The Turtle Island String Quartet has always been known for stretching stylistic and instrumental limits. Despite several personnel changes, its adventurous spirit of exploration is intact, and the baritone violin, that extraordinary hybrid instrument introduced by Darol Anger, is now being played by David Balakrishnan. The program on this disc has a Latin American orientation, with influences of Cuba, Brazil, Mexico, and the Caribbean, as well as African rhythms and American jazz. The pieces are all written or arranged by members of the group; their guest, the virtuoso clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera, contributes two compositions.

The playing is splendid. When string players make their instruments sound like saxophones, guitars, slap-basses, drums, and castanets, string quartet fans tend to get a bit uneasy, but these musicians can also sound like a real string quartet capable of producing a mellow, beautiful tone as well as every imaginable color effect, like ponticello, pizzicato, and barriolage. Moreover, the conversational give-and-take between them is in the best chamber music tradition. The slow pieces have a lilting, songful lyricism; the fast ones jump, dance, and run around brilliantly. To a classically oriented listener, the least convincing numbers are those based on classical pieces, like "Girl from Pathetique," frankly inspired by Tchaikovsky, and "Schizo Grosso," supposedly inspired by Beethoven. "A Night in Tunisia" is a showpiece for the clarinetist and he plays it to the hilt. —Edith Eisler

A string quartet rendering of "A Love Supreme"? Even as John Coltrane's beloved work gets revived in various formats—Branford Marsalis performed and recorded with his quartet, Wynton Marsalis with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, and singer Kurt Elling set a section of it to words—it may seem a stretch as a classical crossover. But unlike the Kronos Quartet, which came a cropper with its unswinging treatments of Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk, the Turtle Island Quartet is steeped in a jazz sensibility. While the enveloping spiritual intensity of "A Love Supreme" may elude it, the San Francisco-based group grabs the listener with its dark undertones, probing lines, rough hewn textures and airy counter melodies. Of the other Coltrane classics included on the CD, the ballad "Naima" stands out with its gorgeous blend of tones and colors and "Countdown" is given a brisk, percussive workout. Jazz fans will find new pathways into "A Love Supreme" while the classical set will find a gateway to one of jazz's enduring achievements. —Lloyd Sachs

If you're looking to label this music as one sort or another—classical, jazz, bluegrass—you're bound to get into trouble. The two Quartets at work here—the Turtle Island String Quartet and the Ying Quartet—are innovators, blending absolutely classical training with a love of experimentation, improvisation, and an ear for unusual textures. The CD begins with a cool, swinging, true jazz classic ("Yearnin'") for the full octet and ends with a version of John Lennon's "Because" which captures the piece's melancholy in just the right manner. Along the way, an original work by the Turtle Island cellist, "Julie-O," discovers the darker and more virtuosic reaches of the pair of cellos. Darius Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde," a 1923 piece that explored the combination of European classical music and jazz, gets a new arrangement, and another original piece, "Variations on an Unoriginal Theme," pits one quartet against the other in a friendly competition that touches on R&B and Samba. This is a unique CD—entertaining and original. —Robert Levine

No Description Available.
Genre: Jazz Music
Media Format: Compact Disk
Rating:
Release Date: 22-NOV-1994