Azica Records Release New Turtle Island Quartet Recording

 Island Prayers

Featuring World Premieres by David Balakrishnan, Terence Blanchard, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate

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Two-time GRAMMY® Award–winning Turtle Island Quartet returns with Island Prayers, a deeply expressive new album released February 20 on Azica Records. The recording marks a renewed artistic statement for the quartet, bringing together world-premiere commissioned works by founder and artistic director David Balakrishnan, Terence Blanchard, Rhiannon Giddens, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate—four voices that together reflect the evolving landscape of American music.

Conceived during the early months of the pandemic, Island Prayers emerged from a period of reflection and reconnection. Balakrishnan’s writing on the album encapsulates his original vision in 1985: a string quartet rooted in the compositional language of the European classical tradition that fully embraces jazz, American roots, and global music performance practices. The result is a recording that honors the name “Turtle Island”—a term used in many Indigenous creation stories for North America—as a place where cultures converge into a living, musical mosaic.

“The composers on Island Prayers embody the breadth of American music,” said Balakrishan. “Terence Blanchard’s jazz language, Rhiannon Giddens’ roots traditions, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate’s Indigenous voice come together as a living portrait of America’s musical past, present, and future.”

The album’s centerpiece is Balakrishnan’s three-movement suite Island Prayers (“Dialogue,” “Atonement,” and “Redemption”), a work tracing an emotional arc from conflict through vulnerability to forgiveness and collective joy. The program also includes Blanchard’s Turtle Trajectory, written for the quartet after several years of close collaboration; Giddens’ Pompey Ran Away, a vivid meditation on American fiddle traditions and history; and Tate’s Little Loksi’, inspired by Chickasaw storytelling and Southeastern Indigenous musical language.

Additional works by Balakrishnan—Darkness Dreaming and Groove in the Louvre—expand the album’s stylistic reach, drawing from Indian raga, European jazz history, and the quartet’s signature improvisatory spirit. Throughout, Island Prayers affirms Turtle Island Quartet’s role as a defining force in contemporary chamber music—one that dissolves boundaries between genres while remaining rooted in expressive storytelling.

Turtle Island Quartet
Gabe Terracciano, violin
David Balakrishnan, violin & artistic director
Benjamin von Gutzeit, viola
Naseem Alatrash, cello

Label: Azica Records
Catalog number: ACD 71391