May 6: JACK Quartet Performs the Music of Composer & Violinist Austin Wulliman at Miller Theatre Pop-Up Concert

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
Contact: Katy Salomon | Primo Artists | VP, Public Relations 
katy@primoartists.com | 646.801.9406 

JACK Quartet Performs the String Quartets of 
Composer & Violinist Austin Wulliman at Miller Theatre, May 6

Featuring Works From Wulliman’s Second Album of Original Music,
 Escape Rites, Out May 9 on Sono Luminus

“a gifted, adventuresome violinist” – Chicago Tribune

“the nation’s most important quartet” – The New York Times

www.austinwulliman.com
 

New York, NY (April 2, 2025) – Composer and violinist Austin Wulliman will be featured in a performance of his own string quartet compositions with JACK Quartet at a Miller Theatre pop-up concert on Tuesday, May 6, 2025 at 6:00PM. The concert celebrates the release of Wulliman’s second album of original music, Escape Rites, out Friday, May 9, 2025 on Sono Luminus. The concert features the NYC premiere of the album's title track, Escape Rites, following its European premiere and tour by the JACK Quartet at Pierre Boulez Saal in Berlin (March 20), London’s Wigmore Hall (March 22), and Musikkollegium Winterthur, Stadthaus in Switzerland (March 29).

In his Escape Rites (2024), Wulliman constructs intricate sonic totems using a palindromic 25-tone scale, where each note finds its distinct place within a complex web of timbral orchestrations and polyrhythmic relationships. Inspired by Boulez’s friendship with John Cage, the piece consists of six continuous movements that invoke wildly disparate emotions and a sense of regression into nostalgia. Wulliman filters the experimental energy of the postwar moment during which Boulez and Cage made a common cause, plus its aftermath, harnessing their utopian energy through the lens of JACK’s performance practice. As a motto for his new piece – and for the program as a whole – Wulliman cites an aphorism by John Cage: “Activity involving in a single process the many, turning them, even though some seem to be opposites, towards oneness, contributes to a good way of life.”

Wulliman’s Late Edition (2024) captures the feeling of being physically and emotionally immersed in a powerful, overwhelming experience. In his program notes, Wulliman writes, “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.”

Inspired by themes of self-discovery and connection with nature, Lost One (2024) depicts the story of a moment of clarity in a tranquil environment, where the boundaries between self and the natural world blur, bringing new discovery to an existential understanding. Wulliman’s notes state, “I wake next to a reflecting pool. An inlet. The water here is cool, shaded by trees that lean in to listen, swaying lightly with the gentle breeze, the hairs on my neck alive. I start my own religion here.” 

Program Information
Tuesday, May 6, 2025 at 6:00PM
Pop-Up Concerts: JACK Quartet:  Escape Rites by Austin Wulliman
Miller Theatre | New York, NY
Link: www.millertheatre.com/events/string-quartets-of-austin-wulliman 
Tickets: Free admission; Doors open at 5:30PM, music at 6PM. Onstage seating is first-come, first-served.

Program:
Austin Wulliman – Escape Rites (2024) [New York Premiere]
Austin Wulliman – The Late Edition (2024)
Austin Wulliman – Lost One (2024)

Christopher Otto, violin
Austin Wulliman, violin
John Pickford Richards, viola
Jay Campbell, cello

Escape Rites Track List

1. Austin Wulliman – The Late Edition (2024)  [7:59]
2. Austin Wulliman – Lost One (2024) [10:01]
3. Austin Wulliman – Escape Rites (2024) [22:33]
          i.. Power Switch
          ii. Wa(l)king
          iii. Escape Rite
          iv. Etude X: a table of contents
          v. NOTNA: the crystal
          vi. el lago de los valores
4-6. Austin Wulliman – Live News (2023-24)
          i.  SYSTEM NOTES [6:01]
          ii.  como se vive (ii) [3:40]
          iii. Live News [6:57]
7. John Cage (arr. Austin Wulliman 2024) – Totem Ancestor (1942) [2:10]

Total Time: 59:21

Austin Wulliman (composer, violinist): tracks 1-7
Christopher Otto (violinist): tracks 1-7
John Pickford Richards (viola): tracks 1-7
Jay Campbell (cello): tracks 1-7

Produced by Austin Wulliman and Ryan Streber
Recorded and Edited by Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, December 16, 2024 & January 16, 2025
Mixed by Austin Wulliman
Mastered by Daniel Shores
Artwork by Alex Sopp
Photography by Shervin Lainez (JACK Quartet) and Anneliese Varaldiev (Austin Wulliman)
Liner Notes by Austin Wulliman
Escape Rites was recorded with the support of a grant from the Alice M. Ditson Fund of Columbia University.

SLE-70037
UPC: 053479703705

About Austin Wulliman
Violinist, composer, and educator Austin Wulliman embodies the imagined and empathizes with the absurd through sounds both familiar and radical, telling stories with a limitless passion for tuning cries from every corner of the human capacity to hear. He is a member of JACK Quartet, called “the nation’s most important quartet” by The New York Times, and has been praised as a “gifted, adventuresome violinist” by the Chicago Tribune. Through in-depth collaboration with performers and composers working in a panoply of aesthetic realms, Wulliman searches daily for the violin’s voice in today’s musical world.

As a violinist in the JACK Quartet, Wulliman has played in renowned venues such as Wigmore Hall, the Berlin Philharmonie, the Elbphilharmonie, Carnegie Hall, and the Wiener Konzerthaus, and featured on festivals such as Tanglewood, Ojai, Spoleto, Lucerne and Wien Modern. His work with JACK has included premieres by John Luther Adams, Chaya Czernowin, Philip Glass, Georg Friedrich Haas, Clara Iannotta, George Lewis, Tyshawn Sorey, and John Zorn, as well as collaborating with the likes of Barbara Hannigan, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Helmut Lachenmann, Igor Levit, Julia Wolfe, and leading a chamber orchestra of members of the Berlin Philharmonic. He has received awards from Musical America (“2019 Ensemble of the Year” JACK Quartet), the University of Michigan’s “Emerging Artist Award,” the Darmstadt Ferienkurse Kranichstein Prize (with Ensemble Dal Niente, 2012), the 2022 Fromm Foundation Prize, and was presented with Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant in 2019.

Equally in demand as an educator, Wulliman serves on faculty at the Mannes School of Music, where JACK is Quartet in Residence. He teaches a malleable violin technique in the service of a wide variety of musical goals, from virtuosic solo repertoire to improvisation, and the refined set of tools needed to be a chamber musician in today’s musical climate. He has taught violin and musicianship on faculty at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, the Lucerne Festival Academy, as well as the University of Chicago. Additionally, he has given guest instruction and master classes at institutions such as the Curtis Institute, The Juilliard School, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, New World Symphony, Northwestern University, and the University of Michigan.

Wulliman’s debut album as composer, The News From Utopia, was released in 2023, which Wulliman wrote, recorded, and mixed. His works have been performed in concert with pianist Conrad Tao at Miller Theatre, by guitarist Alec Goldfarb at the Darmstadt Ferienkurse and Brooklyn’s Roulette Intermedium, and frequently by JACK Quartet. With JACK, his works have been performed at venues such as the Melbourne Recital Centre, Carnegie Hall Citywide, Lincoln Center, Pierre Boulez Saal, Wigmore Hall, Pittsburgh Microtonal Music Festival, and Musikkollegium Winterthur. 

Austin Wulliman first forged his reputation in Chicago with the collective Ensemble Dal Niente, serving as the group’s Program Director and helping build its artist-driven culture. With Dal Niente he collaborated with composers such as Brian Ferneyhough and executed a recording project with the band Deerhoof in music of Marcos Balter. Wulliman has performed with Dal Niente at venues such as Harvard University and Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, Chicago. As an ensemble player, Wulliman has also been a guest artist with groups such as Eighth Blackbird, The Knights, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s MusicNow Ensemble, the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and has led the Lucerne Festival Academy’s Orchestra as concertmaster under the baton of Heinz Holliger and Matthias Pintscher and section leader in a performance of Berio’s Sinfonia with Pierre Boulez conducting.

As a soloist, he has performed Kaija Saariaho’s concerto Graal Theatre with the Aspen Festival and Northwestern University Contemporary Music Ensembles, as well as giving the American Premiere of her Calices for violin and piano. He recently recorded Elliott Carter’s infamous Duo for Violin and Piano for the Library of Congress with keyboard luminary Conrad Tao, with whom he also premiered his own Insurgentes Sur at Miller Theatre. Wulliman has premiered violin concerti by Chris Fisher-Lochhead and Kirsten Broberg, as well as collaborating closely on solo pieces by composers Augusta Read Thomas and Lee Hyla, two essential mentoring voices in his early years in Chicago. His debut solo release, Diligence Is to Magic as Progress Is to Flight was released in 2014. The album is a concert-length collaboration with the composer-improviser Katherine Young, using 4 scordatura and prepared violins and a viola in conversation with 8-channel electronics and a chamber orchestra. Wulliman worked closely with Young from the creation of materials to the completion of the work, including traditional notation and improvised material.

Austin Wulliman was also a founding member of the Spektral Quartet, serving as Ensemble-in-Residence (as well as Adjunct Instructor of Violin) at the University of Chicago (2011-2016). Exploring both the classical string quartet repertoire beginning with Haydn and organizing a robust commissioning program, they also explored contemporary jazz styles with artists such as Miguel Zenon and Billy Childs. With Spektral Quartet, he performed on series such as the University Musical Society in Ann Arbor and BargeMusic as well as giving educational residencies at the New World Symphony and Stanford University.

Wulliman received his Bachelor’s Degree summa cum laude from the University of Michigan, where he studied with Aaron Berofsky. He was an endowed scholar and assistant to Blair Milton at Northwestern University, where he earned his M.Mus. Further studies took Wulliman to the Lucerne Festival Academy and the Aspen Music Festival Fellowship in Contemporary Music, where he also studied privately with Paul Kantor. 

Learn more at www.austinwulliman.com.

About JACK Quartet
Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK Quartet is dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music. JACK embraces close collaboration with the composers they perform, yielding a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. Through its successful nonprofit model, the quartet has both self-commissioned and been commissioned to create new works with artists such as George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, John Zorn, Liza Lim, and John Luther Adams, with upcoming and recent premieres including works by Anthony Cheung, Ellen Fullman, Natacha Diels, and Tristan Perich. The world’s top composers choose JACK because of its singular dedication to innovation and experimentation. Through intimate, long standing relationships with many of today’s most creative voices, the quartet has a prolific commissioning and recording catalog, has been nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards, and is the 2024 recipient of Chamber Music America’s Michael Jaffee Visionary Award.
 
JACK has performed to critical acclaim at Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), Berlin Philharmonie (Germany), Wigmore Hall (United Kingdom), Muziekgebouw (Netherlands), The Louvre (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina). Among their honors, they have earned an Avery Fisher Career Grant and Fromm Music Foundation Prize; been selected as Musical America’s 2018 “Ensemble of the Year; and received Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA's Trailblazer Award, and the CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming.
 
According to Musical America, “many of their recordings are must-haves, for anyone interested in new music.” They have been nominated for multiple GRAMMY® Awards, the most recent being Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for John Luther Adams’ Waves and Particles. Other albums include music by Helmut Lachenmann, Catherine Lamb, Du Yun, Nick Dunston, Zosha di Castri, Iannis Xenakis, and upcoming releases of the complete quartets of Elliott Carter and John Zorn.

JACK Quartet created JACK Studio in 2019 to support commissions, recordings, and workshops with emerging music artists who are interested in exploring and expanding the repertory for string quartet. By bringing together diverse groups of excellent and adventurous people to not only create new projects, but to contribute to the evolution of the JACK Studio project itself, JACK has created an artistic ecosystem that links the quartet with artists from around the world. As JACK marks its 20th Anniversary Season, JACK Studio has grown to include a full range of commissions including prominent composers who also serve as mentors to JACK Studio’s earlier-career collaborators. 

More than 40 composers have worked with JACK Quartet through JACK Studio thus far, hailing from Argentina, Belarus, Canada, Germany, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, South Africa, Syria, and the United States. Their projects have been performed by JACK Quartet at venues including The 92nd Street Y, TIME:SPANS, Central Park, the Lucerne Festival, MoMA PS1, and Mannes School of Music, in addition to being recorded for professional releases. Commissioned artists have been paired with musical mentors including Marcos Balter, Clara Iannotta, George Lewis, Catherine Lamb, Georg Friedrich Haas, Donnacha Dennehy, Claire Chase, and Nadia Sirota.
 
JACK Quartet makes their home in New York City, where they are the Quartet in Residence at the Mannes School of Music at The New School and provides mentorship to Mannes’s Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet. They teach at summer music festivals such as the Lucerne Festival Academy, Banff Centre for the Arts, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. JACK Quartet has a long-standing relationship with the University of Iowa String Quartet Residency Program, where they teach and collaborate with students each fall and spring. Learn more at www.jackquartet.com. 

Photo Credit: Annaliese Varaldiev

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