In-School Performances
“EXTRAORDINARILY SKILLED, PASSIONATE MUSICIANS.”
The New York Times
“THEY OWN THEIR MUSIC, AND WHEN THEY WANT IT TO ROAR, THEY ROAR.”
The Los Angeles Times
“VITAL AND BRILLIANT”
The New Yorker
News and Events

06.02.10
Hot 8 Brass Band to be featured in new Spike Lee film for HBO
The Hot 8 Brass Band is featured in the upcoming Spike Lee film entitled "If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise."

05.24.10
Viver Brasil wins Lester Horton Dance Award
Viver Brasil recently won the Lester Horton Dance Award for Outstanding Achievement in World Dance

Performance Highlights

07.30.10
Christopher O'Riley
Caramoor International Music Festival
Spanish Courtyard- Katonah, NY

08.05.10
ETHEL
Bridgehampton Chamber Music Festival, NY

08.28.10
Turtle Island Quartet
Waterstage - Grand Performances
Los Angeles, CA

Listen

excerpt: ETHEL/Robert Mirabal
Chant
from the program Present Beauty
Senescence Music (Cornelius Dufallo)
To Whom It May Concern: Thank You (Mark Stewart)
Tarentella (Phil Kline)
Escape! from The Hours (Glass / Dufallo)
from the album- Light
Arrival (Zarvos)
from the album- Mary Ellen Child's Dreamhouse
Afterdust (Childs)
from the album- AllSteel
Harddrive (John King)
Peace (John King)

Tours & Projects

Present Beauty: featuring "The Hours" by Philip Glass - Touring 10-11-12

The concept of Literature as a muse for composers is hardly a new phenomenon. Passages of sacred text have always inspired musical treatment. The art of the song cycle evolved largely from literary and poetic sources, and there are certainly many popular songwriters following this model today. Opera, Ballet, Theater and now Film are all media where music and literature meet and mingle.

Stephen 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.”

The art of living in and appreciating the now is more and more becoming the subject of universal discussion; from spiritual communities to popular entertainment to scientific publications. ETHEL presents a program celebrating the concepts of presence and continuity, featuring their own new string quartet arrangement of Philip Glass' score from The Hours. Also on the program are compositions by Terry Riley, Huang Ruo, David Lang, and Julia Wolfe.