Turtle Island Quartet delivers Grammy Award-winning cross of classical and Coltrane.
Surprising strings
Turtle Island Quartet delivers Grammy Award-winning cross of classical and Coltrane.
An improvisational string quartet? If you know anything about classical music, you'll know that's an oxymoron, like "virtuoso garage rock band."
Turtle Island Quartet, however, applies their virtuosity with classical instruments to jazz and contemporary music. Their skill and originality earned the group its second Grammy in February. "A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane" was named Best Classical Crossover Album.
You can see and hear the quartet locally today, when they perform music from the album at the Corning Museum of Glass auditorium (part of the Clemens Center's Great Artist Series).
Cellist Mark Summer was a founding member (with violinist David Balakrishnan) of the quartet in 1985.
"It was kind of a revolutionary concept, and I can't take any of the credit," says Summer, who turns 50 on April 3. "It was David's brainstorm. He has a master's degree in composition and, like me, he really got into rock music -- he played the electric guitar, but he realized that there are a million guitarists. He thought he could really make his mark as a violinist and a composer."
On their first record, Balakrishnan won a Grammy for his arrangement of the song "A Night in Tunisia." The quick recognition fortified the commitment to be unique with Turtle Island Quartet. The quartet has won in the Best Classical Crossover Album category before, for the album "4 + Four" with the Ying Quartet in 2006.
"When you are performing classical string quartet fare -- you know, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn -- the standard of excellence is so high it's pretty unlikely you'll have the time or the inclination to go outside that much. Basically, you're rehearsing all the time just to keep those pieces neat and tidy," Summer says. Though he did attend a classical music conservatory (the Cleveland Institute of Music), his experience was broadened by improvisation on piano, guitar and drums, performing in a rock band -- plus listening to a lot of rock.
Even the quartet's name reflects their interest in melding music traditions. "Turtle Island is a Native American name for the North American continent. It's from creation mythology about the Earth being balanced on the back of a turtle," Summer says. "It's kind of a sneaky way of saying our music has a North American accent.
"You have all these music traditions that came from all over the world, but they really came together in the United States, especially jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll."
The music on "A Love Supreme" is all associated with jazz legend Coltrane. Some pieces he wrote, played or arranged; others were inspired by his talent and personality. The centerpiece of the album is the "Love Supreme Suite."
"We chose that piece because it's such a spiritual, iconic jazz piece. It's one of the best known of Coltrane's recordings and one of the best known jazz pieces because it goes to such depths. It gave David a lot of opportunities to compose," Summer says.
"A Love Supreme," Summer says, is "Classical crossover by virtue of it's a whole record of jazz performed by a string quartet. But for us it's not really crossover because this is what we do. It was just another opportunity to showcase incredible music, which is just what we've always done."
Turtle Island Quartet delivers Grammy Award-winning cross of classical and Coltrane.
An improvisational string quartet? If you know anything about classical music, you'll know that's an oxymoron, like "virtuoso garage rock band."
Turtle Island Quartet, however, applies their virtuosity with classical instruments to jazz and contemporary music. Their skill and originality earned the group its second Grammy in February. "A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane" was named Best Classical Crossover Album.
You can see and hear the quartet locally today, when they perform music from the album at the Corning Museum of Glass auditorium (part of the Clemens Center's Great Artist Series).
Cellist Mark Summer was a founding member (with violinist David Balakrishnan) of the quartet in 1985.
"It was kind of a revolutionary concept, and I can't take any of the credit," says Summer, who turns 50 on April 3. "It was David's brainstorm. He has a master's degree in composition and, like me, he really got into rock music -- he played the electric guitar, but he realized that there are a million guitarists. He thought he could really make his mark as a violinist and a composer."
On their first record, Balakrishnan won a Grammy for his arrangement of the song "A Night in Tunisia." The quick recognition fortified the commitment to be unique with Turtle Island Quartet. The quartet has won in the Best Classical Crossover Album category before, for the album "4 + Four" with the Ying Quartet in 2006.
"When you are performing classical string quartet fare -- you know, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn -- the standard of excellence is so high it's pretty unlikely you'll have the time or the inclination to go outside that much. Basically, you're rehearsing all the time just to keep those pieces neat and tidy," Summer says. Though he did attend a classical music conservatory (the Cleveland Institute of Music), his experience was broadened by improvisation on piano, guitar and drums, performing in a rock band -- plus listening to a lot of rock.
Even the quartet's name reflects their interest in melding music traditions. "Turtle Island is a Native American name for the North American continent. It's from creation mythology about the Earth being balanced on the back of a turtle," Summer says. "It's kind of a sneaky way of saying our music has a North American accent.
"You have all these music traditions that came from all over the world, but they really came together in the United States, especially jazz, blues and rock 'n' roll."
The music on "A Love Supreme" is all associated with jazz legend Coltrane. Some pieces he wrote, played or arranged; others were inspired by his talent and personality. The centerpiece of the album is the "Love Supreme Suite."
"We chose that piece because it's such a spiritual, iconic jazz piece. It's one of the best known of Coltrane's recordings and one of the best known jazz pieces because it goes to such depths. It gave David a lot of opportunities to compose," Summer says.
"A Love Supreme," Summer says, is "Classical crossover by virtue of it's a whole record of jazz performed by a string quartet. But for us it's not really crossover because this is what we do. It was just another opportunity to showcase incredible music, which is just what we've always done."
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