The Cassatt Quartet celebrates 40 years with a new Joan Tower work inspired by love and memory - The Strad

For its 40th anniversary season, the Cassatt Quartet – Muneko Otani and Jennifer Leshnower (violins), Emily Brandenburg (viola) and Gwen Krosnick (cello) – has turned to one of its longest-standing musical companions: Joan Tower. On 14 September 2025 the ensemble will give the premiere of Tower’s String Quartet No. 7, For Jeff, with Love, at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, New York, with the composer in attendance.

The new score is rooted in a relationship spanning almost three decades. The Cassatts first performed Tower’s Night Fields in 1997 and have since played all of her works for string quartet, alongside chamber collaborations. 

Violinist Muneko Otani first approached Tower about a commission more than ten years ago; when she raised the idea again ahead of the anniversary, the context had changed profoundly: Tower’s husband of fifty years, Jeff Litfin, had recently died. In that period, Otani often spent evenings at the composer’s home, sharing food, wine and conversation as grief slowly gave way to creative renewal. Those encounters left their mark on the new quartet, which, as Tower notes, alternates lyrical solos for each player with intense ensemble writing.

The commission, funded by Tower’s friend Phyllis Feder, caught the ear of Maverick’s music director Alexander Platt, who programmed the premiere. Tower has praised the Cassatts for starting early and shaping the process with suggestions – traits consistent with the group’s advocacy for living composers and broadening the repertoire. 

Otani spoke to The Strad about the genesis of the work, the quartet’s four-decade journey and how personal loss and long friendship have informed the sound world of For Jeff, with Love.