ETHEL — String ensemble on another level

Please join us in the Kemper Foyer for a Post-Performance Meet and Greet with the group.

Prior to the performance, a discussion was held about the exploration of the classical art of new music.

This event is sponsored, in part, by the Lied Performance Fund.

Audio description services and recorded program notes are provided through a partnership between the Lied Center and Audio-Reader Network.

Please turn off or silence cellular phones and other electronic devices during performances. Food and drink are not allowed inside the hall.

Cameras and recording devices are strictly prohibited in the auditorium.

Saturday NOV 19 | 7:30pm

ETHEL

ETHEL

There will be no intermission during tonight’s performance.

Program order to be announced from the stage.

To Whom It May Concern: Thank You ............................................................................. Mark Stewart

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector ............................................................................Terry Riley

Suite from The Hours ...............................................................................................................Philip GlassThe Poet ActsMorning PassagesAn Unwelcome FriendEscapeThe Hours

Early That Summer ..................................................................................................................... Julia Wolfe

Wed ............................................................................................................................................... David Lang

String Quartet No. 2: The Flag Project................................................................................ Huang Ruo

ETHEL proudly endorses Beyer dynamic microphones and the AVID family of software and hardware solutions.

For more information, or to make a tax-deductible donation, please visit ethelcentral.com.

Present Beauty

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To Whom It May Concern: Thank You from Origin of the Species Mark Stewart“To Whom It May Concern: Thank You is the final movement of Origin of the Species, a piece commissioned for ETHEL by The Jerome Foundation. The first movements of the larger piece are performed on daxo-phones, which I custom designed for the group. These movements tell fantastical tales of the earth’s creation and the coming to be of all of the planet’s living things. This final movement, inspired by my mother’s atheistic dinner prayer, brings the stories to a gentle, loving rest.” —Mark Stewart

Sunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector Terry RileySunrise of the Planetary Dream Collector is one of the seminal masterworks of the minimalist movement. Twenty-four modules make up the structure of the piece; the performers are charged to “co-compose” the work by determining the ultimate module order and duration of the performance. ETHEL is particularly stimulated by the exercise of presenting this piece; each presentation we offer opens up new fields of possibility as we mix, match and jump from moment to moment in this vibrant work.

Selections from The Hours arranged by ETHEL Philip GlassStephen Daldry’s 2002 film realization of Michael Cunningham’s novel The Hours drew a hauntingly beautiful sound score from Philip Glass. There is a powerful affinity between Glass’ creative aesthetic and that of the novel’s protagonist, author Virginia Woolf. As a writer, she developed the theme of beauty as an experience rooted in the present moment, rather than in relationship to the past or the future. In his music, Glass captures beauty in continuity, without beginning, climax or end. As Michael Cunningham points out in the liner notes to The Hours CD, “Glass can find in three repeated notes something of the strange rapture of sameness that Woolf discovered in a woman named Clarissa Dalloway doing errands on a summer morning.” Deeply moved by the aesthetic of “present beauty,” ETHEL has arranged several movements of Glass’ score and presents them in suite form.

Early That Summer Julia Wolfe“I wrote Early That Summer while I was living in Amsterdam for a year. At the same time that I was working on the piece I was reading a book about American political history. In this book, all of the political crises began with some small occurrence, with a phrase like ‘early that summer....’. That small occurrence would, over time, snowball into something large and explosive. Partway through the book and the piece, I realized that the music was about that sense of anticipation. The Lark Quartet commissioned Early That Summer with funds from the Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Program.” —Julia Wolfe

Wed David Lang“My piece, Wed, is dedicated to the memory of Kate Ericson, a young conceptual artist and a close friend of my wife. In her hospital bed, just before she died, Kate was married to her boyfriend and longtime collaborator, Mel Ziegler. A wedding is usually a joyful event, full of hope and optimism, but this wedding of course had something much darker hovering around the joyfulness. In my piece the four independent lines of the string quartet are made of small changes – a half step up, a whole step down and each line by itself is not that interesting. Put together, however, they allow the music to rock oddly back and forth between major and minor, between consonance and dissonance, between hope and despair.” —David LangWed was written for the Kronos Quartet.

String Quartet No. 2: The Flag Project Huang RuoString Quartet No. 2: The Flag Project is about the Buddhism prayer flags and it is written for string quartet with four pairs of Tibetan finger cymbals. A prayer flag is a colorful panel or rectangular cloth often found strung along mountain ridges and peaks high in the Himalayas to bless the surrounding land and creatures. Unknown in other branches of Buddhism, prayer flags are believed to have originated with Bön, which predated Buddhism in Tibet. String Quartet No. 2: The Flag Project has three movements and each movement is about a different motion of the flags. The entire piece runs around fifteen minutes.

Program notes

ETHEL

etHeL B iograPHyAcclaimed as America’s premier postclassical string quartet, ETHEL boldly infuses contemporary concert music with fierce intensity, questioning the boundaries between performer and audience, tradition and technology. Formed in 1998, New York’s ebullient ETHEL is comprised of Juilliard-trained performers Cornelius Dufallo (violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Jennifer Choi (violin).

ETHEL performs adventurous music of the past four decades, with emphasis on works composed since 1995. Their repertoire includes compositions by quartet members as well as Julia Wolfe, Phil Kline, David Lang, John Zorn, Steve Reich, John King, Jacob TV, Scott Johnson, Don Byron, Marcello Zavros, Evan Ziporyn and Mary Ellen Childs.

Embracing today’s most exhilarating music, ETHEL has performed with Joe Jackson, Kurt Elling, Bang on a Can, Todd Rundgren, Ursula Oppens, Loudon Wainwright III, STEW, Ensemble Modern, Jill Sobule, Joshua Fried, Iva Bittová, Colin Currie, Thomas Dolby, Steve Coleman, Stephen Gosling and Polygraph Lounge. Ever re-imagining the possibilities of music performance, ETHEL has collaborated with acclaimed directors Annie Dorsen and Daniel Flannery and renowned choreographers Wally Cardona, Annie-B Parson and Mathew Janczewski.

ETHEL tours the world, appearing on stages as varied as Venice Biennale, Sydney Opera House, Ravinia, TED, Lincoln Center, Holland’s TROMP Festival, Kennedy Center, FIAC in Guanajuato, Mexico and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Highlights of the 2008-09 season included: world premiere of Phil Kline’s SPACE at the gala reopening of Alice Tully Hall; world premiere of ETHEL’s TruckStop®: The Beginning at BAM’s Next Wave Festival; world premiere of RADIO by Osvaldo Golijov at the debut of WNYC Radio’s Jerome L. Greene Space; world premiere of WAIT FOR GREEN with choreography by Annie-B Parson, commissioned by the arts> World Financial Center; a new collaboration with Arena Dances at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis; world premiere of an original live film score at Celebrate Brooklyn!; TROMP Festival with Colin Currie and Todd Rundgren; Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where ETHEL is ensemble-in-residence with the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project.

ETHEL has released four albums since their debut recording, the self-titled ETHEL (Cantaloupe Music, 2003), which was named Billboard’s “Best Album” for that year. The group’s next recording, Light (Cantaloupe Music, 2006), was selected as number three on Amazon.com’s Best of 2006: Top Classical Editor’s Picks. The group has played as guest artist on a dozen music labels and was recently featured with vocal group Lionheart on John the Revelator: A Mass for Six Voices by Phil Kline (Cantaloupe, Music, 2008). They were also featured on Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman, which received a 2010 GRAMMY ® for Best Jazz Vocal Album (Concord Records, 2009).

For more information, please visit ethelcentral.com.

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ind iv iduaL B iograPHiesCornelius DufalloCornelius Dufallo (violin) is an innovator at the forefront of the American contemporary music scene. The New York Times praises his “alluring” performances and “imaginative” compositions. Dufallo plays acoustic and electric violin and moves seamlessly from classical to pop and jazz styles. His debut solo album, Dream Streets, is a collection of his own compositions for violin. Time Out New York calls it “a beautiful, evocative disc of electroacoustic soundscapes.”

Dorothy LawsonA founding member of ETHEL, Dorothy Lawson’s (cello) previous experience includes years of performance with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, White Oak Dance Project, Philharmonia Virtuosi, American Symphony, Toronto Symphony and numerous new music ensembles. Canadian-born, she completed degrees at the University of Toronto, the Vienna Academy and the Juilliard School. She presently teaches in the Preparatory Division of Mannes College at the New School in New York City.

Jennifer ChoiJennifer Choi (violin) has charted a career that breaks through the conventional boundaries of solo violin, chamber music and the art of creative improvisation. Hailed by Time Out New York as “the passionate” and “one of New York’s most reliably adventurous performers,” she has championed a myriad of twentieth and twenty-first century works. After winning grand prize at the Fischoff and Coleman chamber music competitions, Jennifer gave her Carnegie Hall recital debut and has since performed in venues worldwide.

Ralph FarrisA founding member of ETHEL, Ralph Farris (viola) is a GRAMMY®-nominated arranger, an original Broadway orchestra member of The Lion King and former musical director for The Who’s Roger Daltrey. He has worked with Leonard Bernstein, Martin Scorsese, Depeche Mode, Natalie Merchant, Harry Connick Jr., Allen Ginsberg, Yo-Yo Ma and Gorillaz. A graduate of Walnut Hill School for the Arts, Ralph earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Juilliard.

ETHEL gratefully acknowledges its supporters:

The Aaron Copland Fund for Music: Performing Ensembles Program and Recording Program; American Composer’s Forum Encore Program; The Amphion Foundation; Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund; Arts International DNA, Arts International Fund for U.S. Artists; BMI Foundation, Inc.;beyerdynamic; The Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, Chamber Music America; James and Cornelia Deaderick; The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; The Double-R Foundation; The Greenwall Foundation; The Murray Hidary Foundation; The Jerome Foundation; LEF Foundation; Lower Manhattan Cultural Coun-cil; Meet the Composer’s Commissioning Music/USA; Meet the Composer’s Cary New Music Performance Fund, Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections Program; Meet the Compos-er’s JPMorgan Chase Regrant Program for Small Ensembles; The Multi-Arts Production Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Rockefeller Foundation; The National Endow-ment for the Arts; The New York State Council on the Arts; The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs; The New York State Music Fund, established by the New York State Attorney General at Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors; The James E. Robinson Foundation; Margaret Rowell; Harry Smith and Clare Melley Smith; The September 11th Fund; Sibelius Software; The A. Woodner Fund; and the Board of ETHEL’s Foundation for the Arts.

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FREE ADDITIONAL ACTIVITY• Post-Performance Meet and Greet with artists

Rodgers & hammerstein’sSOUTH PACIFIC An epic musical romance WEDNESDAY, JAN 18 — 7:30pm

UPcoming Performances

ChIARA STRING QuARTET A musical conversation between friendsSUNDAY, JAN 29 — 2:00pm

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