The JACK Quartet has electrified audiences worldwide with their “explosive virtuosity” (Boston Globe) and “viscerally exciting performances” (New York Times) while David Patrick Stearns (Philadelphia Inquirer) proclaimed their performance as being “among the most stimulating new-music concerts of my experience.” Now Louis Garrick is bringing them to Sydney’s Carriageworks for two performances as part of their trailblazing contemporary music series.

Comprising violinists Christopher Otto and Ari Streisfeld, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Kevin McFarland, JACK is very much focused on the commissioning and performance of new works with an enviable roster of contemporary composers on their lengthy CV (Brian Ferneyhough, Georg Friedrich Haas, Simon Holt, György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Steve Reich, Wolfgang Rihm, Salvatore Sciarrino, and John Zorn to name just a handful).

Limelight caught up with violist John Pickford Richards with a few questions before kick off.

How does your approach to live music performance and repertoire differ from more traditional classic music quartets?

JACK Quartet has a mission to perform new music, though ‘new’ can definitely be a relative term! Some people consider anything written in the 20th century to be new, but our definition generally includes music written in the past 30 years, with a preference for music written...