Spektral Quartet: Playing Out

Playing Out is a showcase of liberated creativity, defying definition and building new musical lexicons through the intersection of experimental jazz, improvisation, and electroacoustic music. The program features the New York premiere of an ecstatic new quartet by George Lewis (Fromm Foundation commission), as well as mesmeric numbers by Katherine Young and Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Mead Composer-in-Residence Samuel Adams. For its National Sawdust debut, Spektral Quartet is joined by flute maven Claire Chase for Anthony Cheung’s jazz-infiltrated “Real Book of Fake Tunes” (also commissioned by Fromm). Playing Out offers the prodigious possibilities that form when artistic streams of free improvisation and classical composition merge.

Spektral Quartet actively pursues a vivid conversation between exhilarating works of the traditional canon and those written this decade, this year, or this week. With its most recent album described by Gramophone as “highly-interactive, creative and collaborative…unlike anything its intended audience—or anyone else—has ever heard,” Spektral is known for creating seamless connections across centuries, drawing in the listener with charismatic deliveries, interactive concert formats, an up-close atmosphere, and bold, inquisitive programming. Nominated for a GRAMMY Award this year, Spektral Quartet serves as ensemble-in-residence at the University of Chicago.