JACK Studio Celebration
December 15, 2023
Mannes School of Music at The New School
Program
Passing Fragrance, Red Veil - Zara Ali
melancholy objects - Rishin Singh
Aporias, for JACK - Seare Farhat
Lost & Founds - a film by Iván Decoud
All pieces were commissioned by the JACK Quartet through the JACK Studio Program.
Program Notes
Passing Fragrance, Red Veil: Ali has chosen to include the image Lady Lighting a Lamp by Abdur Rahman Chughtai in lieu of a program note.
melancholy objects is a reflection on extinction. It is a musical balancing act between Susan Sontag’s writing on photography and the composer’s own study of the photography of extinct animals. This 20-minute long work in 5 movements encapsulates the surrealism and the tragedy of humankind’s drive to simultaneously document and destroy the other species with whom we cohabit the planet.
Aporias: I will prove my right to contradiction is my own, or so I have told myself.
I. Occursus, a joining. Cum disiunctae ab invicem voces et concorditer dissonant et concordant said Guido, and so I learned to do so and promptly forgot. So will you.
II. Allah, هُوَٱلظَّهِرُ وَٱلْبَاطِنُ ۖ, both hidden and manifest. There is no outside-text, said Jaques, il n’y a pas de hors-texte. Or is that there is nothing outside the text, said Gayatri. I heard it both ways, and so promptly forgot both. And so will you.
III. A song with no end, آهنگ بی زمان, or maybe my favorite song. So much so I forgot how so I like it, and so I forgot to say so, and so will you.
Lost & Founds began as an exploration about the history of my ancestors; of course, inevitably, that led to trips to distant lands, remote places and historical investigations. On each trip I lost and/or found new things, from certainties to material things. Each one of us encounters little adventures every day, or maybe talks to someone who has an idea to share with us, or maybe that someone carries a book about someone talking about another person who has a story to tell. Lost & Founds visits obsessions and brings together anecdotes and fictions that are born from the mundane, from the subtle and those are combined with the potentiality of the members of the JACK Quartet where the possibilities of the instruments inhabits different forms through light, temperature and space in 6 different locations in New York City.
Bios
Hailed by The New York Times as “our leading new-music foursome,” JACK Quartet is synchronized in its mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening. Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK was founded in 2005 and operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music.
JACK has a prolific commissioning and recording catalog and has been nominated for three GRAMMY Awards. This season, the quartet is featured in the ongoing celebrations of John Zorn’s 70th birthday, a three-concert day at Wigmore Hall, a premiere by Natacha Diels in Philadelphia, an Australian tour, and the 5th edition of JACK Studio at Mannes School of Music at The New School, where JACK is the Quartet in Residence. JACK’s all-access initiative JACK Studio funds collaborations with a selection of artists each year to develop new works for string quartet. Through its successful nonprofit model, the quartet has created hundreds of new works, and the world’s top composers choose JACK because of its dedication to innovation. www.jackquartet.com
Zara Ali (b. 1995) is a composer and multimedia artist based in Weimar, Germany. Her diverse musical style encompasses vivid programs, carefully woven microtonal harmonies, close attention to electroacoustic tone color, and the translation of structural concepts (e.g., (geometry, kinetics, temporality) into sound. Her music has been programmed in Europe, North America and Asia, including in Berlin Konzerthaus, cresc. Biennale für aktuelle Musik Frankfurt Rhein Main, the Royaumont Festival, Archipel Festival, Tanglewood Festival, Seoul International Computer Music Festival, and Yellow Barn Music Festival.
In 2023, she won the Gaudeamus Prize and was selected for Deutsche Oper's international commissioning competition. In 2022, she received first prize at the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy Competition in Composition, the oldest classical music competition in Germany. She also received the Sonderpreis from the Freunde Junger Musiker Deutschland. In 2021, she received a competitive studio grant from the renowned JACK Quartet to compose a new work to be premiered in their 2023 season. In 2017, she received the Robert H. Burns Prize in chamber music composition. Zara received her B.A. from Columbia University in 2018 and her M.M. in music composition at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold in 2022. Her primary teachers during her studies were Georg F. Haas, Zosha di Castri, and Mark Barden. Zara is the composer-in-residence of the Internationale Ensemble Modern Akademie for the 2022-23 season.
Iván Decoud (b. 1992) is a musician and artist from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Focusing on the intersections of improvised music, composition, physical processes of instruments, noise, movement and electronics, Daniel explores the diversity of sound and technique in diverse contexts. With a passion for media, nature, and technology, Daniel has created a large body of experimental work that evokes both human instinct and industrial innovation. Beginning his musical training in Jazz and Improvisation at the Conservatory Superior Manuel de Falla, Daniel has worked with George Lewis, Ingrid Laubrock, Tyshawn Sorey, Okkyung Lee, Marc Ducret and Matana Roberts among others. Over the past four years, Daniel has participated in ensembles and residencies such as The Meeting point (2017, Buenos Aires) , The Jazz and Creative Music (2018) and Ensemble Evolution (2019) Residencies at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada. Daniel Is currently pursuing his BM in Música Expandida at UNSAM (Universidad Nacional de San Martin).
Seare Ahmad Farhat strives to create music that connects a listener to the visceral imagination, energy, and transformation within narrative forms. Starting out his musical endeavors in Afghan folk music, he later built on these valued experiences in the western classical tradition combined with other interests, such as mathematics. Seare is currently pursuing a D.M.A. in composition at Cornell University studying with Elizabeth Ogonek, Kevin Ernste, and Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri.
Rishin Singh (b. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) is a composer living in Berlin. His practice involves tense, repetitive, ritual-like music embedded within the social realm and frequently touching on environmental issues. His music appears on records released by Beacon Sound and Edition Wandelweiser Records. Commissions by the JACK Quartet (US), the Fabrik Quartet (DE), the Flinders Quartet (AUS), Sähkökitarakvartetti (FI), Piano+ (US), Claire Edwardes (AUS), Prof. Martin Sturm (DE), the Amsterdam Wandelweiser Festival (NL), Quiet Music Ensemble (IE), and others.
Highlighted performances include at Linos Festival (Köln), Sacrum Profanum Festival (Krakow), The NOW now Festival (Sydney), Festival Belluard (Fribourg, CH), and Klangraum (Düsseldorf) by musicians including EXAUDI Vocal Ensemble (UK), Huw Morgan (UK), Luisa Rapa (DE), DNK Ensemble (NL), and Dante Boon (NL).
In 2020 he won the Franz Liszt Hochschule für Musik Weimar International Choral Composition Prize, and released a CD on Edition Wandelweiser Records – ‘out from the blinding white’ – of piano music performed by Dante Boon. It was described in a broadcast by BBC Radio 3’s The New Music Show as “sensually beguiling”, and a “gorgeous thought experiment in sound”. In 2022 his large-scale organ work ‘mewl infans’ was released on Beacon Sound, performed by Martin Sturm. In a review of the record for The Wire magazine, Emily Pothast wrote “Sometimes these forceful blasts come to an abrupt end, revealing not silence but the perfumed hiss of wind still whipping through the massive metal pipes - ghosts in a very grand machine.”
Singh has recently been a finalist in the APRA Art Music Awards (Work of the Year: chamber music), and awarded a Berlin Senat für Kultur Composition Stipend to begin work on his first one-act chamber opera (subsequently workshopped at the Bijloke Summer Opera Academy, Ghent in 2022), three Musikfonds Neustart Kultur Stipends, an Australia Council for the Arts Resilience Grant, and funding from GVL to compose a new work for organ, timpani, and string orchestra.