Source: Cora Cooper, 785-776-3408, corac@k-state.edu
Note to editors: Contact April Thibeault at 212-861-0990 for interviews with quartet members.

Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010

UNIVERSITY DISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES TO SPONSOR LECTURE-RECITAL BY STRING QUARTET ETHEL

MANHATTAN -- ETHEL, a New York-based string quartet known for its innovative programming and commitment to contemporary music, will perform at Kansas State University.

The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 30, in Forum Hall at the K-State Student Union. Admission is free. The performance is sponsored by a grant from the University Distinguished Lecturer Series, the K-State department of music and the K-State student chapter of the American String Teachers Association.

Acclaimed as America's premier postclassical string quartet, ETHEL infuses contemporary concert music with fierce intensity and opens boundaries between performer and audience, and tradition and technology.

Formed in 1998 the high-octane group of Juilliard-trained performers includes Cornelius Dufallo, violin; Ralph Farris, viola; Dorothy Lawson, cello; and Mary Rowell, violin.

The performance will be the lecture-recital "Present Beauty," which explores the concepts of time and continuity through music. The featured work of the program will be the quartet's new arrangement of Philip Glass' score from the movie"The Hours," a 2002 film based on Michael Cunningham's novel of the same name.

According to ETHEL members, there is an affinity between Glass' score 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.

Additional works on the program will be compositions by Terry Riley, Huang Ruo, David Lang and Julia Wolfe.

More information on the quartet is available at http://www.ethelcentral.com.