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JACK Quartet
Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, violin • John Pickford Richards, viola • Jay Campbell, cello
New York Stories
MORTON FELDMAN (1926–1987)
Structures
CALEB BURHANS (b. 1980)
Contritus
PHILIP GLASS (b. 1937)
String Quartet No. 5
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- Movement I
- Movement II
- Movement III
- Movement IV
- Movement V
— Intermission —
CAROLINE SHAW (b. 1982)
Entr’acte
JOHN ZORN (b. 1953)
The Remedy of Fortune
About the JACK Quartet:
Hailed by The New York Times as “our leading new-music foursome”, the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected experimental string quartets performing today. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music. The quartet was selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year”, nominated for GRAMMY Awards for recordings in 2018 & 2022, named to WQXR’s “19 for 19 Artists to Watch”, and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, as well as the Fromm Music Foundation Prize.
Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has worked with artists such as Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Helmut Lachenmann, and Caroline Shaw, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by John Luther Adams, Catherine Lamb, Liza Lim, Tyshawn Sorey, Wadada Leo Smith, Amy Williams, and John Zorn. JACK’s all-access initiative, JACK Studio, funds collaborations with a selection of artists each year, who receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new works for string quartet.
Committed to education, JACK is the Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music, where they provide mentorship to Mannes’s Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet.
PROGRAM NOTES
Two legends of New York’s downtown, Philip Glass and John Zorn, bring stylistically divergent visions of the city: a rollicking, romantic ride through a maze of patterns in Glass’ epic String Quartet No. 5, and a peek into the catacombs in Manhattan’s Upper West Side from John Zorn who brings medieval mystery to contemporary America with Remedy of a Fortune. Caleb Burhans leads the listener in a healing ritual of absolution in Contritus, while Caroline Shaw pays homage to the father of the string quartet, Josef Haydn, in her Entr’acte. Morton Feldman reminds us of the pattern and structure all around us. New York: a city of Byzantine systems and countless ideas that defies tidy summary, but always fascinates and excites continued exploration.