JACK Quartet: "Round-about," Music by Latin American composers

Undeniably our generation’s “leading new-music foursome,” JACK Quartet’s “stylistic range, precision and passion have made the group one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” (The New York Times). Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK Quartet celebrates their landmark twentieth anniversary season in 2024–2025, embarking on their third decade as 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 twentieth and twenty-first century string quartet music, delving deeply into challenging new compositions and musical practices from a staggering range of stylistic viewpoints. Through intimate, long-standing relationships with many of today’s most creative voices, JACK 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. 

Among the highlights of the 2024–2025 season, JACK Quartet officially marks their twentieth anniversary with a celebratory concert at 92NY in New York City, featuring the world premiere of a new JACK-commissioned work by Anthony Cheung; the U.S. premiere of JACK commission Three Imaginary Chansons by Juri Seo at Lincoln Center; and the world premiere of Ellen Fullman’s "Energy Archive" at the Beyond: Microtonal Music Festival 2025 in Pittsburgh. In addition, JACK Quartet celebrates their long association with composer John Zorn with the release of Zorn’s complete string quartets on Tzadik Records, as well as an album release concert at Brooklyn’s Roulette Intermedium. 

International engagements include JACK Quartet’s annual marathon of performances at Wigmore Hall in the United Kingdom and appearances at the Pierre Boulez Saal and Konzerthaus Berlin concert halls in Germany, along with appearances in Toronto and Barcelona, as well as Lugano and Winterthur in Switzerland. The season also brings the European premiere of the major multimedia commission Beautiful Trouble by Natacha Diels to Konzerthaus Berlin. 

The JACK Quartet embraces close collaboration with the composers whose work they perform, yielding a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. JACK Quartet has both self-commissioned and been commissioned to create new works with artists such as Philip Glass, Julia Wolfe, Helmut Lachenmann, and Caroline Shaw, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by John Luther Adams, George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, Liza Lim, Tyshawn Sorey, Amy Williams, and John Zorn. The world’s top composers choose JACK because of their singular dedication to innovation and experimentation. 

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—both were nominated in the 2022 and 2023 Best Ensemble Performance category. Other albums feature 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 also 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 twentieth 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 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 has performed to critical acclaim at venues such as Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Berlin Philharmonie (Germany), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw (Netherlands), The Louvre (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), Sydney Opera House (Australia), 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. 

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 provide 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 has long-standing relationships with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall and spring.