Ethel gets New Angle from Montgomery
Lincoln Center decided to ask teens themselves what might get them interested in chamber music. What they learned led to a magical meeting of a string quartet of Manhattan hipsters and a choir from an Alabama public high school.

"Don’t call it a string quartet - it’s a band!" That's the persistent cry of the members of Ethel, a downtown quartet of young string players [nice dodge, eh?] known for their "bad ass" attitude as well as their technique and energy. Ethel was the perfect choice for Melissa Fathman, education director of The Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, as she addressed the vexing question of how to create the next generation of classical music fans.

Fathman had asked teens what would make chamber music more interesting, and they told her straight: that world seems boring and old, and they feel excluded. Why doesn't it feature music written "right now"?

According to Greg Sandow of the Wall Street Journal (May 21, 2003), Ethel was recruited to work with Fathman's new Student Advisory Committee to create a new show, which the students would have to produce and help market to their peers. So far, a very noble and cool idea.

Then fate intervened to make things even more remarkable: a block of tickets for the Ethel performance was purchased by the George Washington Carver High School choir, from Montgomery, Alabama. They would be touring the area in early May, and an assistant who always wants to find the choice "an experience they haven't had" during their tours, had happened on the Ethel program.

On May 9 in the Rose Studio, Ethel performed not only to a young audience, but one that was majority African-American. They moved through their program, which was characteristically adventurous and modern without being excessively pop or slick. "Genuine chamber music," writes Sandow, "written with advanced contemporary classical techniques, which made them miles to smart and tough to be real pop -- and also too gritty and dissonant even to go down well with a normal classical audience."

The crown "grooved." At the end the kids were standing and yelling their approval.

Then, during the debrief, the, uh, quartet's violinist Todd Reynolds asked the choir to sing something. They chose "Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho" and nearly took down the walls of the Studio. Ethel, moved by the performance, then improvised a response "with so much detail," Sandow tells us, "that I'd have sworn they'd planned the music long in advance."

The conversation between artists and audience, a tad awkward earlier, became easy and energetic, with laughter and good spirits all around. The walls between classical and kids, at least for a while, were mere rubble on the ground.

Hear Ethel at their site, and learn more about them in the April 2003 edition of Strings magazine

Read the Lincoln Center announcement of the program

Visit Carver High School