We are publishing FIVE QUESTIONS TO THE JACK QUARTET with the kind permission of the Musikkollegium Winterthur, in whose magazine BUN DÉ the interview appeared in January 2025 (in German).
FIVE QUESTIONS TO THE JACK QUARTET with Felix Kriewald
What famous person, living, dead or fictional, would you like to have dinner with?
Austin Wulliman: Thomas Pynchon: I love his writing and his sense of humor. I want to think we’d have a rollicking time, smoke a big joint and veer into very strange theories about the world.
Christopher Otto: I would like to have dinner with the famous Nobody from Emily Dickinson’s poem; they’re so relatable!
Jay Campbell: GG Allin. Sounds like a truly wild and terrible person.
John Pickford Richards: Andrew Sutherland from Andrew Holleran’s novel Dancer from the Dance. I’ve always been fascinated by queer culture in New York just before the HIV epidemic, and this character strikes me as particularly chaotic and fabulous.
If you could perform the works of only one composer for the rest of your life, who would it be?
Austin: J.S. Bach: the ultimate sustenance.
Chris: I would perform the works of The One and Ultimate Composer: the unformed pre-everything. Does music have to be attributed to a single human?
Jay: J. S. Bach.
John: I don’t think I’m capable of being musically monogamous!
What would you like to do for a living if you couldn't be a musician?
Austin: A personal trainer. I love to motivate others and feel the positive energy generated by people moving their bodies!
Chris: There is no world in which I can’t be a musician; music embraces all of existence. Even if I were brain dead and had no cognitive (much less auditory) function, I would be making music somehow.
Jay: Trauma surgery. It seems very extreme and every day would be an unexpected adventure, full of miracles and tragedies.
John: I’d like to help people through social work, ideally in a direct way. Especially in New York, which is so expensive and heavily populated, people need help living. But I’m not cut out for politics!
The world premiere of which piece would you have liked to have witnessed in person?
Austin: Who can think of something more interesting than Rite of Spring? I guess I’m also pretty curious how the first performances of the late quartets of Beethoven sounded and how people felt.
Chris: Probably the Big Bang -- pretty fun to imagine being there for the beginning of the Universe.
Jay: John Zorn's Cobra.
John: Iannis Xenakis’ Tetras premiered by the Arditti Quartet in 1983.
Which unconventional scoring would you like to compose a piece for?
Austin: I have a plan to write a piece for 432 tuned hair combs played by MIDI controlled machines…part of a larger installation also involving an unusually scored orchestra playing with only their heads above floor level.
Chris: I would like to compose for Piano and Violin (NOT Violin and Piano). The more subtle the subversion, the more powerful.
Jay: Tidal pipe organ.
John: A symphony of sonic booms.
The JACK Quartet will be in Winterthur from 26 to 29 March, performing two concerts with the Musikkollegium and two quartet concerts, see www.musikkollegium.ch .
