John Luther Adams, Jack Quartet Waves And Particles

The world class JACK Quartet, both individually and as an ensemble, have had a personal relationship with Zorn for well over a decade. Here they deliver passionate and virtuosic recordings of his complete string quartets. Zorn’s writing for strings is legendary, and his eight string quartets, written in a thirty-year period from 1988–2017, are some of the most important and original works of the late 20th–early 21st century. Each piece is a unique world of its own, but all carry a dramatic narrative arc, a connection to tradition, and all push the players technically right to the edge of impossibility. Imaginative, challenging, and filled with color and a wealth of emotions, this is new music at its best. Includes a 36-page booklet with extensive notes, scores, and appreciations by the musicians.

Pressed between bodies heaving to the pulse. The room inside the drum: each of us within its envelope. Sent elsewhere. Stamped to distant locales but together in this resonating box. My wrists were broken. My mind screwed on tight.

Pressed between bodies heaving to the pulse. The room inside the drum: each of us within its envelope. Sent elsewhere. Stamped to distant locales but together in this resonating box. My wrists were broken. My mind screwed on tight.

With its trio of August releases, Cold Blue Music reaches the milestone of 50. The label is known as the home of John Luther Adams, but there’s a lot more talent on its roster. Australian composer Stephen Whittington is a prime example, his last appearance being the Satie and Eno referencing Music for Airport Furniture. The follow-up seems more contemporary, despite the fact that its two compositions predate Music and were written two decades apart. Even more surprising is the fact that the title track (written in 1990), seems more modern than “…from a thatched hut” (2010).

We’re the JACK Quartet, a string quartet that champions music by 20th- and 21st-century composers.

The first volume in a series combining Radulescu’s complete Piano Sonatas and String Quartets, there are six of each, on Mode performed by the superb JACK Quartet and Stephen Clarke (piano). In the 1970s, Horatio Radulescu (1942-2008) began exploring and composing begun composing what he called “plasmatic music,” in which sound was conceived as an “endless ocean of vibrations,” as opposed to the traditional way in which music treats sound as a fabric of discrete scale steps. His music is linked to the “spectral music” school. Radulescu’s Fifth String Quartet is one of the key works in his output. It is in some ways the richest manifestation of the body of string techniques he had developed for his music. The Second Piano Sonata is inspired by the Tao of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu (6-5 BC). The first movement, “Immanence,” opens with a powerful sonority built from spectral functions which gives a sense of immensity and strength. The Fifth Piano Sonata makes abundant use — more so than any of the other sonatas — of Romanian folk material, which is absorbed and integrated into Radulescu’s spectral language.