Ebene Quartet plays “Fiction” at www.medici.TV
The Paris-based Ebène Quartet is making waves in concert and on a new Virgin Classics recording with its new genre-bending program “Fiction”, which features improvisations and arrangements of themes from film soundtracks, jazz standards and rock classics. Now, listeners can enjoy a free webcast of the program live from Paris’s famed Folies Bergère on Monday, November 15 (6pm GMT) at www.medici.TV. With “Fiction”, the Ebène takes on and transforms unforgettable tunes by the likes of the Beatles (“Come Together”), Miles Davis (“Someday My Prince Will Come”), Astor Piazzola (“Libertango”), Bruce Springsteen (“Streets of Philadelphia”), Wayne Shorter (“Footprints”), and Charlie Chaplin (“Smile”), as well as the quartet’s already talked-about spin on “Misirlou,” a tune made famous by surf guitarist Dick Dale and by its inclusion in the film Pulp Fiction. Joining the Ebène are the dazzling French soprano Natalie Dessay (singing Harold Arlen’s “Over the Rainbow” and Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing the Rest of your Life”), singer-songwriter Stacey Kent (singing Jobim’s “Corcovado”), Spanish pop singer Luz Casal, and drummer Richard Héry.
Gramophone’s November issue features a rave review of a recording of the Ebène’s “Fiction” program, recently released in Europe by Virgin Classics and to be available in early 2011 here in the States. Noting the “substance and strength” of the musical material, the group’s effortless shifts from one musical style to the next, the “jaw-dropping virtuoso moments,” and the superb contributions of the guest artists, Gramophone’s reviewer concludes, “[It] all adds to the overwhelming impression that the Ebène Quartet have not so much dragged the medium [of the string quartet] screaming and shouting into the 21st century but have managed to invent a completely new genre.”
A video excerpt of the Ebène playing “Misirlou” is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SApSILYF9Mo
About www.medici.tv
Since its official launch in May 2008, www.medici.tv has gained international recognition, bringing together a community of music and arts lovers from 208 countries, who have watched more than seven million videos to date. The site currently averages more than 50,000 individual visitors each month.
Building on the success of webcasts from the Verbier Festival in 2007, www.medici.tv has since offered high-definition webcasts from many other leading festivals, including Aix-en-Provence, Saint-Denis, Aspen, Glyndebourne, and Lucerne, as well as from such music venues as the Opéra National de Paris, Auditorium du Louvre, Cité de la Musique, and Salle Pleyel in Paris, and Milan’s famed La Scala. Many operas and concerts performed by the world’s top-flight artists and orchestras have been webcast both as live events and later as video-on-demand (VOD) – all available for free. The list of artists who have been seen and heard at www.medici.tv is a “who’s who” of today’s stars, including Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Plácido Domingo, Gustavo Dudamel, John Eliot Gardiner, Valery Gergiev, Bernard Haitink, Riccardo Muti, Anna Netrebko, Maurizio Pollini, Thomas Quasthoff, and Simon Rattle. Among the featured orchestras are such ensembles as the Berlin Philharmonic, Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, London Philharmonic, Royal Concertgebouw, Orchestre National de France, Orchestre de Paris, Filarmonica della Scala, and the Chamber Orchestra of Europe.
As well as its webcasts of more than 80 live concerts each year, in partnerships with the world’s top artists and music institutions, www.medici.tv also offers subscriptions giving music-lovers the opportunity to watch more than 400 VOD programs – increasing to 1,000 programs over the next two years – including concerts, operas, recitals, documentaries, master-classes, artist portraits, and archive material. Featured artists include legendary musicians such as Leonard Bernstein, Maria Callas, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Glenn Gould, Herbert von Karajan, Yehudi Menuhin, David Oistrakh, Sviatoslav Richter, Mstislav Rostropovich, Artur Rubinstein, and Georg Solti, as well as leading film directors such as Bruno Monsaingeon, Paul Smaczny, and Frank Scheffer.
medici.tv subscriptions start at $10 per month and $99 for a year.
A list of upcoming live webcasts and VOD offerings available this fall from www.medici.tv follows below.
Upcoming live events, webcast free on www.medici.tv
Thursday, December 16 at 6:30pm – live
Auditorium de Lyon
Orchestre National de Lyon; Choeurs et Solistes de Lyon-Bernard-Tétu / Serge Baudo
Berlioz: L’enfance du Christ (The Childhood of Christ)
Concerts to watch again, free of charge, at www.medici.TV
– Closing concert of the Lucerne Festival, with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Vienna Philharmonic (available until November 18)
– Stradivarius Concert of the Nippon Music Foundation with Steven Isserlis, Sergey Khachatryan, Martin Beaver, Viviane Hagner, Akiko Suwanai, Manrico Padovani, the Tokyo String Quartet (available until December 7)
– The Berlin Philharmonic Octet performing a beautiful chamber music concert at the Auditorium du Louvre, conducted by concert-master Guy Braunstein
– The Orchestre National de Lyon playing Richard Strauss’s symphonic poem Also Sprach Zarathustra
– Watch medici.tv concerts on iPhone with its free medici.tv app
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