92NY presents the JACK Quartet

The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY), one of New York’s leading cultural venues, presents JACK Quartet on Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 7pm in Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnhold Center and streaming online. Tickets start at $40 and are available at https://www.92ny.org/event/jack-quartet. The program will be available to stream for 72 hours following the live performance.

JACK Quartet celebrates its 20^th anniversary season in 2024/25 – remarkable, as it continues to lead as one of the freshest and most vital forces in new music. The quartet – violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell – returns to 92NY with music from their JACK Studio initiative, dedicated to supporting and commissioning the work of emerging composers. JACK Quartet is at the forefront of expanding the modern repertoire for string quartet. Hear them in a program of premieres and commissions from today’s most compelling musical minds.

PROGRAM

EDUARDO AGUILAR HYPER

SEARE FARHAT Aporias

JURI SEO Three Imaginary Chansons

Descent of the Serpent

Swan Song

Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs

ANTHONY CHEUNG Twice Removed (World Premiere)

Notes on the program are available at https://www.92ny.org/program-notes/concerts/111024.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK Quartet is dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music. JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, yielding a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. Through its successful nonprofit model, the quartet has both self-commissioned and been commissioned to create new works with artists such as George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, John Zorn, Liza Lim, and John Luther Adams, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by Anthony Cheung, Ellen Fullman, Natacha Diels, and Tristan Perich. The world’s top composers choose JACK because of its singular dedication to innovation and experimentation. Through intimate, long standing relationships with many of today’s most creative voices, the quartet has a prolific commissioning and recording catalog, has been nominated for three GRAMMY® Awards, and is the 2024 recipient of Chamber Music America’s Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.

JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Berlin Philharmonie (Germany), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw (Netherlands), The Louvre (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina). Among their honors, they have earned an Avery Fisher Career Grant and Fromm Music Foundation Prize; been selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year; and received Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA's Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.

According to Musical America, “many of their recordings are must-haves, for anyone interested in new music.” They have been nominated for multiple GRAMMY® Awards, the most recent being their albums of music by John Luther Adams – nominated in the 2022 and 2023 Best Ensemble Performance category. Other albums include music by Helmut Lachenmann, Catherine Lamb, Du Yun, Nick Dunston, Zosha di Castri, Iannis Xenakis, and upcoming releases of the complete quartets of Elliott Carter and John Zorn.

JACK Quartet created JACK Studio in 2019 to support commissions, recordings, and workshops with emerging music artists who are interested in exploring and expanding the repertory for string quartet. By bringing together diverse groups of excellent and adventurous people to not only create new projects, but to contribute to the evolution of the JACK Studio project itself, JACK has created an artistic ecosystem that links the quartet with artists from around the world. As JACK marks its 20th Anniversary Season, JACK Studio will grow to include a full range of commissions including prominent composers who will also serve as mentors to JACK Studio’s earlier-career collaborators.

More than 40 composers have worked with JACK Quartet through JACK Studio thus far, hailing from Argentina, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, South Africa, Syria, and the United States. Their projects have been performed by JACK Quartet at venues including The 92nd Street Y, TIME:SPANS, Central Park, the Lucerne Festival, MoMA PS1, and Mannes School of Music, in addition to being recorded for professional releases. Commissioned artists have been paired with musical mentors including Marcos Balter, Clara Iannotta, George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, Georg Friedrich Haas, Donnacha Dennehy, Claire Chase, and Nadia Sirota.

JACK Quartet makes their home in New York City, where they are the Quartet-in-Residence at the Mannes School of Music at The New School and provides mentorship to Mannes’s Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet. They teach at summer music festivals such as the Lucerne Festival Academy, Banff Centre for the Arts, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. JACK Quartet has long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall and spring. Learn more at http://www.jackquartet.com.

About The 92nd Street Y, New York: The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) is a world-class center for the arts and innovation, a convener of ideas, and an incubator for creativity. 92NY offers extensive classes, courses and events online including live concerts, talks and master classes; fitness classes for all ages; 250+ art classes, and parenting workshops for new moms and dads. The 92nd Street Y is transforming the way people share ideas and translate them into action all over the world. All of 92NY's programming is built on a foundation of Jewish values, including the capacity of civil dialogue to change minds; the potential of education and the arts to change lives; and a commitment to welcoming and serving people of all ages, races, religions, and ethnicities. For more information, visit http://www.92NY.org.

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