Launched in 2019, JACK Studio provides up to 15 composers each year with the opportunity to partake in reading sessions of existing string quartet works, or participate in a two-year residency with JACK Quartet that invites deep experimentation and collaboration. The program is part of the quartet’s mission to foster more equitable access to paid work outside of institutional infrastructures, and on Dec. 15 at Mannes School of Music, they presented four world premieres by JACK Studio artists Zara Ali, Rishin Singh, Seare Ahmad Farhat, and Iván Decoud.
Zara Ali’s Passing Fragrance, Red Veil immediately commanded the silence of the room with a single long tone, held at such a hazy distance that it sounded like the low hum of a refrigerator. A brash, almost violent pizzicato disrupted the texture, and each instrument cascaded in tandem, sliding into a hush. Ali is a composer and multimedia artist based in Weimar, Germany, and her work was inspired by “Lady Lighting a Lamp” by 20th century Pakistani painter Abdur Rahman Chughtai. The piece rested in discordant clusters of microtones – evoking the sounds of collective moaning, an emergency siren, and a tug between restlessness and surrender – before incrementally climbing in volume and range, as though rising to an audible cry.
JACK Studio artists Rishin Singh, Zara Ali, Seare Ahmad Farhat, and Iván Decoud.
melancholy objects by Rishin Singh jolted the audience with sharp, accented notes traded between instruments, eventually melding and distilling into eerie, atmospheric legatos. This dichotomy reflected the Malaysia-born, Berlin-based composer’s intention to capture “the tragedy of humankind’s drive to simultaneously document and destroy the other species with whom we cohabit the planet,” according to the program notes on JACK’s website. Squiggly, inquisitive lines gained intensity, escalating into a charged argument. The electricity continued buzzing even as whispering harmonics took over, too lightly bowed for defined pitches, then interrupted by lightning bolts of scratch tones. The atmospheric quality of the work transformed the space, the music seeming to emerge from the ether instead of JACK Quartet’s instruments – even as still tones were accompanied by the quartet’s own humming, layered and repeated like a mantra.
Aporias, for JACK by Seare Ahmad Farhat began with a traveling legato that moved through different instruments searching for itself, discovering itself — the most interesting use of long tones, which seemed to be the theme of the evening. Farhat’s music blends influences from Afghan folk traditions, Western classical music, and mathematics, and his work for JACK Quartet is an exercise in contradictions. Aporias is concentrated around a single tone that bends until it seems like it might break. JACK was tasked with creating variation while staying in one place, and did so by moving through tinges of sounding thinner and thicker; at times buzzing, then throbbing; attacking, then dull; slow, and then agitated. The exploration grew frenetic as different players passed the note around, one person catching it in midair, getting it steady and holding it stronger until the next player scattered it once again. Aporias, for JACK was in constant motion and full of energy, a fascinating feat for a work built around a single tone.
The evening closed with Lost & Founds, a film by Argentinian musician and artist Iván Decoud (aka Daniel Iván Bruno) featuring JACK Quartet in various locations around New York City. According to the program notes, the film is “an exploration about the history of [Decoud’s] ancestors…that led to trips to distant lands, remote places and historical investigations,” and draws from the many objects he either lost or found, both tangible and intangible.
JACK Quartet — Photo by Shervin Lainez
The film opens with the quartet in a park, their playing and image immediately disfigured by looping effects that visually and acoustically mimic a seesaw. Their bodies fade, a squirrel is shown in a cloud bubble in silence; their bodies reappear rolling on the ground, the squirrel returns, hovering in the air, again silent. A waterfront appears, and the film quickly becomes percussive, like an Instagram boomerang effect or a scratched CD skipping endlessly – depending on one’s generational affiliation. We see a car on a suburban street, the sound of the headlights, windshield wipers, and horn transformed into an instrument before a cut to the grinding crush of the subway. Cellist Jay Campbell hunches over his instrument, long exposure effects giving him eight arms as his deep tones are eventually heard undergirding the industrial thrum. The film ends by rapidly flashing between close-up images of the quartet, a strobing effect that the audience was not warned about. But despite this one unfortunate misstep, the film is a novel approach to new music that deconstructs our expectations of a string quartet.
Curiously – despite the varied styles and influences in each of the JACK Studio artist’s practice – the commissioned works ended up employing remarkably similar ideas and techniques. Individually, each piece would have stood out on a more varied concert, but together, they made for a fairly homogenous program in need of contrast. Additionally, some of the more delicate moments of the program were marred by the venue; held at Mannes School of Music’s Ernst C. Stiefel Hall, the sound of a drumset in another room bled into the performance space. However, JACK Quartet performed the program with great agility, and their technique never faltered.
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