Cali Immersive Residency: PUBLIQuartet

Genre-bending and Improvising String Quartet

During their Cali Immersive Residency, PUBLIQuartet will work with students on creative collaboration, improvisation, chamber music, new music and genre-expansive performance. Their visit offers students a model for how a 21st-century ensemble can build repertoire, reimagine tradition and engage with urgent cultural questions through sound.

“A perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music.” —The Washington Post

Public Events Schedule

Tuesday, October 13, 2026

• Business Class: Teaching Improvisation to Non-Musicians
  12 – 1:30 p.m.
  Feliciano School of Business, Montclair State University

• Improvisation Workshop: “Four Pillars”
  2:30 – 4 p.m.
  Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University

• Composition Readings
  4:30 – 6:30 p.m.
  Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University

Wednesday, October 14, 2026

Cali Midweek Series: Immersive Residency Performance PUBLIQuartet
2 p.m.– 3 p.m.
Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University
Reservations Recommended.

Reserve Free Ticket

A performance by the multi-GRAMMY-nominated improvising string quartet known for blending contemporary classical music with jazz, world music and other genres. This very special midweek will feature a sneak preview of PUBLIQuartet’s brand new improvisations on Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" Quartet (D. 810), followed by a discussion on their creative process. Followed by reception in lobby. 

Friday, October 16, 2026

• “Hero Levels” Workshop
  12 – 1 p.m.
  Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University

• “Fortissima”: Performance Anxiety and Injury Management Workshop
  1–2 p.m.
  Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University

• Chamber Music Coachings
  2:30–4:30 p.m.
  Leshowitz Recital Hall, Chapin Hall, Montclair State University

Saturday, October 17, 2026 

Bridges Series Concert
7:30 p.m.
Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, New York City
129 West 67th Street, New York, NY 10023

Tickets $30

Rhythm Nation celebrates American rhythmic traditions as an expression of bodily autonomy and tacit history keeping. From the jagged grooves of Daniel Bernard Roumain’s String Quartet No.1: X (an homage to Malcolm X), to the otherworldly textures of Sun Ra’s “Interstellar Low Ways,” to the lyricism of Duke Ellington’s “Come Sunday,” this wide-ranging exploration will also feature movements from Fodé Lassana Diabate’s Sunjata’s Time. Each of the pieces on the program evokes a distinct rhythmic world, reflecting the plurality of American movement(s) and protecting the unspoken spirit of their lineage’s narratives.

Applauded by The Washington Post as “a perfect encapsulation of today’s trends in chamber music,” and by The New Yorker as “independent-minded,” multi-Grammy-nominated PUBLIQuartet is an improvising string quartet whose repertoire blends genres and highlights American multiculturalism. Hailed for their “magnetic momentum and energy” (Feast of Music) “thrilling immediacy” of their “boldly imaginative” playing (BBC Music Magazine), PubliQuartet “brings both technical mastery and freewheeling joy to their music playing” (Feast of Music). The quartet comprises Curtis Stewart and Jannina Norpoth, violin; Nick Revel, viola and Hamilton Berry, cello.