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Terry Riley, Claire Chase, JACK Quartet, Samuel Clay Birmahe
Biography Terry Riley, Claire Chase, JACK Quartet, Samuel Clay Birmahe
Claire Chase
described by The New York Times recently as “the North Star of her instrument’s ever-expanding universe,” is a musician, interdisciplinary artist, curator, and teacher. Passionately dedicated to the creation of new ecosystems for the music of our time, Chase has given the world premieres of hundreds of new works by a new generation of artists. She was the first flutist to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2012, and in 2017 was the first flutist to be awarded the Avery Fisher Prize for Classical Music from Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Chase served as the Richard and Barbara Debs Creative Chair at Carnegie Hall in the 2022-23 season and as the Music Director for the 2025 Ojai Music Festival.
Chase has performed as a soloist recently with the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Helsinki Philharmonic, BBC Scottish Symphony, Munich Chamber Orchestra, Kyoto Symphony, and London Philharmonia. Recent concerto projects include Kaija Saariaho's "Aile du Songe" at Carnegie Hall and The Kennedy Center, and the world premiere of a new duo concerto by Dai Fujikura which Chase performed with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic at Royal Concertgebouw in Amsterdam in January with the violinist Akiko Suwanai and on tour in Europe with the violinist Leila Josefowicz. In the 2022-23 season, Chase premiered a new duo concerto by Felipe Lara with the vocalist and bassist esperanza spalding and the conductor Susanna Mälkki, which was named one of the Best Classical Music Performances of the Year by The New York Times.
In 2013, Chase launched the 24-year commissioning project Density 2036, described by The New Yorker as “a quarter-century journey with little precedent.” Now in its 12th year, Density reimagines the solo flute literature through commissions, performances, recordings, educational initiatives, and a community-focused approach to cultural production. In 2023, Chase performed all ten Density programs to date in a weeklong series of events co-produced by Carnegie Hall and The Kitchen. Central to the Density project is a commitment to supporting an international, multigenerational community of flutists who will take the Density repertoire in bold new interpretive directions. The Density Fellows program, launched in 2023 in celebration of the 10th anniversary, provides an international cohort of emerging flutists with the resources to make the Density repertoire their own. Chase is the artistic director of Density Arts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the advancement of the flute in the 21st century.
As an undergraduate at Oberlin Conservatory, Chase co-founded the International Contemporary Ensemble, a collective of musicians, digital media artists, producers, and educators committed to creating collaborations built on equity and cultural responsiveness. She served as the ensemble’s artistic director until 2017 and as an ensemble member on performance and educational projects on five continents, developing an artist-driven organizational model that resulted in the premieres of over 1,000 new works and earned the group multiple Chamber Music America/ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming, the Trailblazer Award from the American Music Center, and the Ensemble of the Year Award from Musical America Worldwide.
A deeply committed educator, Chase is Professor of the Practice in the Department of Music at Harvard University, where she teaches courses on contemporary music, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cultural advocacy. Chase is also Creative Associate at The Juilliard School, where she mentors young artists and engages students in a range of interdisciplinary projects. Chase’s Debs Creative Chair residency at Carnegie Hall encompassed programming for all ages, including a “Day of Listening” for children and families inspired by the listening philosophies of Pauline Oliveros. Chase partnered with MacArthur Fellow Josh Kun to expand her Pauline Oliveros project as part of Getty’s PST ART x Science Collide festival in 2024-25.
Claire Chase’s extensive discography includes eleven solo albums of world premiere recordings and dozens of collaborative recordings with ensembles, composers, and sound artists from a wide range of musical genres. Chase grew up in Leucadia, California, with the childhood dream of becoming a professional baseball player before she discovered the flute.
JACK Quartet
Undeniably our generation’s “leading new-music foursome,” JACK Quartet’s “stylistic range, precision and passion have made the group one of contemporary music’s indispensable ensembles” (The New York Times). Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell, JACK Quartet enters their third decade as a pioneering string quartet synchronized in their mission to create an international community through transformative, mind-broadening experiences and close listening. Founded in 2005, JACK Quartet operates as a not-for-profit organization dedicated to the performance, commissioning, and appreciation of 20th and 21st century string quartet music, delving deeply into challenging new compositions and musical practices from a staggering range of stylistic viewpoints.
JACK Quartet has been awarded an Avery Fisher Career Grant, Fromm Music Foundation Prize, Musical America’s 2019 “Ensemble of the Year” Award, Lincoln Center's Martin E. Segal Award, New Music USA's Trailblazer Award, CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming, 2024 Chamber Music America’s Michael Jaffee Visionary Award, and the Italian Music Critic's Prize as the Best Ensemble of 2024.
Among the highlights of their 2025-2026 U.S. season, JACK Quartet returns to NYC’s 92NY for a concert featuring new works by JACK Studio Resident Artists Kier GoGwilt, Ailie Ormston, and Jules Reidy and a world premiere by Tristan Perich for string quartet and electronics; a performance at Miller Theatre at Columbia University celebrating the 90th birthday of their musical mentor Helmut Lachenmann; a Cal Performances ensemble debut with a world premiere by Gabriella Smith; a multi-concert residency at The Metropolitan Museum of Art; collaborative work with Ellen Fullman and her long-stringed instrument commissioned by Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond; and an appearance at Big Ears Festival with soprano Barbara Hannigan.
International engagements include three concerts at Festival d’Automne (Paris), where JACK Quartet serve as the “Portrait Musicians” of the festival, performing European premieres by Natacha Diels and Ellen Fullman, as well as Georg Friedrich Haas’ In iij Noct, performed in absolute darkness; JACK Quartet’s annual three-concert day-long marathon at Wigmore Hall (UK); and appearances at Pierre Boulez Saal (Germany), Instituzione Universitaria dei Concerti (Italy), Musica Festival Strasbourg (France), Open Music Graz (Austria), Only Connect Oslo (Norway), and Hochschule der Künste Bern (Switzerland), among others.
JACK Quartet embraces close collaboration with the composers whose work they perform, yielding a radical embodiment of the technical, musical, and emotional aspects of their work. JACK Quartet has both self-commissioned and been commissioned to create new works with artists such as Philip Glass, Georg Friedrich Haas, Liza Lim, Caroline Shaw, and John Zorn, with upcoming and recent premieres by John Luther Adams, Ellen Fullman, Catherine Lamb, George Lewis, Andrew Norman, Terry Riley, Gabriella Smith, and Tyshawn Sorey.
Through intimate, long-standing relationships with many of today’s most creative voices, JACK Quartet has a prolific recording catalog and has been nominated for two GRAMMY® Awards, the most recent being Best Chamber Music/Small Ensemble Performance for John Luther Adams’ Waves and Particles. According to Musical America, “many of their recordings are must-haves, for anyone interested in new music.” Other albums include music by Zosha di Castri, Nick Dunston, Jason Eckardt, Helmut Lachenmann, Liza Lim, Christopher Otto, Austin Wulliman, Du Yun, Iannis Xenakis, the complete string quartets of John Zorn and an upcoming release of the complete quartets of Elliott Carter.
JACK Studio was created by JACK Quartet in 2019 to support commissions, recordings, and workshops with emerging music artists who are interested in exploring and expanding the repertory for string quartet. In 2024, JACK Studio expanded to support commissions for string quartet by prominent composers, two-year paid residencies for emerging composers, and annual reading sessions of existing string quartets by emerging composers. 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.
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 92NY, TIME:SPANS, MoMA PS1, Ojai Music Festival, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Lucerne Festival, and Wigmore Hall, in addition to being recorded for professional releases.
JACK Quartet has performed to critical acclaim at venues such as Carnegie Hall (USA), Lincoln Center (USA), UChicago Presents (USA), Library of Congress (USA), Berlin Philharmonie (Germany), BBC Proms (United Kingdom), Royal Library (Denmark), Philharmonie de Paris (France), Kölner Philharmonie (Germany), Sydney Opera House (Australia), Salzburg Festival (Switzerland), La Biennale di Venezia (Italy), Suntory Hall (Japan), Bali Arts Festival (Indonesia), Festival Internacional Cervantino (Mexico), and Teatro Colón (Argentina).
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 provide mentorship to Mannes’ Cuker and Stern Graduate String Quartet. They teach at summer music festivals such as the Lucerne Festival Academy, Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, and New Music on the Point. JACK 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.
