Praised for its "powerhouse playing" by the Chicago Sun-Times, the JACK Quartet maintains a steady appetite for today's most demanding string quartet repertoire. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, the quartet has given high-energy performances in Europe and North America including appearances at Carnegie Hall, La Biennale di Venezia, the Lucerne Festival, and the Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Michoacán.
The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music, where in addition to learning standard and contemporary repertoire they pursued period, non-western, and popular performance styles. The quartet has since studied closely with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.
The commissioning and performance of new works for string quartet is integral to the JACK Quartet's mission, leading them to work closely with composers Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Matthias Pintscher, Aaron Cassidy, Aaron Travers, Roberto Rusconi, Cristian Amigo, Robert Wannamaker, Randall Woolf, Kirsten Broberg, Alexandra du Bois, and Samuel Adler.
The quartet has worked with composition students at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and in Italy for the Intrasonus Project. In addition to working with composers and performers, the JACK quartet seeks to broaden and diversify the potential audience for new music through educational presentations designed for a variety of ages, backgrounds, and levels of musical experience.
John Pickford Richards holds degrees from the Interlochen Arts Academy and Eastman School of Music where his primary teachers were David Holland and John Graham. He is a member of Alarm Will Sound, bringing him into close contact with such composers as John Adams, Wolfgang Rihm, Meredith Monk, and Steve Reich at venues including Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and The Roxy. John has performed as soloist with the Pasadena Symphony Orchestra, Armenian Philharmonic Orchestra, Ossia New Music, and recently performed the solo part to Luciano Berio's Chemins II at the Lucerne Festival Academy under the direction of Pierre Boulez. He taught for three years at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and is now living in New York.
Ari Streisfeld began playing the violin at age six and grew up studying with Philadelphia Orchestra members Paul Arnold and Yayoi Numazawa. He received his bachelor’s degree from the Eastman School of Music studying with Zvi Zeitlin and his master’s degree from Northwestern University studying with Almita Vamos. He was a member of Dal Niente and has worked with composers Steven Mackey, Bernard Rands, Robert Morris, Carlos Sánchez-Gutiérrez, Ricardo Zohn Muldoon, and David Liptak. Ari attended the Music Academy of the West, New York String Orchestra Seminar, Kent/Blossom Music Festival, and the Lucerne Festival Academy. He was a recipient of an ASCAP Morton Gould Young Composer Award and currently resides in Cambridge, MA while pursuing his Doctorate of Musical Arts at Boston University studying with Peter Zazofsky.
Christopher Otto studied composition at the Eastman School of Music with Martin Bresnick, David Liptak, and Robert Morris. As a violinist, Christopher has premiered many compositions and worked with such composers as Harrison Birtwistle, Pierre Boulez, Helmut Lachenmann, and Steve Reich. Christopher has participated as composer and performer in such contemporary music festivals as the Lucerne Festival Academy, Internationale Musikinstitut Darmstadt, Karlheinz Stockhausen Courses, Institute and Festival for Contemporary Performance at the Mannes College of Music, June in Buffalo, and Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Michoacán.
Kevin McFarland received a bachelor’s degree in composition from the Eastman School of Music. While a student there he was a highly active performer of contemporary music, including frequent concerts with the school’s Ossia New Music and Musica Nova ensembles, and over one hundred premieres of works by faculty and students. He is a member of the Tarab Cello Ensemble, a group dedicated to the commissioning and performance of new music for cello octet. He currently lives in Pennsylvania where he works as a math tutor and enjoys making electronic music in his free time.