Jack Quartet @ LPR 5/24/09

This is a string quartet playing creative classical. They played for 1/2 hour, and I got there a little late, but the 15 min I did get was awesome. They have the tables and chairs, with seats at the bar and the place is pretty full but not sold out.

I couldn't see the instruments too well, but it looked like a traditional string quartet with 2 violins, cello, and viola. I'm not sure if it was a violin or a piano where the artist was making it sound like the high keys on the piano. I guess he had them clamped or extra tight or something. I liked the sound.

It was very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot.

Here's the description from LPR:
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 Musica Contemporanea de Michoacan. 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 studied with the Arditti Quartet at the Pro-Bio Foundation Summer School for Contemporary Quartet Music, the Kronos Quartet at the Weill Music Institute at Carnegie Hall, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain at the Lucerne Festival Academy. 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.