Liberated from labeling, Ethel embraces all
Questions abound when it comes to Ethel, the funky, forward-looking ensemble that makes its Boston debut tonight at Sanders Theatre. Is it a string quartet? Does it play “classical” music? And most urgent of all, where’d that name come from? Merman? Barrymore? Rosenberg?
“Actually, the name came right out of ‘Shakespeare in Love,’ ” says Ralph Farris, the group’s violist. Cinephiles will recall that in the movie, the Bard is trying unsuccessfully to write a play called “Romeo and Ethel the Pirate’s Daughter.”
“And as we were chasing through all sorts of names [for the group], we sort of came to ‘Why don’t we name it like you’d name a child? Like Bob or Biff or James? Or Ethel?’ “
There’s a more serious idea behind the name, too. “We were underwhelmed by the names that involved ‘quartet,’ ” Farris explains by phone from his home in New York.
“We felt that we had things to do that weren’t necessarily going to fit in the world of quartets. So we decided to take a name that gave us the liberty to be whoever the heck we felt like being.”
That mixture of fun and sincerity seems just right for a group whose moniker is “America’s favorite string band.” And in many respects Ethel is a lot closer to a band than a string quartet. Its members play with amplification, improvise, and write their own material. They have a dizzyingly wide array of collaborators, from such cutting-edge composers as Don Byron and Pamela Z to pop icons Joe Jackson and Todd Rundgren. Though they focus on new music, they’re as apt to pull out a bluegrass fiddle tune as some thorny contemporary creation. They love Hawaiian music. And they can rock, when so inclined.
“Music is music to us,” is Farris’s summation of the Ethel ethos. “The only revolutionary thing that we’re perhaps up to is a rejection of labeling.” But that simple approach has its problematic side, as genre labels can be helpful for audiences, he acknowledges. “People need to understand what you’re doing and where the traditions come from that you’re experiencing,” he says. “But what we reject is the limitations that labeling brings.”
The desire to live in a kind of genreless musical world has bred some confusion over the group’s 10-year lifespan. Initially, Farris says, Ethel was tagged as a new-music ensemble. “And we fit there comfortably for a while. But then what are we doing playing with a drumline? We’re not supposed to do that, are we? We’re serious musicians.”
That would be Kaotic Drumline, a percussion group and youth outreach project from the south side of Chicago, with which Ethel hooked up earlier this year. Farris had heard about the drumline when Ethel played at Northwestern University last year; upon seeing YouTube video of Kaotic, his sole thought was “Oh my Lord, we’ve got to make this happen.”
So how do four Juilliard-trained string players figure out how to make music with a drumline, or a bluegrass guitarist, or a jazz pianist? “Generally there’s a lot of homework that goes on before,” Farris says, with everyone listening to recordings and watching videos in advance. “And out of that someone says, ‘I really like that thing that you do in Track 3 - I was thinking about doing something like this alongside it. What do you think?’ That’s one way in. Often there’s a shared language to start from, like the blues. Eventually, we’ve had them hang out in our world, and we’ve hung out in their world.”
Each of those world-sharing experiences leaves a mark on the band - not just broadening its horizons but changing the way it plays. Farris mentions the drumline’s energy and vibrancy and the voice-like glissandi of Hawaiian music, both of which have found their way into the performance of other music. “Everything within taste, but we feel that our experiences outside of the normal boundaries of what we’re supposed to be doing has led us to bring a lot more to our music, even the ‘regular music’ that was written in New York City in 1987 or something.”
The encounter with Kaotic was one of 11 projects in what Ethel calls its TruckStop Tour: extended residencies that allow the ensemble to dig deeply into local musical communities. Previous stops have brought it to Hawaii and Texas; in September it will spend two weeks working with members of the Navajo Nation and Hopi Tribe at Grand Canyon National Park.
“As a touring musician, you get off the plane, you play the show, and then you’re gone,” Farris says. “You’re left wanting for a real sense of place. And the few times in our past history that we could spend a moment with local musicians, we were always jazzed. You had a sense that there was so much more to be tapped into, but you didn’t have the time. So we basically rejected not having the time and decided we have the time and we’re going to make it happen.”
Tonight’s program, presented by Celebrity Series of Boston, hits a number of points on the Ethel constellation, drawing heavily from the group’s most recent CD, “Light” (Cantaloupe). Selections range from Don Byron’s subversively funky “Four Thoughts on Marvin Gaye” to arrangements of a Nordic fiddle tune and a piece by jazz pianist Lennie Tristano.
“The show runs the gamut,” Farris says via e-mail, “from intense heavy metal vibe, to sweet streaming melodies, to groovy funk/jazz, to hip fiddle grooves, to smokin’ downtown contemporary insanity.” It’s a stylistic range out of the reach of many groups. For Ethel, Farris says, it’s “nothing too trippy. But there’s plenty into which one could sink one’s teeth.”
Information: 617-482-6661,celebrityseries.org
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