New York String Quartets Upcoming Seasons

Source: The New York Times.

Two string quartets have defined New York’s new-music scene over the past decade. The JACK Quartet has made a specialty of nail-bitingly difficult works, including an hourlong piece played in complete darkness and a recent performance in which they labored with rubber restraints and elements of sensory deprivation. But even their straight-up renderings of thorny classics of the European avant-garde are as compulsively watchable as an episode of “American Ninja Warrior.”

On the other side of the East River, meanwhile, the members of Brooklyn Rider have built a diverse following on their blend of musical globe-trotting — drawing on their experience with the Silk Road Ensemble — and an approach that’s equally rigorous with newly commissioned music or Debussy.