Quartets ahoy

The JACK play Aaron Cassidy's Second Quartet.

In this week's issue of The New Yorker, I write about a host of younger string quartets: the JACK, the Momenta, the Danish, the Kleio, the Tesla, the Catalyst, the Calder, and the Zaïde. Space did not allow for an identification of the "unnamed Juilliard foursome" mentioned at the start: this was Siwoo Kim, Francisco Fullana, Danny Kim, and Jay Campbell, delivering a whip-smart rendition of John Zorn's Cat O' Nine Tails. There will be no lack of quartet activity in New York in coming weeks: the most notable event is the Endellion Quartet's traversal of the entire Beethoven cycle at the Met Museum, in February. Keep an eye out also for the Spektral Quartet and the Eclipse Quartet.