Quarter notes: May Day (plus) quartets

Seattle is about to be invaded by two prominent string quartets, both champions of non-standard repertory, new music, and everything in between. ETHEL comes first with two performances with Simple Measures, the local chamber music effort striving to remove the mystery around classical music followed by two performances by the JACK Quartet as part of Joshua Roman’s Town Music series.

ETHEL, who is known for playing with amplification, will play “unplugged” for their Seattle performances. Philip Glass’s music from the movie the Hours is on the program as well as others. JACK start’s their west coast swing with a performance at the Sorrento Hotel as part of Chamber v. Chamber and concludes with a stop at Town Hall with music by Gesualdo, Ligeti, Xenakis and others.

In between ETHEL and JACK is the second annual May Day, May Day new music festival on May 1st of course. The festival began last year through the creativity and ingenuity of Paul Taub. Taub and Town Hall invited three local musicians to curate the event — Wayne Horvitz, Christina Valdes, and Jarrad Powell. Though the festival is slightly shorter, the cost of entry is only $5 making this one of the cheapest tickets in town. The price of the ticket allows reentry all day long.

The line up for the day looks like this:

12:00 Paul Taub & Friends12:24 Seattle Modern Orchestra12:48 Dale Speicher1:12 Aaron Otheim1:36 Michael Lim2:00 Melia Watras2:24 Cristina Valdes2:48 Valdes/Parker/Schaefer Trio3:12 Christopher DeLaurenti3:36 Joe Kaufman4:00 Stuart Dempster4:24 Tom Baker4:48 Briggan Krauss/Wayne Horvitz5:12 JazzEd New Works Ensemble5:36 Scrape6:00 Maria Mannisto/Robin Holcomb6:24 Beth Fleenor6:48 Today! featuring Dayna Hanson7:12 Eyvind Kang/Jessika Kenney7:36 Zachary Watkins & Ensemble8:00 Adrienne Varner8:24 Christian Asplund & Ensemble8:48 Music by Mamoru Fujieda9:12 Chrysalis/Stephen Frandrich9:36 Seattle Percussion Collective