As the NACAP Ensemble-in-Residence for the past 7 years, ETHEL is thrilled to congratulate the Native American Composers Apprentice Project on receiving the 2011 National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Standing O!
As the NACAP Ensemble-in-Residence for the past 7 years, ETHEL is thrilled to congratulate the Native American Composers Apprentice Project on receiving the 2011 National Arts & Humanities Youth Program Award. Standing O!
PBS Thirteen recently reviewed ETHEL's collaboration with the Dusan Tynek Dance Theatre company. "...[ETHEL] plays with ferocity and spontaneity..."
Violinist Jennifer Choi recently visited the WQXR studios. Watch her acoustic performance at their Cafe Concert!
ETHEL's Jennifer Choi sits down with New Music Box. Listen, read, and watch more...
The San Francisco Examiner preview ETHEL's world premiere of "In Convergence Liberation."
Are your ears open?! Tune in to Jennifer Choi's interview with "MY EARS ARE OPEN" podcast.
ETHEL's duo of violinists - Jennifer and Cornelius - chit chatted with Q2's The New Canon online series. Read and listen to the full episode here:
ETHEL's Cornelius Dufallo discusses the group's pending trip to Cali. San Francisco Classical Voice reports.
As part of NYC's annual Making Music NY Festival, ETHEL performed at the Abrons Arts Center earlier this month. The NY Times was front + center!
The New York Times applauds ETHEL's recent premiere-packed Merkin Hall concert.
LISTEN Magazine goes "On The Road" with ETHEL's Mary Rowell.
Tune in to this recent interview featuring ETHEL's Dorothy Lawson, Phil Kline, and Lionheart discussing their unique collaboration.
Gramophone Magazine goes in-depth with ETHEL.
Violinist Cornelius Dufallo talks about what's on his music stand right now. Check out the January 2011 issue of STRINGS magazine.
Atlanta's Creative Loafing talks to Ralph Farris about ETHEL's upcoming show at Emory. Read and listen!
Audiophile Audition magazine reviews ETHEL's latest album OSHTALI.
"This is a CD with almost as much variety as there are contributors."
Arizona's KBAQ Radio previews this month's ETHEL's TruckStop tour. Listen online!
NEW MUSIC BOX spotlights ETHEL's latest album "Oshtali."
A Conversation with ETHEL: Dorothy Lawson & Cornelius Dufallo
Click here to view online
Performance Today with Fred Child
National radio and worldwide web broadcast of ETHEL's performance at the Grand Canyon Music Festival:
February 1, 2008: "Lighthouse"
December 21, 2007: "After Dust"
December 6, 2007: "Memory"
November 14, 2007: "Requiem"
November 8, 2007: "Arrival"
October 22 & 27, 2007: "After Dust"
October 8, 2007: "Pelimanni's Revenge"
Click here for full article.
To learn where to tune in, click here.
It's also available archived on their web site: www.here-now.org.
Click here for the full article.
Click here for the full article.
Click here for the full article.
Click here for the full article.
ETHEL on VPRO (Dutch TV)
November 16, 2008
Click here to view.
'Wait For Green' Musicians Haunting Hitchcock Shadows
By Roslyn Sulcas
The New York Times, Monday, December 22nd, 2008
Click here to view article.
Playfully Laying Claim to Songs of Two Jazz Greats
By Nate Chinen
The New York Times, January 23, 2009
Click here to read the full article.
Composition Today talks to composer Phil Kline whose latest work for ETHEL, SPACE, was premiered at Alice Tully Hall and will be performed by ETHEL at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in early May.
Women are from Venus: FollowingLa Nave de Los Monstruos
A 1960s Mexican sci-fi flick meets the New York-based string ensemble Ethel this past weekend at Celebrate Brooklyn. La Nave de los Monstruos is a camp fantasy about two Venusian babes on the hunt for husbands.
Ethel wrote an original score for the film, recruited the band Gutbucket to play along with them, and crafted some Rocky Horror-style dance moves to keep the audience on their toes.
Ethel’s viola player Ralph Farris kept an audio diary during the creative process, which WNYC featured on All Things Considered.
My Ears Are Open. Part I.
Month-long podcast interviews with ETHEL. Listen to what Cornelius Dufallo (violin) has to say!
My Ears Are Open. Part III.
Month-long podcast interviews with ETHEL. Listen to what Dorothy (cello) has to say!
ETHEL's Ralph Farris discusses the group's recent MASS MoCA concert.
Latest Review – ETHEL @ Festival of New American Music
WNYC Radio ranks ETHEL's Greene Space performance as one of the best of 2009!
SOUNDCHECK: Best Performances of 2009
ETHEL's Canadian Debut Reviewed by EXAMINER "...thrilling musical moments..."
Get an in-depth look into ETHEL's recent recording session @ OCU in Ada, OK.
ETHEL's Chickasaw Nation album recording is spotlighted in this week's issue of Native American Times.
"...string quartet steals the show."
Concert Review: EMPAC 2/16/2010
Oklavision TV gets a sneak peek into ETHEL's recent Chickasaw Nation album recording session.
Exclusive preview of ETHEL's Chickasaw Nation album (June 2010 Release on Thunderbird Records). Student-composer interviews, preview tracks, photos, and more all on Q2.
Tune in to national radio program PERFORMANCE TODAY today and tomorrow. You'll hear exclusive performances and interviews by ETHEL at the Grand Canyon Music Festival.
Cellist Dorothy Lawson opens up to "Late Starter Musician" magazine.
ETHEL Debuts Native American Student Compositions
"The old string quartet genre never sounded more up-to-date."
ETHEL performs inside Time Out New York's offices! View the clip!
New York Times reviews ETHEL Fair: The Songwriters at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival.
East Hampton Star newspaper reviews ETHEL's recent concert @ the Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival.
"...the best of the classic and an on-the-fringe sampling of what might well become classics in a few hundred years."
Click here for the full article.
ETHEL: A String Quartet with an Entirely New Sound
November 29, 2006
Click here to listen online.
ETHEL -- yes, that's the group's full name--is a New York crossover string quartet that artfully mixes classical elements with jazz, bluegrass, experimental rock, Brazilian folk dance, Finnish fiddling, speech, even animal noises. Each player is a composer in his or her own right; in fact, six of the dozen pieces on Ethel's latest album were written by them, the remaining six by others.
Ethel's ingenious, hard-driving, subversive pieces sometimes remind me of the Kronos Quartet's forays into vernacular styles, which is not to deny the former ensemble's creative originality or re-creative brilliance. This is their sophomore album for Cantaloupe Music; the music and performances are hugely enjoyable.
The new album by the Pacifica Quartet, ensemble in residence at the University of Chicago, illuminates a fascinating period in 20th-Century music (1922-1931), as represented by the Moravian Leos Janacek's String Quartet No. 2 ("Intimate Pages"), the German Paul Hindemith's Quartet No. 4 and the American Ruth Crawford Seeger's 1931 String Quartet. As Andrea Lamoureux points out in her excellent liner notes, the thematic thread that draws together these disparate works is their composers' public-spirited humanism.
The Janacek is diamondlike in its luminosity, intensely dramatic, deeply autobiographical music laced with plaintive sonorities. The Crawford Seeger quartet, a landmark of 20th-Century chamber music, is a study in dissonant dynamics that generates overwhelming tragic power. The five-movement Hindemith work bespeaks the contrapuntally complex, anti-romantic style cultivated by the young composing Turks of Weimar Germany. The Pacifica players prove themselves to be splendid advocates of all three pieces; first-rate recording, too.
Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune
Soundcheck
Interview by JOHN SCHAEFER
September 13, 2006
Click here to listen online.
Pop Classical ETHEL is Groove Until Itself
By EMILY HULME
September 11, 2006
Local pop classical group ETHEL is hard to define.
They're set up like a traditional string quartet, with two violins, a viola and a cello, but they rock out like a contemporary pop group. At their live shows, the audience is generally up on their feet, grooving to the music, rather than sitting politely and trying to unwrap hard candies without making any noise (not that you could hear a candy wrapper over the commotion Ethel and the crowd makes).
ETHEL is too cool for the concert hall.
We were all interested in other types of music and the type of audience you play for in pop music, and the enthusiasm you have," violinist Mary Rowell said. "The relationship between the stage to the audience was sort of lacking in classical music, where everyone is polite, and sits down and applauds at the right times."
The group is often compared to the Kronos Quartet, another radical contemporary string quartet. But beyond their unorthodox approaches to classical music, there aren't many other similarities. Ethel is a genre unto itself.
And they kind of like it that way. Part of their mission is to change people's conception of what classical music can and should be. Their Web site announces that they're receptive to unsolicited scores, and the group (each member of which has their own MySpace page, in addition to the official ETHEL MySpace) is all about having a direct connection with their audience.
"We want to hear ideas of what other people think ETHEL is," Rowell said.
The group has played all over the world, but ETHEL, with their urgent live show and melting-pot synthesis of musical styles, is very much a New York creature. This fall, they have a residency at Joe's Pub, "sharing the stage with our favorite artists and exploring new territory with them," said violist Ralph Farris.
"There isn't any doubt that this rose very specifically out of New York," said cellist Dorothy Lawson, "only because New York is so ready to promote fresh new faces, and is always curious."
ETHEL CD Release Party At Joe's Pub tonight. 7:30pm, $15. 425 Lafayette St, 212-539-8770
LIGHT WAVES
Ethel blends new classical music with experimental rock
By ROBERT HICKS
September 6-12, 2006
Downtown darlings ETHEL must be having fun playing in a string quartet. How else to explain all those car noises, footsteps, bird chirps, parrot talk, cowboy yelps, rooster crows, cat meows and strains of Marvin Gaye, Texas swing, Brazilian folk and Appalachia on the group’s new CD, Light? That’s light as in light, fun-loving music.
Juilliard alumni mix it together in Light, ETHEL’s new CD.
Photo © Steve J. Sherman.
Comprised of Juilliard alumni—violinists Mary Rowell and Cornelius Dufallo, violist Ralph Farris and cellist Dorothy Lawson—ETHEL showed its dark, serious side on its eponymous debut CD in 2003. In between its frosh and sophomore recordings, the string quartet collaborated with musicians as diverse as Joe Jackson, Todd Rundgren, Mark Stewart and New York singer/songwriter Dana Kurtz. The new disc features the members’ own original compositions, Rowell’s arrangement of jazz pianist Lennie Tristano’s “Requiem” and Farris’ arrangement of Timo Alakotila’s “Pelimanni’s Revenge,” as well as commissioned pieces from young, Brazilian composer Marcelo Zarvos, jazz clarinetist Don Byron, film composer Mary Ellen Childs and San Francisco audio artist Pamela Z.
“We like to groove. We basically like tonal music. Whatever the music is, we want it to have a voice, so that it’s not just an intellectual concept,” says Rowell. “We want to be accessible, but at the same time, we can’t just go out and play covers of rock tunes like other groups do.”
ETHEL recently appeared at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference in Monterey, Calif., where the quartet heard Einstein, a female African gray parrot who lives at the Knoxville Zoo in Tennessee. The bird’s talkative antics inspired Rowell’s humorous composition, “Also Sprach Einstein.”
“The opening Einsteinisms just created the mood for a party tune,” says Rowell.
Prior to their upcoming CD release show at Joe’s Pub, Ethel headed out West for the Grand Canyon Music Festival, the first leg of their “Truck Stop” project that found the quartet first working with young Native American composers for one week in late August. New York documentary film director, Molly McBride, captured the quartet’s activities there. Next spring, Ethel will work with shape-note singers in Lexington, Kentucky.
“We really want to be able to integrate into communities and learn about what’s important to them and to learn about our country a little bit through that kind of interchange,” says Rowell. Future plans for the Truck Stop project include working with a Texan conjunto artist and a Hawaiian musician for an upcoming concert in New York. This December, the group will present its House of Ethel show at the World Financial Center, sponsored by Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC). “There’s always an element of surprise in an Ethel show,” she says, “You never know what’s going to happen.”
September 12. Joe’s Pub, 425 Lafayette St. (betw. Astor Place & E. 4th St.), 212-254-1263; 7:30, $15.
The Pioneer Local
String Quartet, drumline join forcesClick here for the full article.
Wednesday Journal of Oak Park and River Forest
Classical NY meets Chicago PercussionClick here for the full article.
Click here to listen online.
Light CD Review
By SCOTT PAULIN
September 2006
 | Album Details |
If you're not sure what to expect from a string quartet that calls itself ETHEL, the most sensible advice is simply to expect the unexpected. From one track to the next on Light, the group's second album for the wonderfully eclectic Cantaloupe Music label, you'll encounter Brazilian dance rhythms and Finnish fiddling, jazz licks and blues cadences, and a flawless classical technique in the service of rock 'n' roll energy. Like another of today's adventurous chamber ensembles, the Imani Winds, ETHEL's musicians are not only performers but composers and arrangers as well: Their own work accounts for half of the music on Light. But as on their self-titled debut, ETHEL also collaborates here with some of the boldest composers on the avant-garde scene. The album's furthest-out experiment, "ETHEL Dreams of Temporal Disturbances," is full of electronic effects, samples of an Irving Berlin song, and the vocals -- reminiscent of Laurie Anderson's wry observations -- of composer Pamela Z. In contrast, the hauntingly melodic minimalism of Mary Ellen Childs's "After Dust" provides a relatively tranquil respite from the more exuberant goings-on. The quartet's jazz leanings are also brought to the foreground, with ETHEL violinist Mary Rowell's arrangement of Lennie Tristano's "Requiem" providing one of the album's most powerfully emotive moments, and one of Don Byron's "Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye" offering a more abstract, but no less intriguing, synthesis of jazz, soul, and the avant-garde. And then, just when you think you've mapped out the limits of ETHEL's influences and experiments, you encounter the "vocals" of Einstein -- an African gray parrot -- on the spirited final track, Rowell's "Also Sprach Einstein." Light may not suit those who want their music to fit neatly into one predictable category or another, but for the rest of us, it contains an album's worth of invigorating musical fun.
By David Steinberg
March 23, 2008
Click here for the full article.
Click here for the full article.
Click here for the full article.
Sympathy for the Stones from a String Quartet
By Vivien Schweitzer
New York Times, October 15, 2008
Click here to read the article
On The Road: The New York Avant-Chamber Group Ethel Takes Its Truck Stop Tour To The American Heartland And Finds Eager Collaborators
By James Reel
Strings Magazine, November 2008
Click here to view
The Year In Music 2008
2008 Billboard Critics Choice Top 10's
Billboard, December 2008
Click here to view Thom Duffy's picks.
Urband Legend: More of a band, less of a quartet, meet ETHEL
By James D. Watts, Jr.
Tulsaworld.com, January 25, 2009
Click here to read the full article.
ARENA Dances by Mathew Janczewski
ETHEL's collaboration with ARENA Dances
by Camille LeFevre
Dance Magazine, October 2008
Click here to read the full article.
ETHEL on Tulsa's KWGS Radio
Aired on January 28, 2009
Click here to listen
Some Boundaries Are Broken, Others Are Defined
By Allan Kozinn
The New York Times, March 4, 2009
The Tuesday evening installment of Lincoln Centers Opening Nights Festival at Alice Tully Hall was a five-and a-
half-hour celebration of what was once called downtown music, although it long ago moved uptown to places
like Tully, and from the avant-garde into the mainstream.
As a prelude, the idiosyncratic string quartet Ethel gave the premiere of Phil Klines Space as a free concert in
the halls large new public area. The quartets players were deployed individually to the north, south, east and
west of the restaurant and waiting area, and a loudspeaker in each corner carried the amplified, electronically
processed sound of one musician. (The sound designer, Jody Elff, was given equal billing with Mr. Kline.)
Mr. Klines hypnotically attractive 45-minute work begins with the quartet playing a tremolando figure that
gradually shifts to new harmonies and textures before moving through the lexicon of string ensemble effects.
Along the way it explores sustained tones and lightly dissonant harmonies, with a bagpipelike timbre; pizzicato
figures supporting soaring, lyrical viola and cello lines; and ornate violin solos bathed in tape delay that created
an almost fugal illusion.
Click here to read the full article.
My Ears Are Open. Part II.
Month-long podcast interviews with ETHEL. Listen to what Ralph Farris (viola) has to say!
My Ears Are Open. Part IV.
Month-long podcast interviews with ETHEL. Listen to what Mary (violin) has to say!
ETHEL Heralds the Future of Modern Chamber Music
Lehigh Valley Music Blog Review 09.05.2009
Read the recent view of ETHEL's La Nave de Los Monstrous performed at Mass MoCA.
Choreographer Annie-B Parson, ETHEL, and dancer Elizabeth DeMent, return this December 18 to present "Wait for Green," commissioned in 2008 by arts>World Financial Center. Annie-B was kind enough to talk with ETHEL's Ralph Farris about this piece, their collaboration, and her working process.
Farris: Describe your typical creative process. How do you go about making a piece?
Parson: There is sadly no typical. Each piece asks for its own language so I need to find a starting point and then engage with the material and performers in a way that is new to me. Starting point might be a prop, a piece of music, a choreographic form or a piece of text.
Farris: How did your work with ETHEL differ from your normal process? What was harder? What was easier?
Parson: I just laughed out loud as I read the question! It was completely new for me. I engaged with the group as if they were performing artists and watched them move and invent movement-- first. I love non-dancers dancing and I was thrilled ETHEL was game to try to make dances. I approached their music-making the way I look at structural elements in dance. I staged each piece of music directly from what was in my imagination. Images and scenarios come easily when the music has a visual dimension.
Farris: Describe your first working sessions with ETHEL.
Parson: There were no instruments in the room and they asked me not to play music either. They invented dance phrases based on simple ideas around dance-making and manipulation of movement. I can’t remember what exactly we did first but I remember being intrigued by what I was seeing.
Farris: How did the performance space -- The Winter Garden at the World Financial Center -- influence your work?
Parson: I was affected by the fact that in this space the audience feels comfortable to move around and change their location. I decided that we should stage something that moved throughout the atrium. For gods sakes it’s a shopping mall! We embraced the itinerant nature of an audience in a mall.
Farris: Several themes inform the music of "Wait for Green" -- The change of seasons, Waltz forms, Rising & Falling, Inversions & Mirrors, Home. How are some of these themes represented in the movement?
Parson: We use retrograde or reversals in the music and the movement. We use falling and rolling and weight and tension in the dancing. In one work the dancer rolls down the stairs slowly as the sustained notes of the group bring her to the bottom of the stairs.
Farris: Tell us about "that German song" that we play in the opening piece.
Parson: That is a favorite of mine. I love old European folk music and since I have worked with a lot of plays and literature from Germany, Russia and France, I have used quite a few beautiful old melodies. I think this one really embodies notions of home and nostalgia. Of course we completely pull it apart! But then we put it back together again...
Farris: How would you describe your contributions to the musical score of "Wait for Green"?
Parson: I believe I gave each ETHEL an assignment based on the choreographic forms we were working on. Then they would each make something small and then I would respond -- I would ask for certain things to happen at certain points, like repetition and motif and reversal. I would also suggest imagery based on what I was hearing.
Farris: How would you describe ETHEL's contributions to the choreography of "Wait for Green"?
Parson: They made everything!
Farris: Please describe (dancer) Elizabeth DeMent's role within the piece. How has her presence influenced the work?
Parson: She served to anchor the movement and to lend beauty, character and virtuosity. In a way she was a protagonist.
Farris: Please tell us about the set, and the overall look/feel of the show.
Parson: I wanted everything to look different than what one would expect from a string quartet. I didn’t want to see ETHEL sit at music stands and play music. So I asked for a living room, a TV and a vacuum and lots of lamps. There was no set designer. I worked from a William Eggelston photo.
Farris: How would you prepare an audience for this piece? What should they watch/listen for?
Parson: This piece was a workout for my imagination. I would let it just go go go and then try to create what I was seeing. I would suggest that the audience think about the piece as an AURAL imaginative ride.
--
BIG SHOUT-OUT to Annie-B -- for your words, for your collaborative spirit, and especially for your amazing work with ETHEL.
We cannot wait to present this piece again. It was a blast to create it last season, and it will be a great pleasure to revisit the music and the movement. Please join us on December 18!
ETHEL records new album with Chickasaw Nation student-composers
THE OKLAHOMAN gets a sneek peak into ETHEL's recording session in Chickasaw Nation.
ETHEL Rocks The Pioneers' House With a String Quartet Performance
Listen to Q2 this Thursday, March 11 at 7:30 p.m. for a live New Sounds Live webcast of Ethel performing the music of JacobTV.
Cellist Dorothy Lawson discusses ETHEL's approach to performance with KadmusArts.com podcast. Hear here!
EXAMINER.COM interviews violinist Cornelius Dufallo about ETHEL's upcoming concert in Queens.
"Pedal to the metal"... the New York Times gets amped up for ETHEL's summer concert at the Caramoor Festival.
The Youthful Sound of ETHEL: Quartet Releases New Album, has Upcoming Lincoln Center Show
OSHTALI is "pretty spectacular."
RALPH FARRIS (VIOLA) RECENTLY TALKED TO WPRB RADIO @ THE GROUP'S NEW ALBUM, OSHTALI. TUNE IN ONLINE!
Read this recent profile about ETHEL's work with New Jersey schools.
