The Rhythm Method: Resistance Strategies

Praised as “fierce, fearless, and virtuosic… unapologetically stylistically omnivorous and versatile” (New Music Box) and “trailblazing...skillful composer-performers” (The New Yorker), The Rhythm Method strives to reimagine the string quartet in a contemporary, feminist context. The four performer-composers of The Rhythm Method continually expand their sonic and expressive palette through the use of improvisation, vocalization, graphic notation, songwriting, and theater. 

The Rhythm Method has given performances at Roulette, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morris Museum, and the Noguchi Museum in New York, and has been featured at Switzerland's Lucerne Festival Forward, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival, MATA Festival, Music Mondays, TriBeCa New Music, and the Austrian Cultural Forum’s Moving Sounds Festival. The quartet tours regularly both in the United States and abroad, and has performed internationally in France, Austria, and Switzerland. 

The Rhythm Method seeks to nurture ongoing relationships with universities and schools, cultivating multifaceted creativity and musicianship in students of all ages. They have been in residence at Tulane University, Arkansas State University, Zurich University for Art and Music, Hunter College, Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts, and New York University, and they serve as the quartet-in-residence for Lake George Music Festival’s Composer’s Institute. 

The Rhythm Method’s ongoing activities include the Hidden Mothers Project, a programming initiative that highlights works by historical women composers, and Broad Statements, an annual mini-festival celebrating creative music-making by women, non-binary, and gender-expansive people in a wide array of artistic styles. 

In June 2024, the quartet released Pastorale, an album featuring music by Lewis Nielson, Paul Pinto, and Marina Kifferstein on New Focus Recordings. Other releases include their 2022 self-titled debut album comprised of music by all of the quartet members on Gold Bolus Recordings; A Few Concerns (2021), an album of cellist-singer-songwriter Meaghan Burke’s music; and the group’s signature A Very Wandelweiser Christmas arrangements, volumes I and II. The Rhythm Method’s recording of “Silence Seeking Solace” (with soprano Alice Teyssier) was featured on Dai Fujikura’s Chance Monsoon (SONY Japan). 

About the Program

What does resistance sound like? Co-presented by The Rhythm Method and ChamberQUEER, this program gives voice to queer liberation struggles and radicalism, journeying through a whirlwind of anger, fear, unbridled joy, and resilience. 

Cristiano Melli’s “Glitter, Shards of Rain,” connects the 1969 Stonewall riots to the composer’s lived experience of growing up gay in Brazil. Abi Prían-Gallardo’s new work, “Barracas,” responds to the traumatic lesbophobic murders of three women in Buenos Aires in May of 2024. Works by Leah Asher and Erica Navarro stretch to emotional extremities. Finally, The Rhythm Method performs a collectively composed new work that integrates improvisation and memory, synthesizing and digesting everything that preceded it on this intense and moving program.