Faces to watch

Rachel Podger

Violinist

Every so often a performer comes along who makes very familiar music sound fresh and new. Rachel Podger has done that with Bach and Vivaldi. She is not a radical. She does nothing extreme, nothing to draw attention to herself. She simply plays a Baroque period violin with a sparkle that lights up the room. This winter she will bring her Bach-Vivaldi enlivening act to town in a guest appearance with the local period-instrument ensemble Musica Angelica, for a program including music for two solo violins (with Elizabeth Blumenstock as her partner) March 12 at the Colburn School’s Zipper Concert Hall and March 13 at All Saints’ church in Beverly Hills.

Ethel

String quartet

Ethel is hip. A string quartet that goes where other string quartets don’t, these four downtown New York improvisers/rockers/classically trained musicians have formed an ensemble that does it all. Their strong suit is edgy Bang on a Can kind of stuff. They do not fear improvisation. They also have a dreamy avant-garde side that complements their energetic one. They will make their Los Angeles debut Feb. 26, courtesy of Chamber Music in Historic Sites, at SCI-Arc (the Southern California Institute of Architecture). What could be cooler than that?

Wu Man

Pipa player

Given that the pipa has been around for more than 2,000 years, you might think that that this four-stringed Chinese lute’s possibilities would be pretty well exhausted. But you would think that only if you didn’t know Wu Man. A master of the traditional pipa, she also has a flare for the new. She’s inspired Lou Harrison’s last major work, his Pipa Concerto, along with excellent concertos by Tan Dun and Chen Yi. Philip Glass used her last year in his latest opera, “The Sound of a Voice,” and again in his multiethnic, evening-long “Orion,” which was written for the Cultural Olympiad 2004 in Athens and will be given its West Coast premiere (with Wu in the band) as the centerpiece of the Eclectic Orange Festival at the Orange County Performing Arts Center on June 24. Wu will also give a recital Jan. 28 at Caltech’s Beckman Auditorium.