Since their founding in 1998, the string quartet ETHEL has been deeply rooted in commissioning, innovative programming, and collaboration. Their new album Persist (Dec. 6, Sono Luminus) is a striking and timely reflection on courage and resilience in the face of difficulty. Curated and performed in collaboration with flutist-composer Allison Loggins-Hull, the album highlights compositions selected through their HomeBaked commissioning project for early career composers and offers stunning musical interpretations across a wide range of styles.
In Loggins-Hull’s story, persistence is understanding the subtle ways we notice change by iteratively returning to our roots. Her titular work draws strength from the perseverance of her relatives and ancestors amidst “disenfranchisement, segregation, or slavery.” The piece’s cyclical form is rooted in a dreamlike melody that emerges from shimmering ambient pitches, plaintive pizzicatos, and a slowly undulating electronic backbeat.
Narrative-driven episodes move from rollicking chromatic ensemble lines to driving articulations on repeated chords. Tension eases as motivic fragments develop into hopeful melodies and pulsating electronic beats drive towards liberating grooves, but inevitably, each of these developments returns to a subtly changed version of the original melody and texture.
Xavier Muzik’s Pillow Talk continues his recent explorations of the complicated psychological dimensions of physical experiences. The work is grounded in the feelings of waking up next to a partner in the morning, when emotions, physical experience, and reality blur together. Loggins-Hull’s breathlike pacing gives the flute melodies a stirring quality as they emerge from ETHEL’s tight clusters of crystalline harmonies and whispering clouds of harmonic trills.
Evoking how euphoria and anxiety bridge emotional and physical experiences, the ensemble transforms melodic fragments and unexpected rhythms from moments of heart-racing cacophony to hazy calm. Persistence, here, is finding courage when we recognize that our lives are never linear or entirely cyclic.
Migiwa “Miggy” Miyajima’s The Reconciliation Suite develops a series of autobiographical and fictional narratives that explore New York City emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic. Miyajima’s jazz-tinged arrangements find a perfect home in ETHEL and Loggins-Hull’s crossover styles and stories. The ensemble shines as repeated notes expand into lush harmonies (“The Unknowns”) and humorous motives slide into spirited licks (“Mr. Rubber Sole from the Digital World”).
While there’s fun to be had amidst anxious optimism and playful embarrassment, Miyajima surprises listeners with space for reflection and acknowledging beauty. In “Never Be the Same,” Loggins-Hull’s gorgeous alto flute solo is suddenly surrounded by ETHEL humming out a vocal drone, which returns in “The Blooming Season” amidst lush impressionistic melodies. In this performance, persistence is balanced between active vulnerability and reflective noticing.
ETHEL and Allison Loggins-Hull — Photo by Nina Roberts
Sam Wu’s Terraria marks a short break from the album’s narrative focus, offering a poetic meditation on terrariums as dynamic spaces to imagine flourishing. The ensemble excels at cultivating Wu’s carefully crafted timbres and textures. The intricate opening pulsates with subtle vibrancy as flute trills and string tremolos grow into ascending melodic motives. Loggins-Hull gently plants a piccolo solo into stirring duets with Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Ralph Farris (viola), which gradually give way to teeming, driving rhythms from which flute lines soar.
Leilehua Lanzilotti’s we began this quilt here finds inspiration in a quilt created by Lili’uokalani, Hawaii’s last monarch and only queen, while she was imprisoned in 1895 following a failed attempt to overthrow the US Provisional government. Lanzilotti poetically translates the physical act of weaving and the metaphors in Lili’ukalani’s quilt into sounds and gestures. Buoyant string pizzicato and breathy flute melodies in “Uluhaimalama” evoke the sights and smells of Lili’ukalani’s gardens, which supplied her with flowers wrapped in newspapers containing secret messages during her imprisonment.
In “Ku’u hae aloha,” the ensemble abruptly turns the phrase of affection for the Hawaiian monarchy’s flag into a visceral, airy, sustained drone. Laden with tension, the movement suggests many experiences: a prolonged defeated sigh; the feeling of a flag’s fabric running through fingers. The final movement resolves some of this tension, translating the act of quilting into weaving cross-string gestures, flute timbral trills, and fragments of “Paoakalani,” a beloved song composed by Lili’uokalani during her imprisonment. Throughout Lanzilotti’s breathtaking piece, persistence is knowing how to pick up the threads, songs, and love left by others.
Persisting is a complicated and fraught endeavor, both in 2024 and in the many timescales and histories the album’s pieces address: pandemics, imperialism, colonialism; tomorrow morning, and an unknown ecological future. ETHEL and Loggins-Hull do not shy away from the ambivalence that often emerges after hard-fought struggles: What did we lose, or gain? How have we changed? What is now on our horizon?
Yet, if persistence is also a mode of attention, ETHEL, Loggins-Hull, and the composers on the album offer ways of attending to our bodies, one another, and our environment. Perhaps, in these things, we can find hope and keep going.
I CARE IF YOU LISTEN is an editorially-independent program of the American Composers Forum, and is made possible thanks to generous donor and institutional support. Opinions expressed are solely those of the author and may not represent the views of ICIYL or ACF.
You can support the work of ICIYL with a tax-deductible gift to ACF. For more on ACF, visit composersforum.org.