JACK Quartet Announces New Managing Director Julia Bumke

About Julia Bumke

Julia Bumke is a new work dramaturg and nonprofit strategist who fosters composers, performers, and playwrights at all stages of their careers. Prior to her work with JACK Quartet, she served as Development Director with So Percussion, where she focused on Board growth and individual giving strategy. Recent nonprofit consulting clients include PlayPenn, a new play development organization; BalletX, a contemporary ballet company specializing in world premieres; and Emma’s Torch, which empowers refugees through culinary education. As an opera and theater dramaturg, Julia collaborates with artists to craft singular projects as a mix of editor, advocate, and trusted confidante. Her recent work includes premieres and workshops with Oberlin Conservatory, OPERA America, Curtis Institute of Music, Opera Philadelphia, PEAK Performances at Montclair State University, the American Repertory Theater, Lincoln Center Theater, and the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. Julia received her A.B. from Princeton, and her M.F.A. in Dramaturgy from A.R.T.’s Institute for Advanced Theater Training at Harvard. www.juliabumke.com

About the JACK Quartet

Hailed by The New York Times as the “nation’s most important quartet”, the JACK Quartet is one of the most acclaimed, renowned, and respected groups performing today. JACK has maintained an unwavering commitment to their mission of performing and commissioning new works, giving voice to underheard composers, and cultivating an ever-greater sense of openness toward contemporary classical music. Over the past season, they have been selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year”, named to WQXR’s “19 for 19 Artists to Watch”, and awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant.

Through intimate relationships with today’s most creative voices, JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, leading to a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. The quartet has worked with artists such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Julia Wolfe, George Lewis, Chaya Czernowin, and Simon Steen-Andersen, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by Tyshawn Sorey, Georg Friedrich Haas, Clara Iannotta, John Luther Adams, Catherine Lamb, and John Zorn. JACK also recently announced JACK Studio, an all-access initiative to commission six artists each year, who will receive money, workshop time, mentorship, and resources to develop new work to be performed and recorded by the quartet.

Committed to education, JACK is the Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music, who will host JACK’s new Frontiers Festival, a multi-faceted festival of contemporary music for string quartet. They also teach each summer at New Music on the Point and at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. JACK has done educational programs at the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, the Lucerne Festival Academy, Harvard University, NYU, Princeton University, Stanford University, and more. 

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK operates as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of new string quartet music.