Liza Lim / Re-imagining the String Quartet
“…an exploration of performance techniques, of interactive technologies, and diverse cultural vantage points and aesthetics…”
Re-imagining the String Quartet is an ongoing project curated by Liza Lim distributed across a number of related works and events and created in collaboration with the JACK Quartet. The project is part of the activities of the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney.
The string quartet has been a fertile medium for Australian composers notably in the works of Peter Sculthorpe who used it to speculate on notions of an ‘Australian voice’ in relation to East Asian musical traditions and to ideas drawn from Settler-colonial perspectives on Indigenous peoples. The purpose of this project is to offer a platform to composers and performers to further explore the quartet medium in a speculative register. These might include an exploration of performance techniques, of interactive technologies, and diverse cultural vantage points and aesthetics. The JACK Quartet have been dubbed the ‘superheroes of the new music world’ (Boston Globe) and are internationally renowned for their fearless commitment to bringing new musical perspectives into conversation with audiences.
Due to the constraints of the pandemic, a festival planned for June 2021 comprising concerts, masterclasses and workshops featuring the JACK Quartet with Australian ensembles was cancelled. However, I’m pleased to collaborate with Zeitgeist to present two of the works originally commissioned for that program which are by Benjamin Carey & Sonya Holowell.
- Liza Lim
Benjamin Carey
Sonya Holowell
Benjamin Carey /
...and contribute to each other’s support (2021)
for string quartet (for the JACK Quartet)
Commissioned by the Sculthorpe Chair of Australian Music, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, and supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.
Sincere thanks to JACK, Liza Lim, the Sydney Conservatorium of Music and Create NSW.
symbiosis: n
Biology. Association of two different organisms (usually two plants, or an animal and a plant) which live attached to each other, or one as a tenant of the other, and contribute to each other's support. Also more widely, any intimate association of two or more different organisms, whether mutually beneficial or not.
...and contribute to each other’s support is my first string quartet, and my first completely acoustic work to date. Symbiosis has been an important metaphor in much of my work navigating human and machine agencies in live electronic music. As a metaphor, symbiosis privileges interdependence over autonomy, which I’ve found useful in conceptualising relationships between players and machines, and between myself and my materials. This work began with an idea to place the quartet in a complex relationship with a ‘living’ software program, and to generate material and formal strategies through this human-machine interaction. But the medium of the string quartet itself had other ideas, exerting its own agency on the process, and this software was never written. Instead, a dynamic acoustic work emerged, a work exploring the interdependence between instrumental gestures, sonic materials and compositional intent. The work grew organically, section by section from the interactions between low-level materials, with each moment in the work depending on the previous, each section accumulating energy propelling it forward to the next. The result is a work about process, the symbiotic relationship between material and form.
- Benjamin Carey
Sonya Holowell / re-stored- (2023)
for string quartet (for the JACK Quartet)
re-stored- is a collaboration between Sonya Holowell, the JACK Quartet and Luke Warren. Spread out over 2+ years and while navigating Covid lockdowns, this became an extended, iterative process of composition, performance and post-production; shaped by constraints, curveballs and curiosity. Sonya (Australia) chose a selection of her unfinished electronica—a private practice of 15+ years—to transcribe for the string quartet. NewYork’s JACKQuartet performed the compositions and sent back the recordings. Sonya recorded some vocal material from home on her Zoom portable recorder. Then she worked with Luke to combine and manipulate, until someone called time. To my collaborators, I’d like to thank the JACK Quartet and Luke Warren for the pleasure and privilege of our collaboration. Thank you also to Liza Lim for the support and agency afforded me in this commission.
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On the 13th of February 2023, Liza Lim interviewed composer Sonya Holowell about her work, re-stored-, commissioned as part of Liza's "Re-imagining the String Quartet" project.
