Salina, Kansas here we come – January 15th

Dec 30, 2010 News

Wednesday, December 29th, 2010

Turtle Island Quartet at Stiefel Theatre January 15th

The Stiefel Theatre presents the Turtle Island Quartet, Saturday, January 15th at 7:30pm.
A glorious fusion of jazz and classical, the Turtle Island Quartet has been the very definition of American Chamber music for over 25 years. From stages around the globe to international airwaves, winner of two recent Grammy’s for Best Classical Crossover, the Turtle Island Quartet is the most acclaimed ensemble of its kind. Its name is derived from creation mythology found in Native American Folklore. Since the inception of Turtle Island in 1985, they have been a singular force in the creation of bold, new trends in chamber music for strings. Winner of the 2006 and 2008 Grammy Award for Best Classical Crossover Album, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary American musical styles.

Juxtaposed Jimi Hendrix works will be featured with the assumption that the guitar legend is a kindred spirit to a modern-jazz giant – Turtle Island declares Hendrix an evolutionary figure in the historic of music for electric guitar.

“It must have been like this when Beethoven was taking Vienna by storm – the exhilaration of seeing the future of classical music unfold before your eyes and ears.” – St. Louis Dispatch

Cellist nonpareil Yo-Yo Ma has proclaimed Turtle Island Quartet to be a “unified voice that truly breaks new ground – authentic and passionate – a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.”
Tickets range from $15 to $35
Jane Gates

It’s nice to be included! TIQ makes year-end concert highlights round-up.

Dec 27, 2010 Reviews

2010 was a good year for classical music in Utah

EXCERPT

Published: Saturday, Dec. 25, 2010

By Edward Reichel, Deseret News
This was a good year for classical music in Salt Lake City.

The Turtle Island Quartet is one of the foremost exponents of genre bending music today. Their concert at Brigham Young University in March proved once again that nothing is impossible for the string quartet medium and when TIQ plays it, Jimi Hendrix sounds as fabulous as late Beethoven.

Mix chats with David Balakrishnan about TIQ’s latest CD

Dec 27, 2010 News

“Have You Ever Been…” Turtle Island Quartet Plays The Music of JIMI HENDRIX And The Music Of DAVID BALKRISHNAN
Telarc Records

Gary Eskow December 25th, 2010

David Balakrishan has a problem with the Turtle Island Quartet. Well, not really. The group, which he founded a quarter of a century ago, has won a pair of Grammy Awards in the last several years and their latest release “Have You Ever Been…?” is amassing critical praise. Robert Friedrich, who tracked, mixed, and mastered the project at Skywalker Sound, has been nominated for a Grammy award.

TIQ was formed, in part, as a place for Balakrishan- a mind-bendingly capable fiddle player- to hone his craft as a composer. Frustrated by the box “classical” string quartets were stuffed in, performing masterworks by composers whose works stood outside the popular stream that formed a part of his musical DNA, Balakrishnan sought out players who could straddle both worlds.

Over the years he’s managed a shifting group of musicians (save for cellist Mark Summer, a band mate since the git go) who can read anything placed before them and also have the ability to improvise in multiple styles at the drop of the hat. That capacity has allowed Balakrishnan to write detailed sections and line them up alongside simple charts that flourish under the group’s care. Intoxicating though it is, there’s a danger to this method and Balakrishnan knows it.

“You can put a lead sheet in front of TIQ and we can play for 10 minutes,” he says. “Part of our thing is that we have the ability to sound like a rhythm section, so we can play something like Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child” without having to bring in a drummer or bass player.

“We’ll take a tune and start out with the cello playing bass, the violist comping, one of the violins playing chop style and the other improvising around the melody, and then shift roles over time.

“The problem lies in the fact that no matter how good we handle the task, we’re basically imitating other forms of music. If we’re not careful it’s possible that TIQ could end up as an inferior sounding cover band! The key is to go back and forth between the pop, or jazz, concept and the traditional string quartet model. ”

Ok, that’s clear: because it accommodates the interplay of counterpoint and harmony (perhaps the most fundamental aspect of “classical” music) so well, and the instruments have a pronounced vocal quality, the string quartet is often called the most perfectly balanced and expressive of all musical units. Not exactly what Jimi had in mind when he wrote “Stone Free.” Hendrix made sure to give his bass player and drummer pastures to roam around in, but the show belonged to him. A deft exchange of material among the three instruments wasn’t a part of the formula.

“Right!” says Balakrishan. “Hendrix is primal. Part of what we did on this CD was go there for a bit. “House Burning Down” and “Voodoo Child” are examples. Even in “Have You Ever Been” and “1983… A Merman I Should Turn To Be,” which feature arrangements that are more in the traditional string quartet style, our playing is totally grounded in American vernacular phrasing.

“Some players mistake overplaying as energy. This is especially true when classical players try to cross over and play popular music when that’s not part of who they are musically. They often play loud and with exaggerated vibrato, or over emphasize the minor third, which can sound artificial and annoying (*). Hendrix was loud, but his phrasing is beautiful and he played with a great dynamic range. We went for the beautiful legato side on this record.”

(*Good point: check out BB King’s phrasing on the classic “Live at the Regal” album. His thirds are always bent and sustained in context, never called up by rote).

Then there’s the matter of register to consider. The Renaissance lute composer John Dowland wrote tons of songs, mostly for high voice. Listen to the great English tenor Peter Pears’ recordings with Julian Bream and you’ll hear how effective it is to separate the register of the voice from the instrument that accompanies it.

Jimi, of course, couldn’t have cared less about this. Or maybe he did; his performance practice, which mainly consisted of him answering his vocal licks with guitar parts, kept the problem at bay. Did Balakrishan spend much time considering the issue of register?

“Absolutely. I changed keys to fit the music to the instruments. Jimi tuned his guitar down a half step routinely, by the way. That gave us permission to change keys! The important thing to understand is that my job is to try and re-imagine the music, as we did on “Love Supreme,” our tribute to John Coltrane. Again, we don’t want to run the risk of becoming a cover band by copping every lick.

“Another point regarding register is that we had to accept that a string quartet is never going to get the low end that the electric bass, kick drums and tom toms brought to the Jimi Hendrix Experience records. We did consider using electronics to bring some low end into the mix, but ultimately rejected the idea. Our mission is to be a string quartet, to honor that ensemble, and make whatever music we play work with its confines.”

Still on a mission, still looking to stretch, David Balakrisnan looks forward to writing more music for the Turtle Island Quartet, but he’s also looking outside it as a composer. “I’ve been writing for other players and groups. Without the ballast that TIQ provides I have to prove my worth solely as a writer to other people. I welcome the challenge!”

Turtles on Bob Edwards show – Thursday, Dec 22nd

Dec 22, 2010 News

Thursday, December 23, 2010

David Balakrishnan and Mark Summer are the two founding members of The Turtle Island Quartet. Along with members Mads Tolling and Jeremy Kittel, they join Bob in-studio for a perf-chat to discuss their latest recording Have You Ever Been…?, which is an homage to Jimi Hendrix.

XM 133/Sirius 196

M-F 8 AM (ET)

Encore presentations:

Tue-Sat 4 AM

M-F 9 AM

M-F 10 AM

M-F 3 PM

M-F 8 PM

M-F 9 PM (replay of previous day’s show)

M-F 10 PM

Sat 7-9 AM (Bob Edwards Weekend)

A review of our 25th Anniversary Herbst Theatre SF gig

Dec 13, 2010 Reviews

Examiner.com – San Francisco

The Turtle Island Quartet has been giving concerts under the auspices of San Francisco Performances (SFP) since 1991 (back when they were known as the “Turtle Island String Quartet”); so an SFP gig at Herbst Theatre offered the most appropriate venue for their 25th Anniversary Concert.

Furthermore, as Brent Assink, Executive Director of the San Francisco Symphony, said of the Symphony’s centennial season, when you have a big birthday, you want to invite all of your friends. Considering the impact that Turtle Island has had on string quartet performances, jazz, and the recognition that music need not be confined by boundaries of genre, their quarter-century mark was definitely a “big birthday.” However, when one tries to account for all of the collegial relationships they have formed through the breadth of their approach to performing, it is hard to image that the Herbst stage could hold all of their friends. So last night we in the audience had to be content with two of those friends, jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut and eclectic mandolinist Mike Marshall.

The program gave an excellent account of the many different projects that have engaged Turtle Island over the last 25 years. At one end we had two selections from their debut album with Windham Hill in 1988: Miles Davis’ “Milestones” and Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments” (taken as the encore for the evening). At the other we had four tracks from their latest release, Have You Ever Been…?, three by Jimi Hendrix, “Have You Ever Been (To Electric Ladyland),” “House Burning Down,” and “All Along The Watchtower,” and “Monkey Business,” the scherzo movement from the Tree of Life suite by founding member David Balakrishnan.

The guests also contributed selections to the evening repertoire. Chestnut introduced a particularly moving (but not overly sentimental) take on the spiritual “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and a highly imaginative approach to weaving his own jazzy “chorale prelude” on the final chorus of Johann Sebastian Bach’s BWV 147 cantata, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben. The text of the chorus is “Jesu bleibet meine Freude,” better known in English as “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” In the Christmas spirit Marshall performed his own interpretation of “Angels We Have Heard on High” with Chestnut and violist Jeremy Kittel, as well as “Gator Strut” (the title track from his own latest album) with the entire Quartet. He also joined the Quartet in “All Along The Watchtower.”

To go back to one of those features that has distinguished Turtle Island since their formation, this was an evening of making music without ever being constrained by any preconceived notions of genre. As I observed in my preview piece, the original members of Turtle Island “came together to jam;” and over the last 25 years they have demonstrated that just about any music can benefit from jamming, whether it was written by Bach for a church service (in this particular case the Feast of Visitation) or it was one of the wilder psychedelic excursions of Hendrix. Perhaps the best way to summarize the spirit of last night is through a slight pun: Last night was all about the dual semantics of “play,” under which just about any form of music was “fair game.”

San Fran Examiner talks to David about their Silver Anniversary concert – Dec 10th

Dec 6, 2010 News

Commemorating 25 years of Turtle Island
By: Georgia Rowe 12/05/10

Special to The Examiner

Since founding the Turtle Island Quartet, violinist David Balakrishnan has led the group on a wide-ranging musical journey through folk, jazz, Latin, bluegrass and other repertoires where traditional string quartets fear to tread.

This month, though, he is returning to his roots, celebrating Turtle Island’s 25th anniversary with a new CD and a concert featuring the music of rock guitarist Jimi Hendrix.

Presented by San Francisco Performances, Friday’s program at Herbst Theatre will include music from the quartet’s “Have You Ever Been … ?,” an album of Hendrix tunes and Balakrishnan’s original compositions. The group will return to Herbst on Saturday for a family matinee.

Hendrix is a primary source, says Balakrishnan, even as Haydn and Mozart were for string players in the 18th century.

“He was a huge influence,” says the violinist, who grew up in Los Angeles and now resides in the East Bay. “Hendrix was a blues guitarist the way Charlie Parker was a saxophonist — he took it so much further than anyone thought was possible.”

Balakrishnan was a teen when Hendrix released his landmark album, “Electric Ladyland.”

“I was already playing guitar,” he recalls. “Later I switched to violin, but when I look back now, that was the moment when I got inspired. I was so excited, so full of joy about the way he was playing. That was what pushed me to keep going down this road, to keep playing music.”

Balakrishnan founded Turtle Island in 1985 and immediately began exploring music from every corner of the globe. Still, he says he’s always owed a debt to Hendrix.

“You mature, and you become what you are, but it all goes back to that,” he says.

Turtle Island — Balakrishnan, second violinist Mads Tolling, violist Jeremy Kittel and cellist Mark Summer — will be joined at Herbst by jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut and acclaimed mandolinist Mike Marshall.

The program isn’t set, says Balakrishnan, but it’s likely to include Hendrix songs from the new CD, such as “All Along the Watchtower.” It will also include Balakrishnan’s latest original work, “Tree of Life.” He thinks it may be the best thing he’s written.

“It goes as far as I can reach, compositionally,” he says. “And yet, when I listen to it, I can still hear that kid who fell in love with Hendrix.”

IF YOU GO
Turtle Island Quartet

25th Anniversary Concert
When: 8 p.m. Friday
Tickets: $30 to $50

Family Matinee
When: 11 a.m. Saturday
Tickets: $10 to $15

Where: Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco
Contact: (415) 392-2545

The Washington Post says the Turtles have “…astonishing versatility”

Dec 6, 2010 Uncategorized

In performance: Turtle Island Quartet at 25

At twenty-five, the Turtle Island Quartet exists in a constant state of renewal. Founding members violinist David Balakrishnan and cellist Mark Summer welcome young second violinists and violist who are attracted by the sort of technical and improvisational opportunities the standard classical repertoire doesn’t offer. They bring new ideas, new repertoire and amazing skills to the group, stay several years and then move on.

The quartet’s silver anniversary celebration at the George Mason Center for the Arts on Saturday, for instance, gave its newest member, the violist Jeremy Kittel, a terrific show case for some of his stuff — a soul-searing blues cry in the opening arrangement of Jimi Hendrix’s “Have You Ever Been,” a delicate interweaving with guest artists, pianist Cyrus Chestnut and guitarist Mike Marshall, in a jazz version of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and an enthrallingly intricate improvisation in the group’s version of Miles Davis’s “Milestones.” Kittel is classically trained, an internationally acclaimed fiddle champion, jazz performer and composer, and twenty-four years old.

What The Turtle Island Quartet artists have with their repertoire of non-standard sound-producing techniques is the ability to recreate the best jazz, rock, bluegrass and the rest in sonorities that are rich, transparent, balanced and blessedly lightly amplified. This program was a retrospective of the music that this group has made its own over the years. There was an arrangement of Coltrane’s “Moment’s Notice” with Chestnut spinning droplets of notes over the percussive chuff of the violins and the bass-like thumping of the cello; a joyous rendition of Clapton’s “Crossroads”; and Marshall’s bass mandolin, down-home-sounding version of “Gator Strut.” Chestnut’s pensive leads in arrangements of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” and Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” wandered from sweet to astringent, and were both gentle and crystalline.

Balakrishnan’s “Monkey Business,” a commentary on Darwinian controversy, came the closest, stylistically, to classical idioms and rounded out a program that featured astonishing versatility.
– Joan Reinthaler

The Turtles talk 25 years on their Pink Section cover story!

Dec 4, 2010 Uncategorized

At 25, Turtle Island Quartet turns back to Hendrix

Jesse Hamlin, Special to The Chronicle

Friday, December 3, 2010

In 1981, violinist David Balakrishnan began composing string quartet music that seamlessly merged the styles he loved: jazz, classical, bluegrass and Indian music. But who could play it?

“I was writing for a string quartet that just didn’t exist,” says Balakrishnan, a UCLA-trained composer who grew up listening to Indian music, played with Stephane Grappelli and David Grisman, and was deep into Beethoven’s middle-period quartets. He taped the first version of his groundbreaking composition “Balopadem” by overdubbing all the parts himself. In 1985, Balakrishnan co-founded the group that could deliver the grooving, multilingual music he envisioned: Turtle Island String Quartet.

In the vanguard
Over the past quarter century, the renowned Bay Area quartet has been in the vanguard of boundary-blurring string musicians – along with bassist Edgar Meyer and fiddler Mark O’Connor – who can play Mozart, Monk and Bill Monroe with equal skill and passion. Turtle Island, which celebrates its silver anniversary this weekend with a pair of San Francisco Performances-produced shows at Herbst Theatre, took the traditional string quartet in a swinging new direction, creating a sonic world where a Brahmsian passage may flow into a bop solo or a patch of James Brown funk.

“I wanted to take the string quartet form, the genius of it, into the world that I lived in,” says Balakrishnan, 56, a big, robust man who made music his life after hearing Jimi Hendrix live at the Los Angeles Forum in 1968. That electrifying experience inspired him to “get off the page” and begin improvising Hendrix licks on the violin.

Forty years later, Balakrishnan wrote a suite of string quartet arrangements of songs from Hendrix’s timeless 1968 “Electric Ladyland” album. It’s featured on Turtle Island’s latest CD, “Have You Ever Been …?,” along with Balakrishnan’s “Tree of Life,” a beautiful four-movement work that organically melds elements of Indian and Afro-Cuban music, hoedown fiddling, blues and other genres.

Grammy winners
The Turtles, who scored a Grammy in 2006 for “4 + 4,” a collaboration with the Ying Quartet, and another in 2008 for their John Coltrane CD, will play music from the new record and more on Friday night. They’ll be joined by the virtuoso mandolinist Mike Marshall, a charter member of the creative San Francisco string scene from which Turtle Island emerged, and the soulful jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut, another favorite colleague (their other collaborators include the guitar-playing Assad Brothers and the Cuban jazz clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera).

“For me, the album is the culmination of the past 25 years,” says Balakrishnan. “It’s going back to the first light that went on for me – Hendrix – and tells the Turtle Island story.”

He’s sitting in the horse-country Novato home of Turtle Island cellist Mark Summer, the other original member of the quartet that features two brilliant young musicians: violinist Mads Tolling and violist Jeremy Kittel.
Summer’s extraordinary ability to play like a full jazz rhythm section – with walking bass lines, slapped percussive patterns, plucked off-beats and strummed chords – is at the core of the Turtle Island sound. (His marvelous solo arrangement and playing of Hendrix’s “Little Wing” summons the sound of the rock icon’s electric guitar, voice, drummer and bass player).

A classical start
Groomed from early age for a classical career, Summer, who likes to say “I’m in recovery from classical music,” quit the Winnipeg Symphony and spent a year improvising on the cello. He began playing pop and jazz gigs and fell under the sway of the innovative bluegrass fiddler Darol Anger, who was living in the Bay Area and playing with Balakrishnan in a group called Jazz Violin Celebration.

Summer, who’d met Anger at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, moved out here in 1985 to join the scene. Shortly after arriving, he found himself on stage at the Great American Music Hall, jamming with Anger, Balakrishnan and violist Laurie Moore. They played a Bach chorale note-for-note, then dug into the jazz standard “All of Me.” The crowd loved it. A few months later, the foursome became the Turtle Island String Quartet. The group took its name from poet Gary Snyder’s 1974 book “Turtle Island,” titled after the American Indian tern for the North American continent.

When Balakrishnan first proposed the idea of an improvising string quartet that would use classical forms to play jazz and his multi-stylistic music, “I thought it was pretty outrageous,” says Summer, 52. “It was tough to see. How was this going to be received? It was received really well.”

Back in 1985, there weren’t a lot of string players around who could play jazz and classical chamber music equally well. San Francisco’s pioneering Kronos Quartet had recorded the music of Thelonious Monk, and would also celebrate the music of Bill Evans, but the string parts weren’t improvised.

Blurring the lines
“The idea of a string quartet playing jazz was in the air, but nobody had imagined Turtle Island, where the players were jazz and classical musicians,” Balakrishnan says. Everyone in the group improvises, composes and arranges. “I wanted to blur the lines between improvisation and composition. Mark and I always talk about how, as we’ve grown over the years, there’s this amazing conflict built into the group between the controlled composition and the freedom of the individual.”

Tolling, who joined the Turtles seven years ago, thrives on that balance, the challenge of creating spontaneous melodies and playing with the precision and tonal beauty that classical music requires. He also had to learn the bluegrass fiddling techniques, like the chop and shuffle bow, to bring Turtle Island’s music to life.

“It’s enriched me tremendously,” says Tolling, who takes a similar multi-stylistic approach with his own group. “You have to deliver on so many levels. The group exists in a world of its own design. It’s a string quartet that swings and integrates all these styles. It’s not a gimmick. It’s how David hears the music.”
Balakrishnan decided to delve back into Hendrix’s music while visiting the Woodstock Museum in Bethel Woods, N.Y., a few years ago. Watching a video of Hendrix’s Woodstock performance, he was overwhelmed by the music of “an American genius.”

Rather than focusing on the “superficial aspects of the music, the energy and the vibrato, we wanted to show him as a great composer, not just a hot guitarist,” Balakrishnan says. “Sometimes you want to take a piece and really reinvent it. But this is music that I loved as a kid, and it was holy ground to me. I didn’t want to undo it, I wanted to just be it. Hendrix was layering lines on top of each other, overdubbing them into a soundscape. It was perfect for a string quartet.”

Expanding range
Balakrishnan and Summer credit the musicians who’ve come through Turtle Island over the years, among them such prominent players as violist Irene Sazer and violinist Tracy Silverman, with putting their mark on the music and expanding its range.

“I feel the group is more flexible and personal than when we started,” Summer says. “David had this great vision, and the individual players have helped him see how far these roads can lead,” Summer says. Turtle Island, he adds, “was way ahead of its time.”

Kittel, a 26-year-old classically trained fiddler who joined the group three years ago, agrees. Listening to Turtle Island opened his ears.

“They were very influential in paving the way, opening the doors for string players to see other possibilities,” Kittel says.

Balakrishnan saw those possibilities 25 years ago, even if had no idea how they’d play out.

Natural evolution
“It’s been a natural evolution,” says the violinist, who says with all due modesty that Turtle Island has helped redefine the parameters of classical music. “I don’t like the term cutting-edge, which makes me think of music that’s hard to understand and listen to. To me, this is like a flower that bloomed.” {sbox}
Turtle Island Quartet: With mandolinist Mike Marshall and pianist Cyrus Chestnut. 8 p.m. Fri. Herbst Theatre, 401 Van Ness Ave., S.F. $30-$50. Family matinee. 11 a.m. Sat. at Herbst. $10 kids, $15 adults. (415) 392-2545. www.sfperformances.org.

E-mail freelancer Jesse Hamlin at pinkletters@sfchronicle.com.
This article appeared on page Q – 21 of the San Francisco Chronicle

The Washington Post talks with the Turtles

Dec 4, 2010 Uncategorized

Turtle Island Quartet to salute Jimi Hendrix and Charles Darwin on the same album. (Copyright Jay Blakesberg)

By Mike Joyce
Friday, December 3, 2010
TURTLE ISLAND QUARTET

Here’s something few groups could pull off: coupling an ingeniously arranged tribute to Jimi Hendrix with an original string ensemble suite honoring the life and work of Charles Darwin.

Yes, musically speaking, it helps to be a little bipolar, says Turtle Island Quartet co-founder David Balakrishnan. Of course, being in a Grammy-winning group known for its audacious, category-defying repertoire doesn’t hurt, either.

The Bay Area quartet, which is appearing at George Mason University on Saturday night, has been throwing curves at listeners for a quarter-century. Over nearly 20 recordings, the ensemble has reconfigured and revitalized the music of Dave Brubeck, Thelonious Monk, Oliver Nelson, Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane and other American composers, while zigzagging across classical, jazz, pop, folk, Latin and world-beat turf.

Now the quartet has artfully linked the legacies of Hendrix and Darwin on “Have You Ever Been . . .?,” its latest release. Making an album primarily devoted to exploring Hendrix’s creativity as a composer was a logical step for the ensemble, which is made up of Balakrishnan, fellow violinist Mads Tolling, cellist Mark Summer and violist Jeremy Kittel.

As a teenager growing up in the Los Angeles area, Balakrishnan, 56, saw the rock guitar titan perform twice, which, he says, changed his life. In fact, looking back on those concerts now, his voice still rises a notch.
“I was a young guy playing the violin, then falling in love with Hendrix and the rock-and-roll thing and figuring out how to play it on the violin,” he says.

More than anything else, what appealed to him was how Hendrix laced his music with so many intriguing lines and contrasts.

“He had a real sweet, expressive lyrical side,” Balakrishnan says, “and we all know how edgy he could be. Those Hendrix chords, the sharp nines, stretch you in this major/minor way that’s so ecstatic, and I picked up on that as a kid. I really fell in love with that.”

So much so, Balakrishnan says, that catching Hendrix in concert “was probably the singular force that created a musician out of me – that falling-in-love experience, head over heels.”

Open to all kinds of music – classical, rock, jazz, Indian and bluegrass – Balakrishnan says he knew what he liked early on, “but I really didn’t know who I was.” Although solving that puzzle would take a long time, the fundamental concept that gave birth to Turtle Island – the group’s name derives from Native American folklore – allowed him to connect a lot of dots.

Staying true to the European string quartet tradition was key, Balakrishnan says. “Yet the members of the group would have to have equal grounding in jazz technique and improvisation; that’s what set us apart. And for me, personally, a compositional aspect was very important.”

The violinist spent a few years writing string pieces that were never performed by an ensemble. Instead, he overdubbed all the parts. Then somewhat miraculously, according to Balakrishnan, the right players began showing up – Summer, violinist Darol Anger and violist Laurie Moore, for starters.

“You see jazz violinists, but you rarely see a jazz cellist. That’s why Mark is so important to the group,” Balakrishnan says. “Right away the sound started to evolve faster than I could have imagined, even though many people were convinced that a string quartet couldn’t possibly swing.” Some people still have a hard time with that, he says with a laugh. “It’s funny now because swing is one of the things that made our career.”

Two and a half years ago, after watching a film of Hendrix in concert, Balakrishnan began seriously exploring ways to rearrange tunes from the guitarist’s 1968 album “Electric Ladyland.” While pursuing that project, Balakrishnan was also writing “Tree of Life,” a four-movement suite commemorating the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of “The Origin of Species.”

Balakrishnan realized later that the Hendrix- and Darwin-inspired pieces made for a curious yet complementary fit. As a result, the Darwin tribute appears on “Have You Ever Been . . .?” along with other striking string quartet weaves. (And, yes, Balakrishnan is a big fan of the innovative Kronos Quartet, which helped pave the way for Turtle Island’s excursions into jazz, Hendrix and beyond.)

So what’s next? There’s no lack of inspiration, says Balakrishnan, especially now that the quartet boasts young musicians with their own musical passions. Kittel is a champion fiddler well versed in American and Celtic string-band traditions. Tolling, a native of Denmark, grew up fascinated by the jazz recordings of Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek.

“They’re always bringing us new energy and ideas, so that’s exciting,” Balakrishnan says. “They’re individualists with strong personalities, musically speaking, and we know they need space to breathe in. Playing with them really reinvigorates us.”

On Saturday night at GMU, in addition to saluting Hendrix and Darwin, the quartet will perform pieces composed or arranged by its special guests – pianist Cyrus Chestnut and mandolinist Mike Marshall. Also on tap: Brazilian choromusic, a performance inspired by Cream’s take on “Crossroads,” and holiday music, both cheery and soulful.

“It’s going to be a real party,” Balakrishnan promises, “a silver anniversary party.”
Saturday at George Mason University’s Center for the Arts, 4400 University Dr., Fairfax. Show starts at 8 p.m.

Tickets: $22-$44. 703-993-8888 www.gmu.edu/cfa.

The Turtles take on the Nation’s Capitol!

Dec 2, 2010 Uncategorized

by Emily Cary

When the Turtle Island Quartet plays, all the preconceived notions about string instruments are abolished and listeners are transported to an uncharted dimension.

Two years after a jaw-dropping concert illustrating their “string theory,” the virtuoso musicians return to George Mason University Center for the Arts with original pieces inspired by jazz musicians and even a scientist.

Their guests, the outstanding jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut and Mike Marshall, the world-renowned player of mandolin, guitar and violin, will join them in arrangements of holiday favorites incorporating jazz improvisation with classical styles and an infusion of bluegrass, funk, Latin American and classical Indian music.

Winner of the 2006 and 2008 Grammy Awards for best classical crossover album, the quartet is composed of founding members violinist David Balakrishnan and cellist Mark Summer and alternative string whiz kids, the remarkable Danish jazz violinist Mads Tolling and their latest member, violist Jeremy Kittel, the U.S. National Scottish fiddle champion.

IF YOU GO
The Turtle Island Quartet, with guests Cyrus Chestnut and Mike Marshall
» Where: George Mason University Center for the Arts
» When: 8 p.m. Saturday
» Info: $22 to $44; 888-945-2468 cfa.gmu.edu

Each member is a breathtaking solo artist as evidenced by prolonged standing ovations at their concert in Phoenix last week. Their own solos within a number are so deftly improvised that the entire composition is seamless. The quartet’s deep repertoire means that each concert is unique, its selections announced by the personable members as the spirit dictates.

Twenty-five years after Balakrishnan and Summer began raising eyebrows and gathering fans with their musical audacity, they have opened the door to young string players everywhere who are eager to dig into the deep recesses of creativity to discover what most teachers cannot convey. The quartet’s latest album continues their mission to vault traditional boundaries and break new ground. “Have You Ever Been …?” is a salute to Jimi Hendrix’s “Electric Ladyland” paired with Balakrishnan’s bow to Darwin’s theory of evolution.
“Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Electric Ladyland’ is like holy music to me,” Balakrishnan said. “I sat with it for days until I started hearing that he composed like me, layering over dubbings like you’d write for a string quartet. I chose a suite of four pieces from the work that have specific meaning to me. As a kid playing the violin, I kept thinking we were a million miles away.”

To move even further beyond the norm, Balakrishnan undertook a commission from the Lied Center of Kansas City to acknowledge the 150th anniversary of “The Origin of the Species” and the 200th anniversary of the birth of its author, Charles Darwin. The “Tree of Life” project addressed the scientific, political and cultural aspects of the theory of evolution through music, dance, video and spoken word components. It nudged boundaries all the more because it was performed at Kansas University in a state where controversy about evolution continues to prevail.

Balakrishnan named the first of the four movements “Ashwattha” after the Indian Tree of life and the second, “Lucy,” for the second oldest human found. The third movement, “Monkey Business,” is followed by “Coelacanth,” inspired by the world’s oldest fish discovered during the past century. He depicted them through Indian classical music, Eastern European folk music, blues, jazz, bluegrass, swing, bebop, Afro-Cuban and funk.

Everything the quartet plays uses unique techniques each member has developed. Summer switches his cello into a string bass with the tap of a foot pedal. It is often the rhythm section with a drum sound made by striking with his hands or a walking bass sound with flat fingers. Tolling gives a backbeat on his violin using the bow as a stick, while Kittel employs his shuffle bow to provide a grid of rhythm as heard in Celtic and Appalachian styles to make a groove and a rhythmic bounce.

“Jeremy came along at a time when the doors we beat down were wide open,” Balakrishnan said. “The alternate string style is a new thing that Marc O’Connor and others made possible in fiddle camps to reach the youngsters coming up. Consequently, there’s a cohesion in everything we do that comes from deep inside.”