ETHEL's TruckStop™: The Beginning September 19, 2008

New York's favorite string band, ETHEL, explores the melting pot of American music.
ETHEL’s TruckStop™: The Beginning
Cornelius Dufallo, violin
Ralph Farris, viola
Dorothy Lawson, cello
Mary Rowell, violin

Directed by and created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen
Video design by Kate Howard

ETHEL’s TruckStop™ steers its way to the State Theatre with a one-week residency, followed by the world premiere of ETHEL’s TruckStop™: The Beginning, a show conceived by ETHEL and directed by Annie Dorsen (Broadway’s Passing Strange) featuring ETHEL and four award-winning TruckStop™ artists. The characteristically eclectic program will feature collaborative works with Grammy® Award-winning Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Jeff Peterson; NAMMY (Native American Music Award) award-winning and 2008 Grammy® nominee, flutist Robert Mirabal from Albuquerque, New Mexico; “Queen of Tex-Mex” Tejano Conjunto accordionist Eva Ybarra from San Antonio, Texas; and Kentucky Blue Grass legend Dean Osborne; all interwoven with abstract projections “from the road” created by videographer Kate Howard. The result is work at once familiar and fresh; a lush amalgam of compelling aural and visual spectacles.

Road-tested yet brand new, ETHEL’s TruckStop™: The Beginning is a heart-stirring presentation of the power of music as a common language. Since its launch in 2007, ETHEL’s TruckStop™ tour has quickly grown as a vehicle for ETHEL to create music that is uniquely idiosyncratic, through rich and unexpected collaborations with musicians from a vast array of genres, traditions, and geographic regions in a series of community-driven residencies and locally hosted performances. Over 40,000 miles later, ETHEL has come away profoundly moved and changed by the human experience and continues to defy categories and pioneer uncharted musical landscapes.