DCist: Quatuor Ébène at the LoC

For the most part, when string quartets play jazz, the result is often so stilted that I just avoid it when possible. Not only did the Quatuor Ébène play a jazz arrangement of Un jour mon Prince viendra (otherwise known as Someday My Prince Will Come, a song written by Larry Morey and Frank Churchill for Disney's Snow White and performed by jazz legends like Dave Brubeck and Miles Davis) as their encore, and very well at that. They even introduced it by standing and singing it in more than passable four-part close harmony (you can hear part of it at the end of the promotional video embedded after the jump), in what had to have been a first in the history of the Library of Congress. The group is on a North American tour at the moment, having already played last week at Le Poisson Rouge, the hot new nightclub in Greenwich Village that hosts classical music, among other things. They return to Manhattan to play Carnegie Hall next Friday.

Quatuor Ébène, Cool as Ebony (DCist, March 14)