America’s most daring string quartet sensation ETHEL teams up with Dutch multi-media composer JacobTV at Merkin Concert Hall for U.S. premieres of Dolly Shot and Syracuse Blues along with new versions of works specially arranged for and dedicated to ETHEL:
Capriccio, Jesus is Coming, Take A Wild Guess, Body of Your Dreams, Grab It! and String Quartet No.
3..Acclaimed as America’s premier postclassical string quartet, ETHEL boldly infuses contemporary
concert music with fierce intensity, questioning the boundaries between performer and audience,
tradition and technology. "One of the most intriguing and engaging European composers of today"
(Allmusic.com), JacobTV (Jacob Ter Veldhuis) is quickly gaining renown outside his native Netherlands
and has been called “the Jeff Koons of new music” by the Dutch newspaper NRC. He draws raw material
for his multi-media compositions from American media and world events, creating work possessing an
explosive strength and raw energy combined with extraordinarily intricate architectural design.
This concert is a special edition of New Sounds® Live hosted by WNYC’s John Schaefer and will be taped
for future broadcast on WNYC. For 20 years, Schaefer has been finding the melody in the rainforest and
the rhythm in an orchestra of tin cans. The program offers new ways to hear the ancient language of
song.

ETHEL
Formed in 1998, the ebullient ETHEL is comprised of Juilliard-trained performers Cornelius Dufallo
(violin), Ralph Farris (viola), Dorothy Lawson (cello) and Mary Rowell (violin). ETHEL performs
adventurous music of the past four decades, with emphasis on works composed since 1995. Their
repertoire includes compositions by quartet members, as well as works by such luminaries as Julia Wolfe,
Phil Kline, David Lang, John Zorn, Steve Reich, John King, JacobTV, David Lang, Scott Johnson, Don
Byron, Marcelo Zarvos, Evan Ziporyn and Mary Ellen Childs.
Embracing today’s most exhilarating music, ETHEL has performed with Joe Jackson, Kurt Elling, Bang on
a Can, Todd Rundgren, Ursula Oppens, Loudon Wainwright III, STEW, Ensemble Modern, Jill Sobule,
Joshua Fried, Iva Bittová, Colin Currie, Thomas Dolby, Steve Coleman, Stephen Gosling and Polygraph
Lounge. Ever re-imagining the possibilities of music performance, ETHEL has collaborated with
acclaimed directors Annie Dorsen and Daniel Flannery, and renowned choreographers Wally Cardona,
Annie-B Parson and Mathew Janczewski.
ETHEL tours the world, appearing on stages as varied as Venice Biennale, Sydney Opera House, Ravinia,
TED, Lincoln Center, Holland’s TROMP Festival, Kennedy Center, FIAC in Guanajuato, Mexico and the
Brooklyn Academy of Music. Highlights of the 2008-09 season included: world premiere of Phil Kline’s
SPACE at the gala reopening of Alice Tully Hall; world premiere of ETHEL's TruckStop®: The Beginning
at BAM’s Next Wave Festival; world premiere of RADIO by Osvaldo Golijov at the debut of WNYC
Radio’s Jerome L. Greene Space; world premiere of WAIT FOR GREEN with choreography by Annie-B
Parson, commissioned by arts>World Financial Center; a new collaboration with Arena Dances at the
Southern Theater in Minneapolis; world premiere of a commissioned original live film score at Celebrate
Brooklyn!; TROMP Festival with Colin Currie and Todd Rundgren; Jazz at Lincoln Center’s Allen Room,
and the Grand Canyon Music Festival, where ETHEL is Ensemble-in-Residence with the Native American
Composers Apprenticeship Project.
ETHEL has released several albums since their debut, the self-titled ETHEL (Cantaloupe Music, 2003),
which was named one of Billboard’s “Best Albums” for that year. The group’s next recording, Light,
(Cantaloupe Music, 2006), was selected as #3 on Amazon.com’s “Best of 2006: Top Classical Editor’s
Picks.” The group has appeared as guest artist on a dozen music labels and was recently featured with
vocal group Lionheart on John the Revelator: A Mass for Six Voices by Phil Kline (Cantaloupe, Music,
2008) and the Grammy® nominated Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and
Hartman (Concord Records, 2009). For more information, visit http://www.ethelcentral.com.

JacobTV
JacobTV started out as a rock musician and then quickly made a name for himself as a composer. Long
box office lines at the four-day Jacob TV Festival in Rotterdam in 2001 attested to his growing popularity,
and his “coming-out” as a composer of ultra-tonal, mellifluous music reached its climax with the video
oratorio Paradiso. In the last decade his so-called “boom box” music—live instruments with a grooving
sound track based on speech melody—has become internationally popular. Although JacobTV is one of
the most performed European composers, he is still an outlaw in the established modern classical music
scene, and was recently even accused of “musical terrorism” after a premiere at the World Harp
Congress in Amsterdam. According to The Wall Street Journal, his work “made many a hip-hop artist
look sedate.”
“While it is true that my music has to a large extent been inspired by American music that I grew up with,
like blues, jazz, rock & roll and minimal music, American culture in general had a great impact on my
work as an artist,” says JacobTV. “Growing up in the ‘grey’ fifties of postwar Europe, everything that was
colorful, swinging and fun, so it seemed, came from the USA: pop culture, Walt Disney, Hollywood, Andy
Warhol, the Beat generation, nice cars, planes and rockets...Due to my regular visits, the USA is not as
‘exotic’ as when I first came here, but American culture is so fascinating. Totally different from Europe;
according to Dutch painters like Willem de Kooning and Karel Appel, even the light is different here. And
as a composer I can say: the sound of the USA is different too! The result of my impressions of America
can be heard in this program.”
In 2007 an anthology of Jacob TV’s work with 12 hours of audio and video was released by Basta and
presented at a three-day JacobTV mini festival at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City.
Today he lives in the Dutch countryside and is composing a video opera called The News about the
credit crunch and other world events while touring with his JacobTV Band. Visit www.jacobtv.net for more
information.

Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center Presents ETHEL Plays JacobTV
Thursday, March 11, 2010 at 7:30 pm
Tickets: $25, $30 premium seating

Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center
129 West 67th Street (between Broadway and Amsterdam)
Tickets at 212 501 3330 or www.kaufman-center.org