Luke Cissell: String Quartets Nos. 1-5
Release date: September 26, 2025
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"Glorious ... like Bartok playing bluegrass at the YMCA."
—Ted Gioia (The Honest Broker)
Composer and multi-instrumentalist Luke Cissell announces the upcoming release of the double album String Quartets Nos. 1-5.
This collection invites listeners into Cissell's sui generis musical universe, constellated with its hallmark sweeping melodicism, breathtaking rhythmic complexity, and dazzling harmonic language that channels the expansive scope the post-Romantic together with the raw intensity of bluegrass and old-time fiddling. Realized through a solo recording process with Cissell performing each of the parts himself, the music glistens with intimate nuance, iridescent polyphonic texture, and haunting beauty. Spanning fifteen years of the composer's career, this significant body of work represents a major contribution to the repertoire from a singular compositional voice.
String Quartets Nos. 1-5 is available for streaming and download on Bandcamp, Spotify, Apple Music, and all major digital platforms worldwide on September 26, 2025. A limited edition 2-CD set is currently available for preorder, in addition to downloadable sheet music.
Luke Cissell is a New York City based composer and recording artist known for his "wild, genre-bending works" (Timothy Monger, AllMusic) and "incredible" (Goffin & King Foundation) musicianship. In addition to his chamber works and recent SERENADE (2023), a collection of music for string orchestra, Cissell has released a number of genre-defying albums woven with strings and electronics: COSMOGRAPHY (2013), THINKING/FEELING (2018), NIGHTSIDE (2020), and EMERALD CITIES (2021). Born in Louisville, Kentucky, Cissell is a longtime resident of New York City, where he moonlights as a sought-after session musician and Teaching Artist with the New York Philharmonic.