Princeton Sound Kitchen Presents

Jack Quartet

Performing New Works by:

• Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade

• Troy Herion

• Dave Molk

• Jonathan Russell

• Caroline Shaw

Performed by:

• Jack Quartet

Location: Taplin Auditorium in Fine Hall
Ticketing: Free admission
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2014
Start time: 8:00 pm

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PSK presents JACK Quartet performing new works by Princeton composers Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade, Troy Herion, Dave Molk, Jonathan Russell and Caroline Shaw on Tuesday, April 15th, 2014 at 8:00pm.

Dan Trueman, Director

Michael Pratt, Resident Conductor

PROGRAM

JONATHAN RUSSELL
Déjà vu

DAVE MOLK
Ether

TROY HERION
Quartet

CAROLINE SHAW
Ritornello 2.sq.2.j

NINFEA CRUTTWELL-READE
“Ich ewiges Kind”

ABOUT THE PERFORMERS

The JACK Quartet electrifies audiences worldwide with “explosive virtuosity” (Boston Globe) and “viscerally exciting performances” (New York Times). David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being “among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience.” The Washington Post commented, “The string quartet may be a 250-year-old contraption, but young, brilliant groups like the JACK Quartet are keeping it thrillingly vital.” Alex Ross (New Yorker) hailed their performance of Iannis Xenakis’ complete string quartets as being “exceptional” and “beautifully harsh,” and Mark Swed (Los Angeles Times) called their sold-out performances of Georg Friedrich Haas’ String Quartet No. 3 In iij. Noct. “mind-blowingly good.” The recipient of New Music USA’s 2013 Trailblazer Award, the quartet has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Suntory Hall (Japan), Salle Pleyel (France), Muziekgebouw aan ’t IJ (Netherlands), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Reykjavik Arts Festival (Iceland), Festival Internacional Cervatino (Mexico), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), Donaueschinger Musiktage (Germany), Wittener Tage für neue Kammermusik (Germany), and Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik (Germany). Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is focused on the commissioning and performance of new works, leading them to work closely with composers Derek Bermel, Chaya Czernowin, James Dillon, Brian Ferneyhough, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Vijay Iyer, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Mackey, Matthias Pintscher, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, and John Zorn. Upcoming and recent premieres include works by Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Toby Twining, Georg Friedrich Haas, Simon Holt, Kevin Ernste, and Simon Bainbridge. JACK has led workshops with young performers and composers at Princeton University, Yale University, Harvard University, New York University, Columbia University, the Eastman School of Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Manhattan School of Music, June in Buffalo, New Music on the Point, and at the Darmstadt Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik. In addition to working with composers and performers, JACK 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. The members of the quartet met while attending the Eastman School of Music and studied closely with the Arditti Quartet, Kronos Quartet, Muir String Quartet, and members of the Ensemble Intercontemporain.

ABOUT THE COMPOSERS

Ninfea Cruttwell-Reade is a first-year composition graduate student at Princeton University. She studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where she produced music for theater, and later received postgraduate tuition in cello performance at the Royal Academy of Music, London. As a cellist at the Academy she performed many new works, and designed Playing with Rituals—a concert project that saw her present her own electroacoustic composition alongside pieces by Kaija Saariaho and Benjamin Britten. Her recent projects have included Visions of Nature’s Grace, a large-scale choral setting of Gerard Manley Hopkins texts commissioned by More House School, and a collection of preludes tracing the decay of a damaged piano.

Troy Herion is a composer and filmmaker whose works unite contemporary music with visual arts through chamber and orchestral music, opera, theater, dance, and film. Compositions have been performed by American Composers Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Crash Ensemble, Nash Ensemble of London, and Brentano Quartet. His visual-music compositions including Baroque Suite and New York: A City Symphony have been called “marvelous” by New Yorker critic Alex Ross and were featured on MTV, The New York Times, and performed at Carnegie Hall. Most recently he completed a film score for The Dog which premiered at SXSW and will be in wide theatrical release in 2015. He is currently in pre-production on A Period of Animate Existence, a new music and theater work commissioned by Pig Iron Theatre for two choirs, instruments, and actors. A choir of children and a choir of adults sing to each other about planetary cycles, reproduction, and inheritance. www.troyherion.com

Dave Molk is in his 3rd year at Princeton. He writes mainly for pitched and non-pitched percussion, combining an energized rhythmic propulsion, sinuous chromaticism, and a love of glitch. His current research efforts are in software coding and EDM. He previously studied composition at Berklee College of Music under John Bavicchi and at Tufts University under John McDonald.

Jonathan Russell is a composer, bass clarinetist, conductor, and educator, whose work has been hailed as “incredibly virtuosic, rocking, and musical” (San Francisco Classical Voice) and “a fantastically distorted perpetual motion of awesome” (I Care If You Listen). He has received commissions from ensembles such as the San Francisco Symphony, Peninsula Symphony, Imani Winds, Empyrean Ensemble, ADORNO Ensemble, Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, Wild Rumpus, and the Great Noise Ensemble, and performances from numerous other ensembles and performers, including the Berkeley Symphony, Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, Sō Percussion, Third Coast Percussion, Yarn/Wire, the NakedEye Ensemble, Ensemble Pi, The Living Earth Show, DZ4, the BluePrint Project, REDSHIFT, Roomful of Teeth, Ensemble Avalon, Twiolins, the new music bands FIREWORKS, Capital M, and Oogog, pianist-percussionist Danny Holt, and pianists Sarah Cahill, Lisa Moore, Lara Downes, Matthew McCright, Kate Campbell, and Regina Schaffer. His works are published by Potenza Music Publishing, BCP Music, and Peer Music, and his music has been recorded by the Sqwonk bass clarinet duo, the Kairos Consort, pianist Jeffrey Jacob, The Living Earth show, Imani Winds, and the Twiolins. As a performer, Jonathan is a member of two ground-breaking bass clarinet chamber ensembles: the heavy metal-inspired Edmund Welles Bass Clarinet Quartet and the Sqwonk Bass Clarinet Duo, which is commissioning and recording new works by established and emerging composers to create a new repertoire of bass clarinet duo music. He has appeared as soloist with the Peninsula Symphony, Hudson Valley Philharmonic, West Point Military Academy Band, Harvard’s Bach Society Orchestra, the Woodstock Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra, the Great Noise Ensemble, the NakedEye Ensemble, and the Omaha Symphonic Winds. He is also a co-founder of San Francisco’s Switchboard Music Festival. He holds degrees from Harvard University and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Composition program at Princeton University.

Caroline Shaw is a fourth-year graduate student in composition in the Department of Music.