B I O G R A P H Y

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 Met Museum, the Americas Society, and the Noguchi Museum, and has been featured at the Lucerne Festival Forward, MATA Festival, the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival, American Composers Orchestra’s Sonic Festival, Music Mondays, and TriBeCa New Music, among others. The quartet tours regularly both in the US 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, Zurich University for Art and Music, Hunter College, Berklee School of Music, Boston Conservatory, Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts, Arkansas State University, and New York University, and they serve as the quartet-in-residence for Lake George Music Festival’s Composers Institute.

This season’s highlights include the premiere of OCTET, a large-scale multimedia work by Paul Pinto, co-commissioned by Bergamot Quartet for string octet with pre-recorded video; album release shows for both Carrie Frey's Seaglass and Anaïs Maviel's listen to the rain; residencies at Berklee College of Music, New York University, and the Lake George Music Festival; performances as featured ensemble of the Ukrainian Contemporary Music Festival; premieres of new works by all four members of The Rhythm Method; and the seventh annual Broad Statements Festival.

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.

Most recently the quartet has released Seaglass (Gold Bolus, 2025), a portrait album of works by quartet violist Carrie Frey; Pastorale (New Focus, 2024), an album featuring music by Lewis Nielson, Paul Pinto, Marina Kifferstein; and Anaïs Maviel’s ‘listen to the rain’ (Protomaterial). Their discography also includes self-titled debut album The Rhythm Method (2022), featuring music by each of the quartet members; A Few Concerns (Gold Bolus, 2021), an album of cellist-singer-songwriter Meaghan Burke’s music; and the group’s signature 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).

P R O G R A M S

listen to the rain

Approaching listening as performative and performance as meditative, listen to the rain’s instrumentation weaves Afrocentric with Eurocentric music traditions, written and oral. Grounded in the study of the Chinese theories of the five elements—rather, dynamic agents—and of the bagua, the music explores their generative cycles in the body in interdependency with the earth and cosmos, as a structural base. This piece is inspired by the Taoist meditation called fusion of the 5 elements, in which the 8 forces of the bagua – and their corresponding trigrams – are called upon to spin around one’s center, where alchemical balancing and refining of the 5 dynamic agents takes place. Within the body, and in harmony with earthly and cosmic realms, the circular structure both contains and emanates these 8 forces, called by their Ancient Chinese names. This program features Anaïs Maviel on kamele n’goni and voice.

Anaïs Maviel: listen to the rain (2021) for string quartet, kamele n’goni and voices

The full piece is about an hour. An abridged version of listen to the rain is available featuring the following movements, for a run time of approximately 30 minutes: Thunder, Water, Mountain, and Wind.

Complete video of our premiere performance at Roulette.

hounded earth

What does the aftermath of the implosion of the world sound like? This program gives voice to competing visions for the future of the earth and the universe, journeying through whirlwinds of fear, joy, and resilience. Hannah Kendall’s How ruin nested… responds to the tragic homophobic murders of two men in their Dallas, TX home in 2011. Kendall’s hounded earth and Jessie Cox’s Sound Drape Paintings both take inspiration from visual art. Kendall’s piece, inspired by the videos of Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu, challenges the expected sound of a string quartet with a creolized approach to instrument preparations emblematic of Kendall’s distinctive harmonic language. Cox’s works, inspired by the drape paintings of Sam Gilliam, treat the instruments as canvases for a futuristic approach to sound-making. 

Hannah Kendall: hounded earth (2025)

Jessie Cox: Sound Drape Paintings, Selections from 1-5

Hannah Kendall: How ruin nested inside each thimbled throat / & made it sing (2022)

Jessie Cox bio || Hannah Kendall bio

Embrace of the Ethereal

This program embraces music as a relationship between people: bodies with emotions and needs. DoYeon Kim’s new work, which features the composer herself on gayageum and voice, is a musical response to the zero-sum view of the world that arises in difficult times, exploring the deep connection between basic human emotions and music. Carrie Frey’s setting of Lydia Davis texts for the quartet looks at relationships from an odd, outsider perspective, shedding new light on how we relate to each other. Leah Asher’s Songbook is a collection of miniature character-pieces that capture aspects of distinctive personalities. Meaghan Burke’s BBT Piece takes the body as a starting point, deriving a tone row from temperature measurements taken over twelve months and exploring the emotional journey that can come from such dry numbers. Marina Kifferstein’s are we going home reflects on the humanitarian crisis in Palestine, asking the audience to consider the question of whether, and how, refugees can ever go home.

DoYeon Kim: Embrace of the Ethereal (2026)*

Edward Hamel: New Work TBD (2026)

Carrie Frey: Odd Behavior (2025)

Leah Asher: Songbook (2026)

Meaghan Burke: BBT Piece (2024)

Marina Kifferstein: are we going home (2025)

*This new work by DoYeon Kim may expand into an evening-length work, pending grant funding.

Program 1

Florence Price: String Quartet in G Major (1929)

Ursula Mamlok: String Quartet No. 2 (1998)

Hildegard von Bingen: Three Antiphons, arr. Marianne Pfau (~1160, arr. 2000)

Elizabeth Maconchy: String Quartet No. 3 (1938)

Leah Asher: Shoulder to Shoulder (2018)

Program 2

Florence Price: String Quartet in G major (1929)

Virginia Seay: String Quartet (1944)

Germaine Tailleferre: String Quartet (1919)

Elizabeth Maconchy: String Quartet No. 8 (1967)

E D U C A T I O N / W O R K S H O P S

The Rhythm Method is dedicated to working with young composers and musicians and has collaborated with a number of university composition programs, including Boston Conservatory at Berklee, New York University, Arizona State University, Tulane University, Arkansas State University, Zurich University for Art and Music, Hunter College, Youngstown State University, and Bowling Green State University’s College of Musical Arts, and they serve as the quartet-in-residence for Lake George Music Festival’s Composer’s Institute.

We offer the following educational activities as independent events or in conjunction with public performances:

Reading, Workshop, Performance and/or Recording of Student Compositions

Reading, Workshop, Performance, and/or Recording of Faculty Compositions

Extended technique workshop – with violin/viola/cello students

Performance - Rhythm Method program

Instrumental Masterclass – violin, viola, cello  

Chamber Music Masterclass

Graphic Score interpretation/composition workshop

Songwriting workshop

Free Improvisation workshop

Side by side performance with a student ensemble

P R E S S

“…We have become well accustomed to The Rhythm Method’s ability to switch from full-throttle grime to sheer rippling in a snap.” – Connie Li, I Care If You Listen

“No matter the project, The Rhythm Method questions the story told by our inherited history and challenges us to continuously consider the voices of who we create history with.” — Tristan McKay, I Care If You Listen

“fierce, fearless, and virtuosic… unapologetically stylistically omnivorous and versatile” — New Music Box

“The American avant garde has a long and sometimes painfully precious tradition of art strictly for art’s sake – and this quartet seems hell-bent on changing that.” — New York Music Daily

“Four skillful composer-performers...make up this trailblazing quartet.” — Steve Smith, The New Yorker 

“A Few Concerns is a smart, feisty album that is both provocative and a pleasure to listen to. This is a culminating work from Meaghan Burke and The Rhythm Method that should not be missed.” — I Care If You Listen

“The Rhythm Method is one of the most forward-looking string quartets in the world.” — The Jonesboro Sun 

“The Rhythm Method are, individually and collectively, fierce, fearless, and virtuosic performers. They’re also a group of players who are unapologetically stylistically omnivorous and versatile, and have a definite sense of humor – which shows in their choice to release that rare animal, a new music Christmas album. The quartet describe this album as ‘a cheeky but earnest tribute to the ethereal, soul-flossing music of the Wandelweiser composer collective’, drawing on ‘those composers’ deep engagement with silence and slowness, with gentleness and the sort of beauty you have to lean in to hear.’ If you like your holly jolly on the quieter, experimental, ASMR side, this is for you.” — New Music Box 2018 Staff Picks

“When The Rhythm Method improvise together, each of their composer minds fuse into a collective intelligence, creating a multi-layered organism with a collective intuition that I find brilliant. I resonate with this organic way of bringing music together: collaboratively with the canons of string quartet music, yet born in a patriarchal society… Although each composer’s voice is distinct, the sound of The Rhythm Method overarches any piece they perform. That ensemble creative power is a very precious ingredient for cooking this new piece together. There is a lot to experiment with in an ensemble of women composers with more than one foot stepped outside of hegemony.” — Anaïs Maviel, “5 Questions” Interview on I Care If You Listen

“This past evening’s performance by the Rhythm Method string quartet at Roulette was a stunning display of fearsome extended technique and fearless programming. The American avant garde has a long and sometimes painfully precious tradition of art strictly for art’s sake – and this all-female quartet seem hell-bent on changing that. Beyond the concert’s transgressive themes, from Margaret Atwood dystopia to the struggles of women and immigrants, the segues between the works on the bill followed as well musically as they did thematically.” — Lucid Culture

"Uncompromising and unreserved . . . intense, and sensuously gestural” . . . “impressive and gutsy programming” — Examiner.com

“...individual sounds, like nuclear fragments, gradually melded into ancient-sounding melodies and ritualistic harmonies…a hypnotic journey, which one wishes could have been repeated” — Luzerner Zeitung (in translation)

M E D I A

R E C O R D I N G S