Parkwest Strings

1. Beneath the Ocean — Maldives

Not metaphorically. Actual underwater weddings. 

In the Maldives, couples have exchanged vows surrounded by coral reefs, tropical fish, and blue light filtering through the ocean above them. The setting feels more like science fiction…

Best Chicago wedding venues for live music—from the perspective of a professional Chicago string quartet.
A guide to venues where ceremony and cocktail hour music truly come to life.

Choosing a Chicago wedding venue is not just about how it…

If I had to pick one moment in the ceremony, it’s the recessional.

It’s simple. It works every time. And when it’s done right, it changes the entire feel of the room in a matter of seconds.

Why It Works

…

Blame Bridgerton.

Somewhere between the candlelight and a string quartet playing pop music, everyone realized:

This is exactly what weddings are supposed to feel like.

The Moment It Clicked

When songs like Enchanted are played on live strings, something…

What happens when you take one of the most iconic guitar solos in heavy metal and put it in the hands of a string quartet?

Mr. Crowley — String Quartet (Excerpt)
A bold, expressive take on one of heavy metal’s…

Chicago is known for its skyline, but some of its most meaningful spaces have been here far longer.

These spaces hold more than beauty. They carry history, tradition, and small details that often go unnoticed unless you know where to…

From staged applause to outright chaos in the concert hall

Applause, for Hire

In Paris, audience reactions were sometimes carefully arranged in advance.

Professional groups known as claques were hired to influence how a performance was received. They were…

Music and visual art have often existed side by side.

Some artists worked directly with musicians. Others thought about color, rhythm, and structure in ways closely aligned with music.

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944)

Kandinsky had a well-documented connection to music, particularly…

Shinichi Suzuki (1898–1998)

So many of us know his teaching method — but not how it began.

Suzuki grew up in Japan, where his father owned a violin factory. Instruments were part of his daily life, but he did not…

There is a part of wedding planning that rarely gets discussed, yet it shapes the entire experience of a ceremony.

Not the song itself, but how it sounds in the space.

After performing at hundreds of weddings across Chicago, one…

Trends don’t start at weddings anymore. They start online.

A short clip. A sound that catches. A lyric that repeats just enough to stay with you. And then, almost without noticing, those same songs begin to show up in real…

When planning a wedding, the dress is often one of the first details to take shape. From there, everything else begins to follow, including the music.

Wedding music doesn’t always come to mind right away, but it plays a central…

There is always one part of the ceremony that never goes exactly as planned, and it usually involves the smallest members of the wedding party. It also tends to be the moment where the tension softens, as guests lean in…

Watching this year’s Olympics, it became surprisingly clear how important the music is, especially in the moments when it was being talked over.

It shifted my attention to how much of the performance depends on what we hear, not just…

In 2025, Parkwest Strings had the honor of performing at three weddings in the Fragrance Garden at the Morton Arboretum. Each ceremony unfolded in its own way, shaped by the changing beauty of the garden and the distinct story of…