Above: the members of ETHEL - Dorothy Lawson, Kip Jones, Ralph Farris, and Corin Lee - with flautist Allison Loggins-Hull; photo from the ensemble's website
~ Author: Shoshana Klein
Tuesday September 24th, 2024 - In the middle of a busy week, I got to hear the legendary string quartet ETHEL as well as flautist/composer Allison Loggins-Hull at Merkin Hall - the beginning of their official season as well as mine! Somehow I hadn't crossed paths with ETHEL before, although I have known about them for a while - as one of the few dedicated new-music string quartets.
Above: interview with Dorothy Lawson, Allison Loggins-Hull, and John Schaefer
This concert was also a New Sounds live broadcast, so in between each piece there were interviews by John Schafer with members of the ensemble. While I’m not a die-hard New Sounds listener, I’ve heard enough to be excited to hear it happening live.
Another interesting note is that the ensemble was set up a little differently than you’d expect - with the viola on the left, the cello on the right and then the violins flanking the flute, which was in the middle. It makes for a bit more of a balanced sound than the usual string quartet, which has the violins on one side and the two lower voices on the other.
The first piece, by Sam Wu, called Terraria, was in a very familiar new-music tonality that it feels like we use a lot nowadays, but there were enough different soundscapes for it to be interesting and engaging. It felt very much descriptive of a type of landscape and was a good opening piece.
The second piece was by Migiwa “Miggy” Miyajima, who is Japanese - the piece was in four movements and she has a jazz background that was evident but not overwhelming. Each movement was distinct and interesting, and my favorite might have been one in which members of the string quartet vocalized a drone while Allison played an alto-flute melody over the top.
The next piece was by Leilehua Lanzilloti - the composer on the program I was most familiar with - and was introduced with some information about Hawaii and US imperialism. They talked a lot about how the music had a lot of the “island music” feeling and that definitely came through - partially through some layered rhythmic plucking textures in the strings. Another really interesting effect was one in which the strings used multiple strings playing the same note and oscillated back and forth - sort of the string equivalent of what I’d call a timbral trill on the oboe, in which you slightly change the note so that it’s only vaguely perceptible.
The piece by Xavier Muzik was fun and energetic - it definitely had a different energy than the pieces before it even though it started somewhat similarly to some of the others. The last piece, by Ms. Loggins-Hull, had electronics and started with a fixed media drum beat that was kind of intense. It was a really nice piece that had a lot of variation and she certainly didn’t seem to give herself an easy part, which she of course performed flawlessly.
I'm going to be honest: this concert was in the middle of a really busy time and I can't say that I gave it the attention it deserved, but I was able to tell that all the music was really high quality and of course the performers are as well. It was well curated and nice to have one experience that was about an hour and a half interspersed with engaging interviews about the music. It always takes me a minute to get used to an amplified string quartet, but the sound was really well done and sounded exactly like listening to new sounds, which was both comforting and exciting to hear while seeing the music being made.
~ Shoshana Klein