Ethel featuring Allison Loggins-Hull
Biographie Ethel featuring Allison Loggins-Hull
ETHEL
Established in New York City in 1998, the string quartet ETHEL sets the contemporary concert standard: “indefatigable and eclectic” (The New York Times), “vital and brilliant” (The New Yorker). Composer performers—Ralph Farris (viola), Kip Jones (violin), Dorothy Lawson (cello), and Corin Lee (violin)—fuse uptown panache with downtown genre mashup. ETHEL has performed across the United States and worldwide; released 10 feature albums; guested on 50+ recordings; won a GRAMMY® with jazz legend Kurt Elling; and toured with Todd Rundgren & Joe Jackson. ETHEL champions the art and music of today, forging human connections across sound and style.
At the heart of ETHEL is a collaborative ethos — a quest for common creative expression, forged in listening and community. The quartet designs productions that inspire engagement, such as The Red Willow, featuring Taos Pueblo flutist Robert Mirabal, and Signature Sessions, a supercharged survey of the quartet’s 25+ years of inspired music-making.
ETHEL has premiered over 250 works, many of them commissioned by the quartet; ETHEL members have themselves been commissioned by The Ringling Museum of Art, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Georgia Tech, and the NEA. The quartet regularly performs music by such celebrated composers as Julia Wolfe, Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, Jessie Montgomery, Andy Akiho, and Marcelo Zarvos. Other collaborators include Bang on a Can All-Stars, Vijay Iyer, Stewart Copeland, Raven Chacon, David Byrne, Annie-B Parson, Gina Gibney, Grant McDonald, Steve Cosson, and Annie Dorsen.
Recent and upcoming appearances include the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lensic Performing Arts Center, Merkin Concert Hall, and Carnegie Hall featuring Ron Carter. The 2024/25 season also features an album release concert of “Vigil” at Brooklyn Public Library, a unique collaboration with Lebanese violinist Layale Chaker.
ETHEL has been featured at TED Conferences; on ABC Radio Australia, SiriusXM, Conan O’Brien, John Schaefer’s New Sounds, Fred Child’s Performance Today, Randy Cohen’s Person Place Thing, NPR’s Weekend Edition; and on the soundtracks of Dan In Real Life and HBO’s Deadwood. From mid-2020 to early ‘22, ETHEL curated and produced Balcony Bar from Home, a virtual series hosted on The Metropolitan Museum’s Facebook page which has garnered nearly 2 million views.
ETHEL is Ensemble-in-Residence at Denison University, and Resident Ensemble at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Balcony Bar in the Great Hall.
Allison Loggins-Hull
is a “powerhouse” (The Washington Post) flutist, composer, and producer whose work defies classification and has been described as “evocative” by The Wall Street Journal. She has been associated with acts across the spectrum of popular and classical music including Flutronix, Hans Zimmer, Lizzo, Imani Winds, Alarm Will Sound, the International Contemporary Ensemble, Alicia Hall Moran, and Jason Moran. Her music is resonant with social and political themes of the current moment, encompassing motherhood, Blackness, and cultural identity. Loggins-Hull and Nathalie Joachim co-founded the critically acclaimed duo Flutronix, which has been praised by The Wall Street Journal for being able “to redefine the instrument” and for “redefining the flute and modernizing its sound by hauling it squarely into the world of popular music” (MTV).
Beginning with the 2022-2023 season, and continuing for three seasons, Loggins-Hull is the Cleveland Orchestra’s eleventh Daniel R. Lewis Composer Fellow. In addition to several Cleveland Orchestra commissions, including an expanded arrangement of her composition Can You See? in the 2022-23 season, Loggins-Hull’s work will be centered around the narratives and history of Cleveland, through chamber music performances and composition workshops with students. During the 2022-23 season, Loggins-Hull performs with Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran at the Mississippi Museum of Art, with ETHEL at the Brooklyn Public Library, and on an East Coast tour with Flutronix and Third Coast Percussion. As a composer, she has eight world premieres, a U.S. premiere, and a New York premiere this season, including 7th Ave. S for the Cygnus Ensemble at New York City’s The Village Trip; the world premiere of her Persist at the Brooklyn Public Library; Love Always with Toshi Reagon and Alarm Will Sound at the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center; a world premiere performed by yMusic at Carnegie Hall; Chasing Balance premiered at Toronto’s Koerner Hall, UCSB Arts & Lectures, Carnegie Hall as part of cellist Alisa Weilerstein’s FRAGMENTS; and a world premiere for Castle of Our Skins at Philadelphia Chamber Music Society.
Last season, Loggins-Hull joined the Bang on a Can All-Stars for their People’s Commissioning Fund concert and performed Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran’s Two Wings: The Music of Black America in Migration at Cal Performances in Berkeley. Her compositions were performed by the LA Phil and San Francisco Symphony, and she premiered two projects with Flutronix: Black Being at the Arts Club of Chicago and Cincinnati Symphony and Discourse with Carolina Performing Arts. The New Jersey Symphony premiered Can You See? and her commissioning project Diametrically Composed – composed with fellow composers/mothers Alicia Hall Moran, Sarah Kirkland Snider, and Jessica Meyer – received its long-awaited premiere at Bryant Park in New York City.
Highlights of Loggins-Hull’s performances include concerts at The Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Chicago’s Orchestra Hall, World Cafe Live, and many other major venues and festivals around the world. She has composed for Flutronix, Julia Bullock, and many others, and has been commissioned by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carolina Performing Arts and The Library of Congress. In support of her work, Loggins-Hull has been awarded grants from New Music USA, and a fellowship at The Hermitage Artist Retreat in Englewood, Florida.
With Flutronix, she has released two full studio albums (Flutronix and 2.0), a live album (Live From the Attucks Theatre), an EP (City of Breath) and is signed to Village Again Records in Japan. As a member of The Re-Collective Orchestra, Loggins-Hull was co-principal flutist on the soundtrack to Disney’s 2019 remake of The Lion King, working closely with Hans Zimmer. She was a co-producer of Nathalie Joachim’s celebrated album Fanm d’Ayiti, which was nominated for a 2020 GRAMMY for Best World Music Album. On the small screen, she has been featured in an internationally broadcast ESPN Super Bowl commercial, the 62nd annual GRAMMYs Award Show and the Black Girls Rock! Awards Show. Continuing her work in film, Loggins-Hull composed the score for Bring Them Back, a 2019 award-winning documentary about the legendary dancer Maurice Hines directed by Jon Carluccio and executive produced by Debbie Allen.
Allison Loggins-Hull is a former faculty member of The Juilliard School’s Music Advancement Program and teaching artist at The Juilliard School’s Global Ventures. From 2018-2022, Allison Loggins-Hull served on the flute faculty of The John J. Cali School of Music at Montclair State University. Born in Chicago, she lives with her family in Montclair, New Jersey.
