Wigmore Hall: Three Programmes in a Single Day
JACK Quartet returns to Wigmore Hall for their annual three-concert day with performances at 11:30 AM, 3:00 PM, and 7:30 PM.
Concert #1: 11:30 AM
The first of JACK Quartet’s three programmes at Wigmore Hall in a single day, built from works commissioned for the Kronos Quartet’s Fifty for the Future project, promises to astonish and inspire with its hypnotic focus and thrilling energy. Sky Macklay’s Vertebrae runs up and down scale fragments like notes ‘played by a prehistoric person on a xylophone of sun-dried bones’, while Mark Applebaum’s Flashlight voyages to ‘an alternate universe where this piece was written by Haydn.
Sky Macklay: Vertebrae
Nicole lizee: darkness is not well lit
Barry Guy: what is the word
Onutè Narbutaitė: just strings and a light wind above them
Mark Applebaum: flashlight
Concert #2: 3:00 PM
Two of JACK Quartet founding member Christopher Otto’s compositions receive their UK première this afternoon, including the latest iteration of his 3x4x5, created in 2017 and now expanded to include a greater range of material. ‘It’s kind of a network of pathways through different harmonies at different times,’ he says of the original score. Lost One stems from Escape Rites, the JACK Quartet’s 2025 album collaboration with Austin Wulliman. Wulliman’s piece, writes Hump Day News, is ‘A bit eerie. A bit anxious making. Floating in the air like an unanswered question.’
Christopher Otto: Cascade Quartet (UK premiere)
Austin Wulliman: Lost One (UK premiere)
Austin Wulliman: Escape Rites (UK premiere)
Christopher Otto: 3x4x5x7+Loblied (with tape) (UK premiere)
Concert #3: 7:30 PM
Georg Friedrich Haas’s Eighth String Quartet seems to bend time and space as it draws its audience into some far-distant universe. The piece, written for and first performed by the JACK Quartet in 2014, contrasts with the constantly-shifting terrain of the fourth quartet by Philip Glass, composed in 1989 in remembrance of the artist Brian Buczak. The JACK Quartet’s day-long festival of new work concludes with a series of notable UK firsts by composers based in the United States.
Georg Friedrich Haas: String quartet no. 8
Philip Glass: String quartet no. 3 “Buczak”
Juri Seo: Dahlia (UK premiere)
Gabriella Smith: Aegolius (UK premiere)
Tristan Perich: A Series of Short Works, Open-Ended, Somewhat Optimistic (UK premiere), for string quartet and 1-bit electronics, commissioned by JACK Studio with the support of 92NY and NYSCA