JACK Quartet Celebrates 20th Anniversary at 92NY

The GRAMMY-nominated JACK Quartet officially marks their 20th anniversary with a celebratory concert at The 92nd Street Y, New York (92NY) in New York City. Featuring the world premiere of a new JACK-commissioned work by Anthony Cheung, the program will also include works commissioned by the ensemble through JACK Studio. These vivid new works highlight the launch of Studio's newly formed commissioning fund, investing in the future of JACK's creative partnerships in their third decade.

JACK Quartet celebrates its 20th anniversary on Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 7:00 PM at Buttenwieser Hall at The Arnold Center within New York City's 92NY. In a program composed entirely of JACK Quartet commissions, the quartet premieres Anthony Cheung's Twice Removed, alongside three other recent collaborations, including Eduardo Aguilar's HYPER, Seare Farhat's Aporias, and Juri Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons. The program will be available to stream for 72 hours following the live performance.

First on the program is Eduardo Aguilar's HYPER-a furnace of motion, the choreography of the players' movements producing sonic energy, eventually hurling the players into the audience. The score's unusual form resembles a technical drawing, a mode that Aguilar tentatively calls "Topochronography" (a writing for movement). Aguilar states, "I thought of this music as a congruent gesture of energy that unfolds composed through the design of the physical forces that produce it."

Following HYPER is Seare Farhat's Aporias, a work blending Afghan musical traditions with Western classical history and reflections of the composer's background in mathematics. It moves through beautiful chants, harmonic resonances, and blisteringly emotional outbursts. Farhat says of the piece, "In the following, I will prove my right to contradiction is my own, or so I have told myself."

Juri Seo's Three Imaginary Chansons, written in the winter of 2023-2024 for JACK's Modern Medieval program, was inspired by the speculative music of the late Medieval Ars subtilior, in which developments in notation led to unprecedented explorations of rhythmic complexity. Seo says, "I wanted to extend the same kind of exercise to pitch, utilizing the new intervals of extended just intonation." The piece is formed of three songs: the ouroboros spirals in Descent of the Serpent, a sweet river of lute chords flow in Swan Song, and an elaborate Byzantine tapestry of symmetrical vigor, violence, and speed comes to life in Confronted Cocks and Running Dogs.

The program concludes with Anthony Cheung's Twice Removed. Making its world premiere, the piece builds on the concept of "ekphrasis," the description or reflection of a work of art through use of a different medium, such as a poem inspired by a sculpture. Taking the process one step further, Cheung has composed, in his words: "...a series of musical responses to other existing artistic responses, carried over from one medium to another and now into a third, or reflected back into sound. For instance, a poem about a painting (and vice-versa) or a building inspired by a piece of music."

As JACK marks their 20th Anniversary Season, JACK Studio, an outlet for composers to explore, develop, and share their unique voices, will grow to include the full range of commissions including prominent composers, who will also serve as mentors to earlier-career collaborators. JACK Studio provides highly visible showcases that support the diverse variety of voices creating work for string quartet today. JACK Studio has supported more than 40 emerging composers, and artists from Argentina, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Iran, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, Nigeria, South Africa, Syria, and across the USA have collaborated with JACK on workshops, residencies, recordings, and premieres. JACK has performed projects by Studio artists everywhere from Central Park, MoMA PS1, TIME:SPANS, and Kaufman Music Center in New York City to the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland, bringing these artists to a global audience. With the expansion of Studio this season, JACK is bringing Studio-commissioned works to Lincoln Center, The 92nd Street Y, Wigmore Hall, Music Academy of the West, Pierre Boulez Saal, Winterthur Musikkollegium, Lugano Arts Center, the Ojai Music Festival, and many more.

JACK Quartet created JACK Studio in 2019 to support commissions, recordings, and workshops with emerging music artists. By bringing together diverse groups of excellent and adventurous people in a focused and friendly setting to not only create new artistic projects, but to contribute to the evolution of the JACK Studio project itself, JACK has formed an artistic ecosystem that links people that otherwise may not have had these opportunities, while simultaneously expanding the variety of musical artists with whom JACK has the opportunity to collaborate.

In November 2024, the quartet, its resident artists, and commissioned composers will gather for the inaugural weeklong Studio Residency at Potash Hill in Southern Vermont. The JACK Residency will be a yearly incubator for the community, filled with lively conversation, musical risk-taking, and friendship. This expansion of JACK Studio to include an immersive, week-long residency period marks an important step in the evolution of the program. Commissioned composer Anthony Cheung will be in residence rehearsing the newly completed work for JACK, while serving as mentor to current JACK Studio resident artists and helping oversee the JACK Studio Readings session for 2024, conducted from recording studios at Potash Hill.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK is a pioneering string quartet synchronized in their mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening. Founded in 2005, the ensemble 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. The Sydney Morning Herald singled out the quartet for bringing "consummate instrumental mastery and unwavering commitment to presenting the music of today as a transformative experience."