CultureHub NYC
47 Great Jones Street
3rd Floor
New York, NY 10012
Friday, December 5: 7pm and 9pm (Bergamot Quartet)
Saturday, December 6: 7pm and 9pm (The Rhythm Method)
Tickets: $25
Students/Seniors: $15
A virtuosically surgical multimedia work for amplified string quartet and multi-channel video by Paul Pinto performed by Bergamot Quartet and The Rhythm Method.
Commissioned by The Rhythm Method and Bergamot String Quartets, String Quartet No. 3 OCTET continues Paul Pinto’s playful exploration of video and theatrical chamber music. Just shy of an hour, the performance begins with a close-up on a tablescape of string instruments “operated” by four methodical musicians, their eight dexterous hands, and hundreds of pencils. Alternating through moments of Foreman-like precision and virtuosic irreverence, OCTET is a subtle and one-of-a-kind marriage of sonic slowness and visual anticipation.
Paul Pinto’s String Quartet No. 4: I PASS’D A CHURCH has become a cornerstone of The Rhythm Method’s repertoire, and was released on New Focus Recordings in 2024.
Credits for OCTET
Composed and directed by Paul Pinto
Zach Herchen, video and sound engineer
Performed by:
Bergamot Quartet (Friday at 7pm & 9pm)
Ledah Finck, violin
Sarah Thomas, violin
Martine Kinsella Thomas, viola
Irène Han, cello
The Rhythm Method (Saturday at 7pm & 9pm)
Leah Asher, violin
Marina Kifferstein, violin
Carrie Frey, viola
Meaghan Burke, cello
Run time: 50 minutes
Regular Tickets: $25
Students/Seniors: $15
Senior tickets for 65+, student tickets for students enrolled in a full-time program.
Hailed by The Wire as “one of the most exceptional composers in new music, with a sensibility that can handle deadly seriousness and wicked humour” Paul Pinto creates multi-disciplinary music, opera-theater, installation and performance. Sometimes with his longtime friends thingNY and Varispeed. And sometimes alone in his bedroom. Some highlights include Meredith Monk's Indra's Net, Patriots with Jeff Young, Gelsey Bell's mɔɹnɪŋ, Peter Maxwell Davies’ Eight Songs for a Mad King, the cyclorama video installation Whiteness with Kameron Neal, an ongoing re-arrangement of Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives, and his first opera Thomas Paine in Violence. He sang and danced on Broadway in Dave Malloy's Great Comet of 1812, and created many tiny performances during the pandemic for Zoom, television, headphones and the U.S. mail. Recent and upcoming projects include Water Music (an album and soundwalk on Gold Bolus Recordings), String Quartet No. 3 ‘Octet’ (Rhythm Method and Bergamot Quartets), The All-Father (a new take on Wagner’s Ring Cycle), and the operatic monodrama Mano a Mano, directed by Kristin Marting. A child of immigrants, born and raised in Richmond Hill, Queens, Paul now proudly calls Jersey City his home, because that's where his wife, child, and vegetable garden are. pfpinto.com
Photo by Titilayo Ayangade
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 quartet has performed across the country and abroad, at venues including Roulette, the MIT Museum, Joe’s Pub, The Stone, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Morris Museum, and the Noguchi Museum, and have been featured artists at the Lucerne Festival Forward, the String Orchestra of Brooklyn’s String Theories Festival, MATA Festival, Music Mondays, TriBeCa New Music, and Lake George Music Festival. Most recently the quartet has released Seaglass (Gold Bolus, 2025), a portrait album of works by quartet violist Carrie Frey; and Pastorale (New Focus, 2024), an album featuring music by Lewis Nielson, Paul Pinto, Marina Kifferstein.
Photo by Corey Hayes