Ellen Fullman & JACK Quartet

Artists Space is pleased to present two weeks of legendary sound artist and composer Ellen Fullman's Long String Instrument, with performances on Friday evenings April 26 and May 3 and a continuous installation on view.

JACK and Fullman perform a work-in-progress on April 26.

Installation on view: Wednesday, April 24 - Friday, May 3

JACK at Mannes School of Music

As the Mannes Ensemble-in-Residence, JACK Quartet will give a recital at the Ernst C. Stiefel Hall at The New School.

Johnny MacMillan, Songs from the Seventh Floor
Christopher Otto, Miserere, after Nathaniel Giles
Elliott Carter, String Quartet no. 1

This concert is free and open to the general public. Registration required.

Rocketing ecstatically between sadness and joyfulness, Natacha Diels’s Beautiful Trouble is an evening-length ‘opera’ (as dramatic spectacle) for JACK Quartet that explores a slim window of human existence. Moments gathered like precious stones coalesce to create both sense and nonsense, forming a logic all the piece’s own. Organizing the stones just so reveals clarity in chaos, if only for a moment.

Touching on elements of:
work ethic (humans as puppets),
dystopia,
the beauty of nightmares,
unmistakable loves,
childlikeness (play),
just music,
protest (no more wars),
loss,
nature as commodity (or not),
the beauty of silliness (playful nonsense),
long walks,
and wholeness.

“The five-part piece, which marries surreal short films to a just-as-absurdist live performance, is an ideal vehicle for JACK’s open-minded virtuosity.” - The New York Times

Beautiful Trouble was developed with support from Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, TIME:SPANS, The Barlow Foundation and the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation. Workshops were hosted by Mannes School of Music at The New School.

Composer Portrait Series: Amy Williams
The music of Amy Williams embodies a vivid soundworld with ever-changing textures that beguile the ear. The astonishing composer, who is equally as accomplished as a pianist, joins JACK Quartet to perform a selection of her works.

Program: All by Amy Williams

Tangled Madrigal for string quartet (2024) World Premiere, Miller Theatre Commission
Bells and Whistles (2022) for piano trio
Richter Textures (2011)
Cineshape 2 (2007) for piano and string quartet

Read: Program Notes by Tim Munro

Read: Q&A with John Pickford Richards about Amy Williams

Album Release: Austin Wulliman: The News From Utopia

The News From Utopia is JACK violinist Austin Wulliman's debut album as composer. The record is a solo project built from many multi-tracked layers of Wulliman, which he composed, recorded and mixed.

The live experience will incorporate electronics built of samples from the album, as well as live performances from JACK Quartet and video by JACK Studio artist Iván Decoud. Additionally, the concert includes the US Premiere of Down Pat for electric guitar and electronics, written for the unique talents of guitarist and composer Alec Goldfarb.

The News is built from a web of musical conspiracy theories that coalesce into imagery and a nonlinear network of narrative. A field of pixels comes into focus, a series of images scroll past your phone screen, a dark veil falls over the noonday sun, a nightscape of the desert melts into the sea roiling with whitecaps and you wake up with your heart racing, eyes wide. Wulliman's latest work, Down Pat, tunes the guitar to the electrical ground, using MIDI interface to control an extended ratio-based tuning system. 50 hz, 60 hz, 440 hz and an increasing concatenation of 11s and 5s and 3s build a network of polyrhythm, harmony, and scalar logics that our plugged-in guitar hero embodies: the king is his castle. The performance also features a video premiere by Argentinian multimedia artist Iván Decoud for the track BLINK.

Program: all by Austin Wulliman

SYSTEM NOTES (2023) – World Premiere for string quartet and electronics
BLINK (2022) – World Premiere for string quartet, electric guitar and electronics
Down Pat (2023) – US Premiere for electric guitar and electronics
-Alec Goldfarb, guitar
The Late Edition (2023) - World Premiere for string quartet
Lost One (2024) — World Premiere for string quartet
The Docks (2022) – World Premiere for string quartet and electronics
The News From Utopia (ii) (2024) – World Premiere for string quartet and electronics

Tyshawn Sorey, For Grachan Moncur III (US premiere)

As part of 92NY’s 150th Season, JACK Quartet and Tyshawn Sorey (percussion) perform the US Premiere of Sorey’s For Grachan Moncur III. Following a world premiere at the Lucerne Festival in summer 2022, the work is in homage to Moncur – the late composer and trombonist who blazed a trail through modern jazz in the 1960s, shares Sorey’s Newark, NJ roots, and had a major influence on Sorey’s musical development.

Online streaming also available for 72 hours following the performance.

JACK Studio Celebration

JACK celebrates four new JACK Studio projects in a free recital on December 15, 2023. This concert is held in partnership with Mannes School of Music at the The New School in New York City, where JACK is the  quartet-in-residence.

The recital will showcase premieres by JACK Studio composers Zara Ali, Seare Farhat, and Rishin Singh. It also features a screening of Lost & Founds, a film by Iván Decoud commissioned and performed by JACK Quartet through the JACK Studio program.

Each of these artists has worked with JACK for a two-year residency, during which they received opportunities to develop new work, hear their music performed by JACK Quartet, and get mentorship from performers in their field.

Click here for the concert program, bios, and program notes.

Barbara Hannigan + John Zorn

Program: All by John Zorn

Star Catcher (2022)

Split the Lark (2021)

Liber Loagaeth (2021)

Ab Eo, Quod (2021)

Pandora’s Box (2013)

Performers: Barbara Hannigan, voice; Stephen Gosling, piano; JACK Quartet; Stephen Gosling, piano; Jorge Roeder, double bass; Sae Hashimoto, vibraphone; Ches Smith, drums; and Ikue Mori, electronics

Tippet Rise and the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation are delighted to participate in a special collaborative concert at Paula Cooper Gallery (534 West 21st St, New York) on Wednesday, October 18 at 6:00 PM EDT, in celebration of Mark di Suvero's exhibition Painting and Sculpture (through October 21).

Our friends the JACK Quartet will perform John Luther Adams’ Lines Made By Walking (String Quartet No. 5), a Tippet Rise commission which premiered at the art center in 2019. In addition, poet Jenny Xie will read several of her works, interwoven among the three movements of the Adams piece.

This event is free and open to the public.

John Zorn at 70: Music for Strings

Program: All by John Zorn

Sigil Magick: A Curious and Detailed Exposition of Sigils, Signs, and Hieroglyphs Peculiar to the Occult Orders, Hermetic Brotherhoods, and Dark Mystery Schools of the Late Middle Ages for string quintet (2020)

The Gas Heart a mini opera for 2 celli and 2 percussionists (2020)

Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science for string sextet (2020)

Note: David Fulmer will be playing violin on this performance, as a substitute for Austin Wulliman.

Seare Farhat, Ka Spoojmai Shwa Poh Hala Ke (US Premiere)

Clara Iannotta, you crawl over seas of granite (US Premiere)

Cenk Ergün, Yekpare (World Premiere)

JACK Quartet's commission of Cenk Ergün's Yekpare is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts Individual Artists Composer Commission Grant with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Helmut Lachenmann, String Quartet No. 2 Reigen seliger Geister

Helmut Lachenmann, String Quartet No. 3 Grido

Catherine Lamb: Prisma Interius VII
Christopher Otto: rag'sma
Iannis Xenakis: Tetras

JACK’s performance during Bang on a Can’s Long Play Festival is part of the greyfade label showcase. More info is available here.