JACK Quartet coming to Mizzou for residency, concert on Friday, October 27

The acclaimed new music group JACK Quartet is coming to the University of Missouri for a two-day residency, culminating in a concert at 7:30 p.m. Friday, October 27 at Whitmore Recital Hall.

Admission to the concert is $5 at the door for the general public, free to Mizzou students, faculty and staff with ID.

In addition to the concert, while they’re on campus the quartet (pictured) will have coaching sessions with the university’s graduate string quartet and Mizzou New Music Ensemble, and take part in a convocation with the entire School of Music.

They also will present a free, public workshop with Mizzou New Music Initiative post-doctoral fellow Carolina Heredia on Thursday, October 26 at Whitmore Hall, performing the Missouri premiere of a new section of her composition “Ausências/Ausencias/Absences.” (JACK Quartet premiered the original, shorter version of Heredia’s work in 2016, and you can see them playing it, plus a couple of other sample performances, via the embedded video players at the bottom of this post.)

Called “superheroes of the new music world” by the Boston Globe, and praised as “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity and a take-no-prisoners sense of commitment” by the Washington Post, JACK Quartet was formed in 2005 by violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, all alumni of the Eastman School of Music. In 2016, violinist Austin Wulliman and cellist Jay Campbell joined the group, replacing Streisfeld and McFarland.

JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and spread of new string quartet music. They have collaborated with a stellar roster of contemporary composers, including Derek Bermel, Cenk Ergün, Roger Reynolds, Toby Twining, and Georg Friedrich Haas. John Luther Adams, Chaya Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caroline Shaw, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, Matthias Pintscher, and John Zorn.

The quartet has performed at major venues around the world, including Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in the USA, as well as Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ (The Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), and many others.

As part of an ongoing commitment to music education, the JACK Quartet spends two weeks each summer teaching at New Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont, and has long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program and the Boston University Center for New Music.  They also have taught and performed at schools including Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, and the University of Washington.

“Ausências/Ausencias/Absences” by Carolina Heredia

“Intonations” by Derek Bermel

“Ritornello” by Caroline Shaw