All about Ralph.

An award-winning graduate of The Juilliard School, three-time Tanglewood Fellow, Young Arts Master Teacher, Viola Faculty and Director of Chamber Music of the Longy School of Bard College, Ralph is a founding member and Artistic Director of the genre-bending string quartet ETHEL (described by the New York Times as “indefatigable and eclectic,” and by the New Yorker as “vital and brilliant”). The group is Resident Ensemble at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Balcony Bar, where Ralph programs the weekly “ETHEL and Friends” concerts. ETHEL is also Ensemble-in-Residence at Denison University, where its members were awarded honorary doctorates during Denison’s 2017 commencement exercises.

Ralph’s creative ideal—driving his own artistry as well as ETHEL’s—is a collaborative ethos, a quest for a common creative expression forged by the celebration of community. With ETHEL, Ralph creates and tours rich multimedia productions such as ETHEL’s Documerica, inspired by the tens of thousands of images shot as part of the EPA’s decade-long Project Documerica, launched in 1971 and The River, a collaboration with Taos Pueblo flutist Robert Mirabal (nominated for a 2016 NAMMY).

ETHEL’s self-titled debut album was a Billboard “Best Recording of ’03.”Its follow-up, Light, ranked #3 on Amazon.com’s “Best of ’06”and Oshtali: Music for String Quartet (2010), is the first commercial recording of American Indian student works. Heavy (2012), was a Q-2 “Album of the Week”and ETHEL’S Documerica (2015), was featured in the New York Times and on iTunes. 

ETHEL has appeared as a guest artist on over a dozen recordings including Laurence Hobgood’s forthcoming tesseterra (TBD, 2017), Cold Blue Two (Cold Blue Music, 2012), Kaki King’s Glow (Velour Recordings, 2012), Joe Jackson’s The Duke (Razor & Tie, 2012), Thomas Dolby’s A Map of the Floating City (Redeye Label, 2011), and Kurt Elling’s GRAMMY®-winning Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman (Concord Records, 2009).

A tireless collaborator, Ralph is always at work on a host of projects with rock stars, filmmakers, choreographers, educators, stage directors and poets, from Down East Maine to glitzy Las Vegas. Recent work includes appearances with dance legend Molissa Fenley, with guitar goddess Kaki King, jamband legend Trey Anastasio, violin standard-bearer Daniel Hope, and The Rhythmatist himself: Stewart Copeland of The Police. Shifting seamlessly between producing groundbreaking recordings, commissioning seminal contemporary works, and building new projects for studio and stadium, Ralph has appeared on the world’s great stages (The Library of Congress, Tokyo’s Suntory Hall, FIAC in Guanajuato, Mexico, the Sydney Opera House), at festivals (Ravinia, TROMP, Venice Biennale), on numerous television shows (The View, The Daily Show, Late Night, As The World Turns), and on countless recordings (Depeche Mode, Regina Carter, Clay Aiken, Rod Stewart, Natalie Merchant, Harry Connick, Jr.).

Ralph served as Music Coordinator for the appearance of The Legend Of Zelda: Symphony Of The Goddesses on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, as Orchestra Leader for the 2006 Gorillaz Demon Days Live residency at New York City’s Apollo Theater, as Music Coordinator for Merce Cunningham’s Ocean at Lincoln Center, and as Music Supervisor/Coordinator, Performance Coach, and Shadow Conductor on Martin Scorsese’s promotional film The Key to Reserva. During the 9/11 relief effort at St. Paul’s Chapel (adjacent to the World Trade Center site) Ralph lead the volunteer corps of musicians in performance and meditation three times a day, seven days a week, presenting a rich variety of artists, from Dishwalla to Judy Collins, and from the Vienna Boys’ Choir to a choir of sanitation workers. In 2011, in partnership with choreographer Karen Krolak of Monkeyhouse, Ralph built a community-driven public parade of music, dance and performance art in Eastport, Maine.

As a solo performer, Ralph has performed in concert with Paul Simon, Juana Molina, Tom Verlaine, Jill Sobule, STEW, Andrew Bird, Fernando Otero, Thomas Dolby, Jeff Peterson, Laurence Hobgood, Jake Shimabukuro, JP Jofre, Vijay Iyer, Pete Townshend, Leonard Bernstein, Alice Cooper, Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Sinead O’Connor, Joe Jackson, and Lou Reed. Ralph served as Music Director and Solo Fiddle of the Roger Daltrey Band and is an original company member of Disney’s The Lion King on Broadway. With ETHEL, Ralph has appeared twice at the TED Conference—as a speaker, and as the house band. His new ensemble, a band of violas known as Firewood, debuted with Gallim Dance at The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Temple of Dendur.

As a composer, Ralph’s works have been heard on stages the world over, from Carnegie Hall to the Grand Canyon; from Tasmania, Australia to St. Petersburg, Russia. His commissions include the Jerome Foundation, dance evangelists Monkeyhouse, Las Vegas darlings Jarrett & Raja, Walnut Hill School for the Arts, and the NEA. His scoring credits include Noelle Brower’s Everything is Ordinary; Anika Burt’s Begin Again; Jehane Noujaim’s industrial Pangea Day; and with ETHEL, Susan Todd’s The Mother Is the One Who Stretches, and Danielle Wilmouth’s Eleanore & The Timekeeper. Ralph composed incidental music for The Aquila Theatre’s production of A Female Philoctetes, produced at BAM in April 2014, as well as music for their 2014-15 production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Current projects include a full-length musical, a children’s ballet, Snow White, for Pineapple Dance, and a Ringling Museum commission to collaboratively score ETHEL’s CIRCUS: Wandering City, which originated at BAM in November 2018 and tours in Fall 2019.

A sought-atfter arranger and orchestrator, Ralph recorded and arranged strings on the 2001 GRAMMY®-nominated hit “Superman (It’s Not Easy)” by Five For Fighting. Other arranging highlights include work with Dishwalla, Ryan Star and Stage, Marina Belica, Chantal Kreviazuk, and Pound, several releases by blues maven Dayna Kurtz, and tracks with Dutch jazz-pop band Room 11. In conjunction with Lord Graham Russell and music director Cynthia Kortman Westphal, Ralph arranged and orchestrated a new Air Supply musical at the University of Michigan entitled Dance With Me.

In addition to producing albums by his group ETHEL, Ralph is currently producing a series of contemporary classical records by composer Stanley Grill, as well as the upcoming album A Path Of Light, by the Hevreh Ensemble.