From left: Laszlo Pap, Mei-Mei Luo, Richard Fleischman and Claudio Jaffé.

It’s too early to call it in an invasion, but one Palm Beach County-based string quartet is expanding this season to venues in Broward and Miami-Dade counties.

The Delray String Quartet, founded six years ago out of the collapse of the Florida Philharmonic, has played for the past five seasons on selected Sundays in the historic Colony Hotel in downtown Delray Beach. The hotel, which dates from the 1920s, has no air conditioning in its music room, so during concerts the windows are open to the streets outside, meaning that many a motorcycle has joined the quartet as a special guest artist in the middle of the music.

Managed by Don Thompson, who was co-producer of The Fantasticks, the longest-running musical of all time (42 years), the quartet has added All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale and St. Thomas Episcopal in Coral Gables to its performance spaces this season. The goal: to be a power on the South Florida chamber music scene.

“I do feel that the DSQ is now THE regional quartet, as we are regularly performing in all 3 counties,” Delray violist Richard Fleischman wrote in an e-mail to me last month. “In addition to getting the CD out, our main plan was to expand our local base.”

Earlier this year, the Delray issued its first disc, a recording of two works by Dvorak — the American Quartet (No. 12 in F) and the Piano Quintet in A (Op. 81), with guest artist Tao Lin — and in February, debuted the String Quartet No. 3 of Thomas Sleeper, which the University of Miami composer wrote on commission for the group.

The Sleeper quartet turned out to be a gritty, powerful work with a particularly intense slow movement, and the Dvorak CD, while perhaps not the caliber of the greatest readings of these much-recorded works, showed that the group could make good arguments for core repertoire. Both are critical steps in building a lasting reputation: a respected brand, essentially.

The Delray will join a chamber music scene in Miami-Dade and Broward in which two other quartets are much better-known to local audiences. The Bergonzi Quartet, based at UM for many years, and the Amernet Quartet, based at Florida International University. Both quartets have made appearances, though not on a regular schedule recently, in Palm Beach County, and have been together much longer than the Delray.

“While we may not have the reputation and finesse of the Amernet, we are committed to staying in the area and devoting our time to performing in South Florida,” Fleischman wrote. The other members of the Delray are first violinist Mei-Mei Luo, second violinist Laszlo Pap, and cellist Claudio Jaffé. Luo and Pap have been with the group since the beginning, but faces have changed in the viola and cello chairs; Jaffé is the quartet’s third cellist since its founding.

That, too, presents a challenge. Like any band of musicians in any genre, playing with the same people all the time helps the group develop a real unity of sound and character. It’s much harder to do that with frequent personnel changes. The advantage the group has this season is the sheer number of gigs, which should help sharpen the quartet’s game considerably.

The quartet also is planning to add pre-concert lectures about the music a half-hour before the performances. Fleischman and Jaffé will be the speakers; they are both good at that sort of thing, and it’s the kind of service that audiences really appreciate. Like seeing great art in a museum, listening to art music is at once visceral and educational.

It will be interesting to see how the Delray does in its new homes. I’m betting that this plan will be mostly to the good for them, and that the South Florida chamber music scene will be that much richer because of it.

(The Delray String Quartet opens its season at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4, at St. Thomas Episcopal in Coral Gables; at 8 p.m. Saturday at All Saints Episcopal Church in Fort Lauderdale; and at 4 p.m. Sunday in the Colony Hotel, Delray Beach. On the program are the Beethoven String Quartet No. 4 in C minor, Op. 18, No. 4, and the Piano Quintet in F minor of Cesar Franck, with guest pianist Tao Lin. See the group’s Website for more information.)