Ellen Fullman presents the Long String Instrument with the JACK Quartet

As part of the 2025 edition of the Festival d’Automne, the Bourse de Commerce presents the world premiere of Energy Archive 2, a work by American composer Ellen Fullman, performed alongside the American string ensemble JACK Quartet in the museum’s Rotunda.

For years, Ellen Fullman has stretched long strings across spaces, walked among them, rubbed them with her rosin-coated fingers –like a manual bow – feeling every vibration and releasing delicate sounds under their sovereign wave. She conceived her first Long String Instrument in New York in 1983, on the occasion of a group exhibition. Since then, she has approached her instrument with meticulous care – selecting materials, determining the length and tension of the strings in proportion to her height, exploring the relationships between tones, and refining the resonator that amplifies them for us.

At the Bourse de Commerce, she stretches the Long String Instrument across either side of the concrete cylinder designed by Japanese architect Tadao Ando, set at the heart of the Rotunda’s twenty-eight-meter diameter – and pairs it with the strings of the JACK Quartet.

The JACK Quartet consists of violinists Christopher Otto and Austin Wulliman, violist John Pickford Richards, and cellist Jay Campbell. Founded twenty years ago in New York, where it is in residence at the Mannes School of Music, the quartet enthusiastically and rigorously explores a broad stylistic spectrum, engaging with both established and emerging artists. Interpreters of 20th-century modernist masters as well as pioneers of contemporary music, the quartet works closely with the composers whose works it performs, transmitting their techniques, languages, and emotional depth. Their practice often invites dialogue with performance, installation, theatrical or choreographic gesture, and video. Whether on stage or in exhibition spaces, each concert becomes an experience – introducing new practices, expanding the horizons of the arts, and aiming to stimulate and transform both the mind and our ways of listening.

Ellen Fullman, Energy Archive 2, for Long String Instrument and JACK Quartet (2025), commissioned by the Festival d’Automne in Paris. World premiere.

JACK Quartet: Christopher Otto violin, Austin Wulliman violin, John Pickford Richards viola, Jay Campbell cello
Ellen Fullman: Long String Instrument

Presented in co-production by the Pinault Collection and the Festival d’Automne in Paris.