JACK Quartet Reveals 2023-2024 Season

GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet is an experimental string quartet synchronized in its mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK was founded in 2005 and operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music, delving deeply into challenging new compositions and musical practices outside the classical mainstream.

JACK is poised for a busy and exciting 19th season in 2023-2024, marked by featured appearances in the ongoing celebrations of John Zorn's 70th birthday, an album release of his complete string quartets on Tzadik Records, major global tour dates, and the premiere of a new Zorn work with regular collaborator Barbara Hannigan. Other season highlights include a performance at Prague Sounds Festival and a three-concert day at London's Wigmore Hall featuring the European premieres of works by Vicente Atria, Juri Seo, and Amy Williams. In 2024, JACK premieres Natacha Diels' Beautiful Trouble at Penn Live Arts in Philadelphia, embarks on an Australian tour, and celebrates the 5th edition of its commissioning and composer development initiative, JACK Studio.

JACK Quartet's season begins on August 13 and 14, 2023 with two performances at the TIME:SPANS Festival at New York City's Mary Flagler Cary Hall at The Dimenna Center for Classical Music. On Sunday, August 13, 2023, JACK performs German composer Helmut Lachenmann's (b. 1935) Quartet No. 2 Reigen Seliger Geister (1989) and Quartet No. 3 Grido (2000-01). The next evening, August 14, 2023, JACK gives the world premiere of Cenk Ergün's Yekpare (2023), commissioned by JACK thanks to the New York State Council for the Arts Individual Artists Composer Commission Grant and workshopped with Cenk over the last two years, alongside JACK Studio artist Seare Farhat's Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke (2022) and Clara Iannotta's you crawl over seas of granite (2019/20), written for JACK Quartet.

Described as “some of Mr. Zorn's most able and enthusiastic interpreters'' (The New York Times), JACK celebrates the great composer's 70th birthday with musical tributes at venues including the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, CA on September 3, 2023; Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, MN on September 9, 2023; and a special performance at Columbia University's Miller Theatre in New York City on September 21, 2023. JACK's program features three of John Zorn's pieces: Sigil Magick, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science, and his mini-opera Gas Heart.

In Europe, JACK champions Zorn works such as Cat o' Nine Nails, The Alchemist, The Remedy of Fortune, and Necronomicon at Cité de la Musique in Paris on November 1, 2023; three performances at the SoundsOfMusic Festival in The Netherlands from November 2-4, 2023; and the Prague Sounds Festival on November 6, 2023. They return to the United States and to Columbia University's Miller Theatre on November 16, 2023, performing with frequent collaborator, soprano and conductor Barbara Hannigan, to share John Zorn's vocal works, including Star Catcher, Liber Loageth, Pandora's Box, and more.

Through intimate, long standing relationships with many of today's most creative voices, the quartet has a prolific commissioning and recording catalog and has been nominated for three GRAMMY Awards. As part of John Zorn's 70th birthday celebrations, JACK has been entrusted to record his Complete String Quartets, a feat supported by the quartet's deep relationship with the composer over many years of collaboration. Slated for release in December 2023 on Zorn's own record label, Tzadik, JACK's performance of the composer's eight string quartets is a monumental achievement.

JACK violinist Austin Wulliman releases his own self-composed solo album, The News From Utopia, on September 27, 2023 via Bright Shiny Things, supported by a performance from the entire JACK Quartet at Roulette in Brooklyn. Learn more.

JACK returns to San Francisco for another important seventieth birthday celebration on October 26, 2023, this time to honor Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Luther Adams. Their concert at San Francisco Performances will feature Adams' lauded string quartets The Wind in High Places and Lines Made by Walking. John Luther Adams emerged from decades of full-time environmental activism with a rich artistic voice and a belief that music can do more to change the world than politics. Adams' vision of a musical expression searching for its future home through a grounded presence in our natural world has inspired JACK Quartet to create nine quartets with him, including the ensemble's GRAMMY-nominated album, Lines Made By Walking. Letting the natural resonance of the quartet's strings ring out as if swept by the wind atop a mountain or tracing the steps of Adams' daily walks in the Montana foothills, the music is an invitation to inhabit space and sound and to rediscover a fascination with music's very relationship to the natural world.

After a performance at Princeton Sound Kitchen playing new works by graduate student composers on November 28 and 29, 2023, JACK heads to Washington, D.C. for a recital at The Phillips Collection on December 3, 2023, featuring music by Caleb Burhans, Christopher Otto, Gabriella Smith, Nicola Vicentino, and John Zorn.

They'll return to the University of Iowa from December 4-7, 2023, where they teach twice each season in collaboration with the String Quartet Residency Program and the Composition Department. Their residency will culminate in a recital co-presented by Hancher Auditorium on December 6, 2023 featuring the string quartet repertoire of John Zorn.

They close off the year at home in New York with their 2nd annual JACK Studio Festival on December 15, 2023. This festival is held in partnership with Mannes School of Music at the The New School, where JACK is the quartet-in-residence. Committed to helping dismantle outmoded classical music pipelines for composers, JACK's all-access initiative JACK Studio supports collaborations with a selection of artists each year, who receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new works for string quartet. The festival will showcase premieres by JACK Studio composers Zara Ali, Seare Farhat, Tatiana Gerasimenok, Rishin Singh, and Sakari Vanderveer. It also features a screening of Lost & Founds, a film by Daniel Iván Bruno commissioned and performed by JACK Quartet. Each of these artists has worked with JACK for a two-year residency, during which they received paid opportunities to develop new work, hear their music performed by JACK Quartet, and receive mentorship by leaders in the field.

On February 2, 2024 at 8:00pm, JACK Quartet performs the world premiere of Natacha Diels' Beautiful Trouble at Penn Live Arts in Philadelphia. The production, constructed as a five-video series for a choreographed string quartet, is designed with the purpose of examining a moment in time using the power of abstract narrative and music. Diels, an assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania, used these ideas to create a concert-length production with experimental music, video, and theater, in order to create a sensory experience that considers both our ability and desire to consume media.

JACK Quartet then performs student works in Baltimore, MD, at Peabody Institute on February 8, 2024, before returning to the Miller Theatre for the final time this season, performing a portrait concert featuring the works of composer Amy Williams on February 22, 2024. The program includes a world premiere string quartet by Williams, commissioned by Miller Theatre in honor of the portrait.

After additional engagements at Connecticut College on February 23, 2024 and their second residency visit to the University of Iowa on March 4-6, 2024, JACK performs at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston on March 10, 2024, where they play a recital of works by Christopher Otto, John Zorn, Amy Williams, Iannis Xenakis, and a world premiere by Jeffrey Mumford, commissioned by the museum.

JACK Quartet embarks on a three-city tour of Australia. Between April 5 to April 10, 2024, they will perform and conduct educational programs at the nation's most prestigious venues in Sydney, Melbourne, and Adelaide. Programs include Elliot Carter's Sring Quartet No. 1, Liza Lim's String Creatures, ancient music arranged by JACK violinist Christopher Otto, and bonus works by Gabriella Smith, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Amy Williams, and Johnny MacMillan.

The Quartet returns to the United States for the U.S. Premiere of Terry Riley's Holy Liftoff with Claire Chase at Bing Concert Hall with Stanford Live on May 8, 2024. Written for modular instrumentation, this iteration will be performed for flute, string quartet, and electronics.

JACK Quartet will perform a day-long three-concert marathon at the iconic Wigmore Hall in London on May 11, 2024, featuring the European premieres of JACK-commissioned new works by Vicente Atria and Juri Seo, as well as one of the new premieres by Amy Williams commissioned by Miller Theatre. Seo's new work will present a rare combination of two passions shared by both JACK and the composer: counterpoint and just intonation. The piece draws inspiration from the Medieval “Ars subtilior,” and leverages the ensemble's exceptional ability to navigate the subtle nuances of infinitesimal pitch variations.

For their final performance of the 2023/24 season, JACK Quartet will perform at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin on May 12, 2024. The performance will close out an exciting and packed-full season that sees the JACK Quartet engage in music education, performances at iconic venues, reaching new cities and audiences with new original music from their members.

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