Pastorale by The Rhythm Method

The Rhythm Method string quartet (Leah Asher, Marina Kifferstein, Meaghan Burke, and Carrie Frey) celebrates its 10th anniversary season with the release of Pastorale, featuring three works written for the group by Lewis Nielson, Paul Pinto, and ensemble violinist Marina Kifferstein. Each piece, in its own way, grapples with questions of social awareness, engagement, and collectivism, all of which is consistent with The Rhythm Method's commitment to meaningful artistic inquiry since its inception.

Three composers, four poets, and five musicians, playing and singing music crafted with the utmost care and commitment; an album that makes us slow down, question, and feel. Pastorale is a triptych of works composed for The Rhythm Method, each of which expands the borders of the string quartet in innovative new ways. The quartet embraces vocalization, microtonality, extended techniques, and alternative structures among many other techniques, not simply to add to their arsenal, but to cultivate unique expressions with each interpretation.

Paul Pinto’s String Quartet No. 4 (‘I pass’d a church’) is an achingly slow rendering of the composer’s poetic elegy on the labor of rebuilding between Hurricanes Irene and Sandy. With echoes of Robert Ashley and ASMR, the piece takes a magnifying glass to each breath, each bow-hair crackle, blurring the borders between instrument and voice. Pinto’s score anthropomorphizes the creaking sounds of the church itself, as if its worn down structure is exhaling sighs of resignation through the swells of the quartet. What would a building ravaged by storms and embodying the anxiety of a generation facing the specter of climate change sound like if it could sing?

Marina Kifferstein, violinist and co-founder of The Rhythm Method, wrote her haunting String Quartet No. 2 for the last concert before the COVID-19 lockdown. Using just intonation practices and meditative vocalizations, the quartet foregrounds the hidden frequencies of routine musical figures, placing them in direct conflict and harmony with voices in and outside our heads. Pairings of chord tones fade in as others recede, as Kifferstein consistently reframes how our ears interpret each harmony as it morphs into the next. Conventional patterns of tension and resolution are obscured by the introduction of frequencies that prolong conclusive cadential movement.

Finally, Lewis Nielson’s Pastorale .... para los pobres de la tierra, commissioned by International Contemporary Ensemble for soprano/flutist Alice Teyssier and The Rhythm Method, sets texts by Antonio Machado, Pablo Neruda, and Saint Francis of Assisi in a tour de force work for the quintet, drawing on Teyssier and the quartet’s unique skills as vocalists and instrumentalists and weaving a complex musical fabric honoring those who labor and love. Nielson uses the expanded quartet instrumentation to great effect, taking advantage of Teyssier’s double duty on passages that seamlessly flow from flute to voice. He extends the idea of dual roles to the quartet as well, calling for extensive singing from the string players as well—he writes in his program note, “work is required by all parties.” The score percolates with activity throughout, but always fuses together to embody the cohesive collectivism that Nielson finds in the texts and for which he strives in much of his work, within and beyond music.

The quartet will celebrate the release of Pastorale, which coincides with their 10th anniversary as an ensemble, with a performance featuring Alice Teyssier on June 6, 2024 at 8pm at JACK in Brooklyn.

– The Rhythm Method/Dan Lippel

The Rhythm Method is a New York City-based string quartet of composer-performers dedicated to contemporary, feminist programming.

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