Mar 29, 2016
The Jaeyu Quartet is this year's Wildcard group. Jaeyu means freedom and the members—Wonmi Jung, voice; DoYeon Kim, gayageum; Chris McCarthy, piano; and Eli Cohen, percussion—formed the quartet with the intention of exploring freedom collaboratively and purposefully. They explore concepts such as “What does freedom mean in music? How can we free ourselves from the boundaries of genre so often needlessly imposed? How can we create a space in which every member feels free to express themselves and their respective cultures? How can we use our music and our freedom to bring awareness and action to the myriad ‘unfreedoms,’ as economist Amartya Sen puts it, that exist in today's world?”