Jack Quartet
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About the Program Paul Crewes Rachel Fine STRUCTURES (1951) listener's attention to it, so the melody emerges INTONATIONS (2016) Artistic Director Managing Director (…) One of the most remarkable pieces (…) is note by note from an ever-shifting cloud of Commissioned by the 92nd Street Y “Structures for String Quartet” (1951). It is a classical dissonance. Later, Crawford would attempt to make Premiered in New York, NY on May 23, 2016 by PRESENTS string quartet without sonata development, without this effect even clearer to the audience by arranging JACK Quartet at the 92nd Street Y as part of the serial development in general without benefit of this movement as an Andante for string orchestra, opening concert of the 2016 NY PHIL BIENNIAL. clergy. Like Emily Dickinson’s best poems, it does not trusting that the conductor would control these seem to be what it is until all questions of “seeming” emerging melodies even better than individual Intonations is my first multi-movement quartet, have disappeared in its own projection. Its form string players could. inspired in part by the novel "The Invisible Man" by JACK QUARTET reveals itself after its meaning is revealed, as Ralph Ellison. Each movement explores a distinct Dickinson’s passion ignores her dazzling technique. The Allegro finale features hard-edged playing at quality of the human voice, from the breath of As with several other Feldman pieces, if you cannot the frog of the bow by the first violin, juxtaposed harmonica blues to a gospel singer's melodic thread JACK Quartet Program hear “Structures”, I doubt that studying the score with fast unison or doubled answers by the other to vocal cadences in hip hop. Members: would be a help, though it is a thoroughly notated strings, posing a tricky problem in dynamic balance STRUCTURES (6') field of dynamic incident, whose vertical elements for the performers. As the movement progresses, It has been a great joy to collaborate with the JACK VIOLIN Morton Feldman (1926-1987) are linked through some sort of shy contrapuntal the three lower strings adopt the material and Quartet for several years, both as performer and Christopher Otto stimulation of great delicacy and tautness. manner of the violin, and vice versa, by stages, composer. I'm grateful to Clement So at the 92nd then return via the same path to the texture of the Street Y and to Ellen Highstein at the Tanglewood VIOLIN STRING QUARTET (12') —Frank O’Hara (quoted from: Morton Feldman beginning. It's a bold concept, brilliantly executed. Music Center for helping bring this new composition Austin Wulliman Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953) Essays: edited by Walter Zimmermann beginners to life. Rubato assai press, Cologne 1985) This quartet represented both the high point of VIOLA Leggiero Crawford's career as an avant-garde composer and - Derek Bermel John Pickford Richards Andante STRING QUARTET (1931) a premature end to it. The Seegers became Allegro possible Ruth Crawford (who married her composition TETRAS (1983) CELLO Communists, necessarily involved in the teacher Charles Seeger in November 1931, shortly Iannis Xenakis was born in Romania, but studied Jay Campbell "proletarian music movement." Crawford Seeger's EARLY THAT SUMMER (12') after writing this quartet) was among the most music veered sharply in that direction with the architecture in Greece, where he also participated Julia Wolfe (b. 1958) daring and accomplished American avant garde couple's subsequent pioneering work in American in the Greek resistance during World War II. He composers. She wrote music in which a lot happens folk song taking all her career time. She did not worked for the French architect Le Corbusier, all at once, on every possible level. She exercised return to the path indicated by this great quartet notably collaborating with Edgar Varèse on the 15 minute intermission strict control over all aspects of the music, rhythm, again until 1952, by which time she was already Phillips Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Fair. and tone color, as well as the individual notes of fatally stricken with cancer. He is well known for contributions regarding INTONATIONS (20') the melodic lines, creating music of extraordinary applications of cutting-edge mathematical Derek Bermel (b. 1967) dramatic tension. This quartet is often considered –Joseph Stevenson theories to acoustic and electronic music her masterpiece. composition, as well as an aesthetic that is EARLY THAT SUMMER (1993) influenced by his Grecian roots. He lived out the TETRAS (10') The quartet, a 12-minute work is fully as Commissioner: the MTC Lila Wallace/Readers Digest remainder of his life in France as a political exile Iannis Xenakis (1922-2001) concentrated and advanced as any work for a Consortium Program and founded the Xenakis Institute in Paris. He similarly sized ensemble produced by Anton First Performer: The Lark Quartet, The Kitchen, New died tragically of Alzheimer’s disease in 2001. Webern, Schoenberg's most radical disciple. The York City, 30 May 1993 SATURDAY, JANUARY 14, 2017 AT 8PM texture throughout favors lines that are highly I first encountered Xenakis’ music rummaging Bram Goldsmith Theater independent from each other. The first movement, While living in Amsterdam [in 1992] I began Early through my teacher’s CD collection. The liner Rubato assai, has the kind of wide, arching intervals That Summer. I was reading a book about U.S. notes described his works using words such as Running Time: 75 minutes with a 15 minute intermission that are a part of the Webern-Schoenberg style, political history and the author kept introducing "mathematical," "calculus," and "scientific," which perhaps not surprising since Crawford wrote the small incidents with phrases like "Early that I found a bit off-putting. At the time, I had quartet in Berlin during her Guggenheim summer..." The incidents would eventually inherited my teacher's skepticism of the JACK QUARTET Deemed "superheroes of the new music world" (Boston leading them to collaborate with composers John Luther Adams, Chaya Fellowship year of 1930-1931. The way the snowball into major political crises or events. I application of math to composition, even though I Globe), the JACK Quartet is "the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen, Caroline Shaw, Helmut Lachenmann, movement increases in energy by piling up on realized that the music I was writing was exactly enjoyed math (especially calculus) often to the impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity and a take-no-prisoners Steve Reich, Matthias Pintscher, and John Zorn. Upcoming and recent itself, so to speak, is typical of Crawford's music and like this — that I was creating a constant state of chagrin of my peers. The sounds I heard couldn't sense of commitment." (Washington Post) "They are a musical vehicle of premieres include works by Derek Bermel, Cenk Ergün, Roger Reynolds, sets the work apart from its European models. anticipation and forward build. Early That Summer have been more contrary to my expectations. I choice to the next great composers who walk among us." (Toronto Star) Toby Twining, and Georg Friedrich Haas. was written for the Lark Quartet. I asked them to would have described them as being brutal, The second movement, Leggiero (lightly), is play it the way they play Beethoven. They are so primitive, and alien. I didn't quite know how to The recipient of Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, New Music JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, canonic, with imitative entrances cast in distinct clear and strong, full of fire and aggression. process what I was hearing at the time; I didn't USA's Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous commissioning, and spread of new string quartet music. Dedicated to registers; the lines of the music are often linked know whether I liked it, hated it, or what. Programming, JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie education, the quartet spends two weeks each summer teaching at New from one instrument to the next like a chain. The —Julia Wolfe Hall (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ Music on the Point, a contemporary chamber music festival in Vermont for third movement is a remarkable study in what -Kevin McFarland (Netherlands), IRCAM (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne young performers and composers. JACK has a long-standing relationship Crawford called "dissonant dynamics." Each of the Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they four instruments has its own independent rise and Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), and teach and collaborate with students each fall. Additionally, the quartet fall in loudness on different held notes. The Teatro Colón (Argentina). makes regular visits to schools including Columbia University, Harvard assertion of one particular note transfers the University, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John and the University of Washington. Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK is focused on new work, PERFORMANCES MAGAZINE 11.