Recent Press
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"JACK Quartet brings consummate instrumental mastery and unwavering commitment to presenting the music of today as a transformative experience."
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“Beautiful Trouble is a tour de force of reckless imagination and confident craft, and a testament, however offbeat, to the JACK Quartet’s unshakeable courage and coherence.”
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“With that sprawling stylistic range and its technical mastery, its enthusiastic curiosity about eminent and student composers alike, its precision and passion, the JACK has, since its founding in 2005, become one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles.”
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"The JACK Quartet has long been a powerful voice for contemporary music, tackling the most challenging chamber repertoire with a combination of fluency and commitment."
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“One of the most eye-opening and exhilarating concerts I’ve heard all season.”
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"A program that challenged what music can be...JACK not only plays challenging music well but seems to fully fathom it."
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"I can’t praise JACK’s playing highly enough. The group is musically and technically impeccable; throughout the concert, the players sounded very much like one instrument with an enormous range, a self-effacement of their individualism in favor of making the most unified sound possible for these magnificent works."
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“Lim's new quartet String Creatures – commissioned jointly by Miller Theatre, Lucerne Festival, and Melbourne Recital Centre – is not just an exceptional piece, but in my view one of the finest things JACK has done.”
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“The New York-based lads of JACK made perhaps the strongest impression, performing several extremely difficult pieces, including the US premiere of Catherine Lamb’s String Quartet.”
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“Virtuosic performances as mesmerizing as this come along once in a lifetime.”
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“No group has been busier than the JACK Quartet, which, shutdown notwithstanding, has maintained a rigorous schedule of rehearsing, recording, coaching, and online performance.”
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“It’s hard to think of another string quartet that plays such ferociously contemporary repertoire with their impeccable precision.”
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“Ghostly ensemble textures for the entire quartet were the highlight. At times, the group seemed to fall in lock step, cohering around a mechanical Minimalism. But while keeping the hushed dynamics steady, Lim bent individual string lines away from the expected polyphonic patterns. It was all gripping material.”
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“You always remember your first. The first live concert you attended after the initial pandemic lockdown, that is. So the JACK Quartet will always hold a place in my heart.”
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“...expert in the most ferociously difficult modern scores…”
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"JACK Quartet’s precise performance and malleability brilliantly realizes the composer’s intentions."
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“…the JACK men, some of Mr. Zorn’s most able and enthusiastic interpreters, [leaned] into both the piece’s gritty aggression and its moments of cartoonish levity, like when Mr. Richards cued his fellow players with whips of his bow.”