Acclaimed string quartet Ethel have announced the Dec. 6 release of their eighth album Persist, for which the group reconvened with dynamic flutist Allison Loggins-Hull. Celebrating the courage, patience and resilience displayed by people in times of great difficulty, Persist captures the arc of personal and collective persistence elicited by new commissions from four brilliant young composers: Migiwa “Miggy” Miyajima, Xavier Muzik, Sam Wu, and 2022 Pulitzer Prize finalist Leilehua Lanzilotti. Passionate, committed, hopeful and inspiring, each piece contributes to an experience which surpasses the sum of its parts.
Taking its title from Loggins-Hull’s album opener, Persist presents the unique pairing of string quartet and flute as five entities coming to together to form one sound. “We cultivated an interconnectedness that really shows the level of trust we’ve achieved together. The greatest utility there is in music is its power to connect. And it is Ethel’s greatest responsibility to see that our music does just that among listeners and our fellow artists,” says Ralph Farris, co-founder and violist of Ethel.
Persist marks the fifth iteration of HomeBaked, Ethel’s commissioning program for early-career composers. The initiative, begun in 2010, has commissioned and debuted 20 works by 16 early-career artists. Loggins-Hull teamed with Ethel to solicit, select, and collaborate with composers from historically underrepresented backgrounds. Ethel’s 25-plus years working with Native American composers reintroduced them to the idea of utilitarian music — “music that serves purposes other than being just some cool or lovely thing to listen to,” Farris says. “As the utilitarian inspirations of this album’s musics were revealed, we were called to reckon with each story of persistence, each personal history, each moment of a young person’s life they chose to celebrate or memorialize.”
Established in New York City in 1998, Ethel set the contemporary concert standard. Composer-performers Farris (viola), Kip Jones (violin), Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Corin Lee (violin) fuse uptown panache with downtown genre mashup. Ethel have performed across the United States and worldwide; released 10 feature albums; guested on more than 50 recordings; won a Grammy with jazz legend Kurt Elling; and toured with Todd Rundgren and Joe Jackson. Ethel champion the art and music of today, forging human connections across sound and style.
At the heart of Ethel is a collaborative ethos — a quest for common creative expression, forged in listening and community. The quartet designs productions that inspire engagement, such as The Red Willow, featuring Taos Pueblo flutist Robert Mirabal, and Signature Sessions, a supercharged survey of the quartet’s many years of inspired music-making.
Ethel have premiered over 250 works, many of them commissioned by the quartet; Ethel members have themselves been commissioned by The Ringling Museum of Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Georgia Tech and the NEA. The quartet regularly performs music by such celebrated composers as Julia Wolfe, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, Jessie Montgomery, Andy Akiho and Marcelo Zarvos. Other collaborators include Bang On A Can All-Stars, Vijay Iyer, Stewart Copeland, Raven Chacon, David Byrne, Annie-B Parson, Gina Gibney, Grant McDonald, Steve Cosson and Annie Dorsen.
Celebrated as a musical powerhouse, Loggins-Hull is a composer, flutist, and producer whose work defies genre, from symphonic music to film scores, chamber and electronic music. Her signature style of composing for orchestra is characterized by unique sonic effects that echo contemporary music production techniques. Her works are profoundly influenced by Black American music, creating a vibrant and kaleidoscopic sonic palette. Thematically, her compositions are deeply rooted in the experiences of community, culture, and life, offering a rich and evocative musical narrative. Her artistic reflections on Black stories, music, and experience, have led to works aligned with Afrofuturism, a movement that imagines alternate realities and a liberated future viewed through the lens of Black cultures. She is a Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow to the Cleveland Orchestra and the newly appointed Resident Artistic Partner to the New Jersey Symphony.
Listen to the title track from Persist HERE, and get more information HERE.
