Ralph Farris (born Ralph Howard Farris, Jr., 1970) is an American violist, violinist, composer, arranger, producer and conductor, best known as a founding member and artistic director of the ensemble ETHEL. Farris is an electric string player with a lengthy career that spans the gamut of musical genres from rock and jazz to Broadway. His instruments are outfitted with a piezoelectric pickup which allows him to play amplified.[1] Amplification was initially adopted early in Farris's career in order to facilitate the playing of various "contemporary classical" pieces that involve electronic components.[2][3] It continues to be integral to his signature sound.
From his earliest concerts, Farris was a notable soloist.[4] As the principal violist of The Juilliard Orchestra, Farris performed at Carnegie Hall in Roger Daltrey's 1994 A Celebration: The Music of Pete Townshend and The Who, playing the famous fiddle solo in Baba O'Riley. After, he became the Musical Director for the short-lived tour of the same name. Farris is an original member of the orchestra Broadway production of The Lion King, where he doubled on violin and viola and served for a few years as an assistant conductor. He is on The Lion King: Original Broadway Cast Recording (1997). Farris has recorded with and arranged for a wide variety of well known jazz, classical, rock and country musicians.[5] He has worked as music supervisor, acting coach, and contractor for luminaries in film, theater, dance and music.[6][7]
During the 9/11 Relief Effort Farris was the lead coordinator of the volunteer musicians who performed daily at New York City's St. Paul's Chapel ("The Miracle Church").[8][9] In December 2001, he conducted a group of Broadway actors and singers in a radio simulcast of holiday songs at Ground Zero and Times Square. His string quartet arrangement of The Star-Spangled Banner was performed at the World Trade Center site by the St. Paul's Chapel String Quartet on the one-year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks and was internationally televised. The WNYC program Soundcheck featured Farris as one of four guests for a project called Measuring Time: Music for 9/11/11 marking the tenth anniversary of 9/11.[10]
Farris is a very active participant in arts education. On his own and through ETHEL's Foundation for the Arts he has taught master classes at numerous universities and music conservatories.[11] His quartet is the ensemble in residence at Denison University.[12] In 2007 he recorded a segment for New York's WNYC about his experience working with young composers in the Native American Composers Apprenticeship Project (NACAP), a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award winning outreach program in which ETHEL has been an artist-in-residence since 2005.[13] In 2010 and 2011, he was a guest composer with the Eastport Strings, a youth ensemble in Eastport, Maine, hometown to Farris's grandfather. He is a frequent lecturer at Juilliard and currently serves as a member of the board of trustees of his alma mater Walnut Hill.
Musical style
WNYC's John Schaefer has described Farris as an "arranger extraordinaire".[14] He is credited for wide variety of pop and rock orchestrations and arrangements, such as the strings for Five for Fighting's chart topping ballad "Superman (It's Not Easy)" and the single "Great Round Burn" on KaKi King's album Glow. The ensemble ETHEL is typically described as being part of New York City's Downtown Music scene because of their close association with composers from the Bang on a Can collective and with the experimental art spaces The Kitchen and Tonic where they got their start.[15] Farris has a fairly omnivorous musical style, which is sometimes labeled Totalism or Polystylism for its rock and pop influences. His compositions include Three Solstice Songs based on works by the late poet Harry Smith, for string quartet and SATB choir. The first of these, Solstice People, was featured in the 2007 In the House of ETHEL: Solstice concert at the World Financial Center'sWinter Garden.[16]Factions, for string quartet was premiered at BAM's 2013 Next Wave Festival with accompanying video projection.[17] In 2014 he composed incidental music for the Aquila Theatre'sA Female Philoctetes which premiered at the BAM's Fisher's Hillman Studio and served as Musical Director and Composer for their touring production of The Tempest.[18][19]Sammich, for string quartet and 2 guitars, was featured in the 2015 Ecstatic Music Festival.[20]
With his string quartet, Farris tours extensively, more than 150 days a year.[21] In 2014 he made some solo and collaborative appearances, including the Tribeca New Music Festival with Tracy Silverman, MIT'sHacking Arts Festival with Karen Krolak from the dance corp Monkeyhouse, and Vassar College'sModfest, with percussionist Frank Cassara.[22][23][24]
^"MUSIC REVIEW; A Rock Band's Effects In a String Quartet Sound", The New York Times by Allan Kozinn, November 2, 2002 [1]Archived 2016-03-06 at the Wayback Machine
^"A bold force in foursomes; The members of Ethel offer a different string-quartet sound, and not just because of their penchant for improvising, amplifying, commissioning and composing.", Los Angeles Times, by Kyle Glann, February 20, 2005 [2]
^Classical Music in Review, The New York Times by James R. Oestreich, February 1, 1994 [3]Archived 2017-10-06 at the Wayback Machine
^"An Environmental Album Recaptured in a Concert ‘Documerica,’ at BAM, Featuring the New-Music Quartet Ethel", New York Times by Steve Smith, Oct. 6, 2013 [6]Archived 2016-12-23 at the Wayback Machine
^Music At Merkin Concert Hall: ETHEL, Kaki King & John King, The Artists Forum, by Eric J. Davis [7]Archived 2015-04-13 at the Wayback Machine
^"Music For Writers: A Quartet Named ETHEL And A Guitarist Named Kaki", Thought Catalog, by Porter Anderson, March 19, 2015 [8]Archived 2015-03-31 at the Wayback Machine
