Ebène Quartet North American Tour – Winter 2010
Described in a New York Times headline as “A String Quartet That Can Easily Morph Into a Jazz Band,” the Paris-based Ebène Quartet, winner this season of Gramophone’s coveted “Recording of the Year” award, returns to North America for a nine-city tour from February 5 – 23. The tour will feature the celebrated ensemble in performances of music heard on its first two releases for Virgin Classics, as well as signature jazz and pop interpretations. The winter tour kicks off in Appleton, Wisconsin (Feb 5) and includes two performances in Los Angeles (Feb 13 and 14), a return for the second consecutive season to New York’s popular music club, [Le] Poisson Rouge (Feb 16), and a concert at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. (February 23). Last season, the group played Debussy’s String Quartet – featured on its award-winning album – at [Le] Poisson Rouge; one of its disc-mates, the Ravel Quartet, will be on the program there this year, along with jazz standards and improvisations that have set the group apart as one of classical music’s most adventurous ensembles. Complete tour dates and program details follow below.
Last season, the Ebène Quartet made huge waves with much-discussed live performances in the U.S. and with its debut recording for Virgin Classics, an all-French album featuring quartets by Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré. For its second release for the label – issued in the States in October 2009 – the Ebène offered an all-Brahms program, pairing the composer’s String Quartet No. 1 with his Piano Quintet. Japanese pianist Akiko Yamamoto joins the quartet for the latter. Reviewing the album for MusicWeb Interational, Gavin Dixon observed:
“The Piano Quintet (Op.34) is given an appropriately epic reading, by turns expansive, heroic, even symphonic. Pianist Akiko Yamamoto matches the Ébène sound magnificently. Here again the precision of the recorded sound pays dividends … [In] the more dramatic passages, neither pianist nor quartet holds back on the music’s extremes. The details of Brahms’ dynamics pose a certain problem with regard to tastefulness; he often gives very brief hairpins between extreme dynamics over the course of a few notes. The quartet achieve an impressive feat in honouring these directions and making the results sound dramatic rather than histrionic. These are much recorded works, so it is to the credit of Quatuor Ébène and Akiko Yamamoto that their interpretations are both fresh and individual.”
Following the Ebène’s performance at Carnegie’s Weill Hall last season, Alex Ross wrote in the New Yorker:
“Their playing was…secure, alive, rich-toned, and profoundly musical. … Brahms’s String Quartet in C minor seethed with drama. … Their performance of the Ravel Quartet was a riot of nuance, sometimes raptly lyrical and sometimes swingingly rhythmic. A recent Virgin Classics CD of the Ravel, Debussy, and Fauré quartets shows similar virtues. In a wacky encore, which involved both playing and humming variations on ‘Some Day My Prince Will Come,’ the Ebène revealed that they don’t take themselves too seriously. They seem bound for greatness all the same.”
Later in the season, Ross confessed at his New Yorker blog, “I couldn’t stop listening to the Ebène Quartet’s hyper-lyrical renditions of Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré,” and he subsequently named the group’s French album one of the year’s ten most exceptional recordings.
Allan Kozinn reported extensively for the New York Times on the Ebène’s genre-crossing performance in March 2009 at [Le] Poisson Rouge:
“On its Web site (quatuorebene.com/en), the Ebène Quartet has all the usual things, from a biography and a touring schedule to music clips and an estimable repertory list, as well as a link to ‘The Other Ebène.’ Click on it, and you will find recordings of the group’s improvisations on jazz standards and a Bruce Springsteen song, and a YouTube clip showing this young Parisian string quartet tearing its way through ‘Misirlou’ from ‘Pulp Fiction.’ The Ebène players had it both ways at their concert at Le Poisson Rouge on Wednesday evening. They began conventionally, with quartets by Haydn and Debussy, and then morphed into a jazz band for a handful of freewheeling improvisations that included the ‘Pulp Fiction’ piece, Wayne Shorter’s ‘Footprints,’ Miles Davis’s ‘All Blues’ and Chick Corea’s ‘Spain.’ As an encore the four musicians stood together at the center of the stage and sang (in French) a richly harmonized version of ‘Someday My Prince Will Come,’ and then dropped into their seats to give the tune a brief but zesty going over. Not long ago musical fence-hopping of this kind was suspect, mostly because the performers who tried it were great in one style and abysmal in the other. This group seems entirely natural in both … The cellist, Raphaël Merlin, frequently played like a jazz bassist, with as much pizzicato as bowing, and plenty of bent notes. His solos and those of his colleagues — Pierre Colombet and Gabriel Le Magadure, violinists, and Mathieu Herzog, violist — were spirited and consistently inventive. It would be hard to say which version of the Ebène quartet is more pleasing; but then, you don’t have to.”
A video of the Ebène performing “Misirlou” is available at this link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBuDXn0M3M&eurl=http://www.quatuorebene.com/en/article/page/jazz.
The Ebène Quartet returned to the Verbier Festival last summer and continues to concertize widely throughout Europe; it recently returned from a highly successful tour of India. Since then the group has completed recording sessions for a jazz-inspired album that will be released by Virgin Classics in summer 2010, when the group returns to the States for a tour of leading summer music festivals (details tba).
Ebène Quartet – North American tour dates/programs February 2010
Friday, February 5
Appleton, WI
Lawrence University
(Masterclass day of concert)
Haydn: Quartet in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “The Rider”
Brahms: Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1
Debussy: Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
Saturday, February 6
Columbia, MD
Candlelight Music Society
All-Beethoven program (part of ongoing multi-group cycle)
Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Monday, February 8
Toronto, ON
University of Toronto
Haydn: Quartet in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “The Rider”
Brahms: Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1
Debussy: Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
Wednesday, February 10
Tucson, AZ
Arizona Friends of Chamber Music
Mozart: Divertimento in F major, K. 138
Fauré: String Quartet in E minor, Op. 121
Mendelssohn: String Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
Saturday, February 13
Los Angeles, California
Da Camera Society
All-Beethoven program (part of ongoing multi-group cycle)
Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Sunday, February 14
Los Angeles, CA
The Clark Library/UCLA
Ravel: Quartet in F major
Fauré: Quartet in E minor, Op. 121
Debussy: Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
Tuesday, February 16
New York, NY
[Le] Poisson Rouge
Ravel: Quartet in F major
Jazz/Crossover
Friday, February 19
Burlington, VT
UVM Lane Series
Haydn: Quartet in G minor, Op. 74, No. 3, “The Rider”
Brahms: Quartet in C minor, Op. 51, No. 1
Debussy: Quartet in G minor, Op. 10
Sunday, February 21
Athens, GA
University of Georgia
Office of Performing Arts
All-Beethoven program (part of going multi-group cycle)
Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Quartet in F major, Op. 59, No. 1
Quartet in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Tuesday, February 23
Washington, D.C.
Washington Performing Arts Society
Beethoven: Quartet in F major, Op. 18, No. 1
Fauré: Quartet in E minor, Op. 121
Mendelssohn: Quartet in F minor, Op. 80
For further information contact:
Glenn Petry, 21C Media Group: (212) 625-2038, [email protected]
Mariko Tada, EMI Classics: (212) 786-8964, [email protected]
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© 21C Media Group, January 2010