Product Description Starting with his music of the 1960s and early 1970s, with works such as For 1, 2 or 3 People (1964), the Prose Collection (1968–71), and Changing the System (1974), Christian Wolff (b. 1934) quietly re-invented chamber music. He created music in which the activities of the performers― timing, cueing, assembling and selecting materials―were foregrounded. Although to some extent these activities were always a part of classical music, Wolff opened them up for creative decision-making by the musicians themselves. Charles Ives began to develop a different conception with (among other works) his String Quartet No. 2 (1913). It portrays four individuals who come together to have a discussion that turns into an argument (presumably over politics) and then its transcendental resolution in the mountains. With Ives and then others from the American Experimental Tradition (including John Cage), chamber music starts to become a place where differences are unleashed. Given his exploration of the ontology of people making music together, the string quartet, laden as it is with the tradition of unity, might not at first seem to be an obvious fit to Wolff’s sensibilities. But his quartet music stems as much from Ives and Cage as from the European art music tradition. The four characters of Ives become four people playing music. In one piece he simply calls them “2 violinists, violist and cellist.” Sometimes they are asked to coordinate like a traditional quartet. But at other times (often in the same piece), they are pushed to the point of dissolution. Here we find a music that allows for the spontaneous expression of four musicians who are bound together by something more than the rule of the bar line. These are all world-premiere recordings. About the Artist Christian Wolff (born 1934, Nice, France) is a composer, teacher, and sometime performer. Since 1941 he has lived in the United States. He studied piano with Grete Sultan and composition briefly with John Cage, in whose company, along with Morton Feldman, then David Tudor and Earle Brown, his work found inspiration and encouragement, as it did subsequently from association with Frederic Rzewski and Cornelius Cardew. He also had a long association with Merce Cunningham and his dance company. As an improviser he has played with the English group 11 AMM, Christian Marclay, Takehisa Kosugi, Keith Rowe, Steve Lacy, Larry Polansky, and Kui Dong. Academically trained as a classicist, he has taught at Harvard, then, from 1971 to 1999, in music, comparative literature, and classics, at Dartmouth College. Since 1999, Quatuor Bozzini has been an original voice and strong advocate in new, experimental, and classical music. Propelling the hyper-creative Montreal scene and beyond, the quartet cultivates an ethos of risk-taking, experimentation, and collaboration, boldly venturing off the beaten track. With rigorous qualitative criteria, they have nurtured a vastly diverse repertoire, unbiased by the currents of fashion. This has led to more than four hundred commissioned pieces, as well as close to five hundred premiered works. Their conception-to-production collaborative approach has also developed numerous successful and authentic transdisciplinary projects with film, theater, and dance artists. To ensure continual development in their art, the quartet’s musical laboratories, the Composer’s Kitchen, Performer’s Kitchen, and Bozzini Lab, work to mentor and support new generations of composers and performers. The quartet runs its own recording label, Collection QB, and has issued critically acclaimed albums (JUNO nomination 2020, German Record Critics Prize 2009), many of which have become reference recordings in the field. They have also released albums on Wergo–Deutscher Musikrat, Edition Wandelweiser, Another Timbre, Hubro, ATMA Classique, and Centrediscs. Quatuor Bozzini is a self-managed organization, producing a concert series in Montreal and touring extensively in Canada, the USA, and Europe.