The JACK Quartet Explores the Depths of the John Zorn Universe

By Greg Cahill | From the January/February 2025 issue of Strings

“I don’t think of myself as a jazz or rock artist. I think of myself as someone who’s using all of these different elements to create something else. But if I had to pick one line where I came from, it would be more classical than anything else.” —John Zorn

Ask JACK Quartet first violinist Christopher Otto to describe the attraction of John Zorn’s string quartets and he waxes cosmological: “When I inhabit the disparate stylistic universes and find joy in the cross-level paradoxes, the music’s multiplicity leads me to perceive a sense of underlying unity. Coherence and incoherence cocreate each other.”

You can experience the thrill of that sonic sojourn on the Jack’s newly released recording of the complete Zorn string quartets.

For the uninitiated, DownBeat magazine has described Zorn as “an American composer, conductor, saxophonist, arranger, and producer whose avant-garde and experimental approaches to composition and improvisation are inclusive of jazz, rock, Jewish music, hardcore, classical, contemporary, surf, metal, soundtrack, ambient, and world music.”

Adds Rolling Stone: “[Although] Zorn has operated almost entirely outside the mainstream, he’s gradually asserted himself as one of the most influential musicians of our time.”

Over the years, the 71-year-old Zorn has been closely identified with New York’s musically adventurous downtown jazz scene, though he has composed for classical ensembles and even opera. Influenced by the likes of Hungarian-Austrian avant-garde composer György Ligeti, Zorn taught himself composition and orchestration, though he did have guidance from composer Leonardo Balada. 

A milestone in Zorn’s output of classical work manifested in 1988 when the Kronos Quartet commissioned the prolific composer to write Cat O’ Nine Tails, subsequently recorded on Kronos’ eclectic 1993 album Short Stories. He followed up in 1999 with four works on String Quartets, which featured violinists Mark Feldman and Joyce Hammann, cellist Erik Friedlander, and violist Lois Martin. A four-star All Music Guide review of that album, on Zorn’s own Tzadik label, noted: “Maybe Zorn’s genius isn’t that he creates entirely unique music, but he certainly has an ear for great musical ideas, gleaned from his years of deep listening. And so, while these compositions may not be landmarks among string quartet works, they are exceedingly well done.”

And how does Otto characterize the alternately strident and soothing passages heard on the Zorn quartets? “[They are] a series of noises [that] become empowered with meaning. Within each quartet, and over the course of all eight, we embroil ourselves in the tensions of a particular musical context, only to be snapped into a radically different one,” he says. “Quick changes of tempo, tonality, and character give way to glimpses of stasis. The rates of change themselves change irregularly, and so on, through a cascade of interacting levels. These dizzying shifts of timescale can help us more fluidly change our perspectives and our relations to the world.”

The Jack Quartet—violinists Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell—is well suited to explore the eclectic Zorn universe. In recognizing the ensemble’s endeavors, the New York Times has hailed the Jack as “one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” and one of Zorn’s “most able and enthusiastic interpreters.” 

Since its inception in 2005, the New York–based ensemble has toured the world while specializing in the contemporary repertoire of such modern composers as Philip Glass, Iannis Xenakis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Laura Elise Schwendinger, Helmut Lachenmann, and Steve Reich, to name a few. “From Jack’s beginning in 2005, we wanted to explore music that was highly underappreciated,” Otto says, “a vast landscape of repertoire that has been overlooked or rejected by the majority of string quartets.”

The Jack now holds the Clark residency at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in upstate New York and has received plaudits for its stage and studio work: The Boston Globe has hailed the quartet as “superheroes of the new music world” while the Washington Post has deemed the ensemble “the go-to quartet for contemporary music, tying impeccable musicianship to intellectual ferocity.” The Jack’s 2020 album Lines Made by Walking (Naxos) featured a compelling, eco-inspired, three-movement work by John Luther Adams (the ensemble received a 2025 Grammy nomination for its recording of Adams’ Waves & Particles) and the ensemble garnered a 2022 Grammy nomination for Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance. “It will not appeal to everyone,” Gramophone opined at the time, “but rest assured that the Jack Quartet’s committed performances are a model of flawless ensemble and intonation, captured in very clear sound.”

In celebration of the Jack’s 20th anniversary, the ensemble at press time was scheduled to perform a November 10 program of new commissions at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, including the world premiere of Anthony Cheung’s Twice Removed and three other recent collaborations: Eduardo Aguilar’s HYPER, Seare Ahmad Farhat’s Aporias, and Juri Seo’s Three Imaginary Chansons. The latter three works mark the launch of a new commissioning fund under the auspices of the nonprofit Jack Studio. Other anniversary highlights include a record-release concert at Brooklyn’s Roulette Intermedium promoting the Zorn string quartets album; centennial concerts for Pierre Boulez in London and Switzerland; the European premiere of Natacha Diels’ Beautiful Trouble; a new version of Zorn’s Memento Mori with with Japanese drummer, electronic musician, and composer Ikue Mori;an Alaska tour, featuring a world premiere by John Luther Adams; a residency with Musikkollegium Winterthur; the Jack’s annual return to Wigmore Hall in London for a three-concert marathon; and various concerts throughout the United States. 

Why is it important to champion contemporary string works? “The string quartet has always been a living tradition, and we want to contribute to that liveliness,” Otto says, “recognizing that new string quartets can be powerful creative forces that profoundly affect our consciousness.”

Otto, who studied composition (as well as mathematics) at the Eastman School of Music, developed a taste for the esoteric at an early age. “In overcoming our own limitations and celebrating an expansive range of aesthetics, we become more versatile musicians and more effective communicators,” he says of contemporary classical music. 

He advises listeners to “get lost in the coalescence and fracture of sonic patterns, joyfully participate in the play of chaotic systems, and you may find spiritual sustenance and creative rejuvenation.”

Microtonal intervals, found in such works as Zorn’s Xaphan: Book of Angels, Volume 9, are a part of his focus, and he speaks passionately about it. “Rational—or just—intervals have clearly identifiable perceptual qualities and have the power to establish strong tonal centers,” Otto says. “In an expansive sense, tuning is a dynamic process of deepening our awareness and aligning ourselves. Equal temperament flattens an infinitely nuanced, multidimensional tuning space into a simpler, lower-dimensional one. It gathers a multitude of distinct frequencies into a pitch-class, which is a collection of tones that are treated as equivalent. Temperament is not necessarily a problem, but over time this simplification can desensitize us. I think it’s important to pay attention to those inconvenient details that might seem to complicate things, but which can lead us to a more complete truth.

“This is not about the triumph of one tuning system over another,” he adds, “but about becoming aware of how our ears and minds are operating. We can break out of the perceptual prisons that limit us as soon as we remember they are not real or absolute.”

Otto awakened to the possibilities of experimentalism as a teen when he initially encountered Zorn. “I first heard Forbidden Fruit, for voice, string quartet, and turntables, when I was in high school,” he recalls. “In college, I listened to and played a variety of Zorn’s ensemble music. Jack Quartet first played Cat O’ Nine Tails in 2007. I first met and worked directly with Zorn in 2012, playing his string duos and trios.” 

As a unit, the Jack first worked with Zorn in 2013.

“It’s incredibly inspiring and energizing to collaborate with the composer and understand the music on a human level,” Otto says. “Zorn revels in the effect of his own music. While playing, we see him erupt at particularly powerful passages with ecstatic passion, hear him cackle and cry—fumoso!—and are inspired to nourish this ravenous creature within us.”

While Zorn’s music can be strident, Otto encourages folks not to turn away from these quartets, since the rewards are great. “The abrasive quality scrapes away encrusted habits and breaks through the illusions of limitation to reveal forgotten tenderness,” he says. “And we are eager to blow people’s minds!”