String fling

When Turtle Island String Quartet arrived on the jazz scene 16 years ago, other jazz string quartets could scarcely be found. No one seemed to know what to do with jazz that had no sax, no horn, no sexy, soulful percussion.

“The phrase that sums it up was, ‘Strings can’t swing,’ “ says David Balakrishnan, Turtle Island’s founding member, of the prevailing attitude at the time.

Then Turtle Island came along and proved that strings could not only swing, but rock the very foundations of contemporary jazz. Balakrishnan says that Turtle Island, which had its birth in 1986 in Oakland, Calif., helped pioneer a new kind of classical-jazz fusion. The quartet, made up of violinists Balakrishnan and Evan Price, viola player Danny Seidenberg and cellist Mark Summer, now has 11 records to its name as well as a handful of soundtrack collaborations, including music for the film Affliction and the HBO comedy Sex in the City.

“Turtle Island was the first to bring it together for authentic jazz string players,” Balakrishnan says. “We stuck to our mission, our roots, our viewpoint, and the world is catching up.”

Including Reno. Turtle Island will play with the Reno Philharmonic’s string section March 10 and 12 as part of their latest tour. Although they are playing some dates without a supporting cast, the quartet members love collaborative work and often team up with fiddlers, clarinetists and symphony orchestras as they travel. Balakrishnan says that they’ve just finished playing several dates with Cuban clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, adding that the quartet’s performances with D’Rivera are some of the most memorable of their career.

“A string quartet has a very strong chemistry, like a family, since we all play the same kind of instrument,” Balakrishnan says. “It’s a very charged, deep kind of interaction. Paquito allowed us to loosen up.”

That characteristic intensity is what makes Turtle Island stand out.

“String quartets tend to be about creating a unified voice,” he says. “But for our group, it’s more about the tensions of four jazz musicians who want to have an individual voice.”

Yet somehow the distinct voices work themselves out into a pleasing whole, creating a dynamic that has caught the attention of even famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who has said that the quartet “is a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.”

Galen Wixson, executive director of the Reno Philharmonic—and the man responsible for bringing Turtle Island to Reno—agrees.

“We just thought that they offer such a unique musical mix,” he says. “The kind of music they play is different from that of anyone else. You could call it jazz on the one hand, blues on the other.”

Wixson met the quartet some years ago at a Kansas City education conference. The quartet, who believes in passing their tradition along to the next generation, was at the conference talking to educators about their music. And blowing educators away.

“A lot of music teachers didn’t know anyone was capable of making music like this,” Wixson says.

Wixson himself was so impressed that he took the quartet out to a coffeehouse after the conference. It was late at night, and the coffeehouse was ready to close its doors, but the Turtle Island guys took out their instruments and began an impromptu mini-concert.

“That’s the way they are,” Wixson says. “When they get an inch, they just start playing. The cooks in the kitchen started peeking out their heads.”

When I mention the incident to Balakrishnan, he laughs and says he can’t quite remember it, but that it sounds like something they would do. The quartet is full of innovativeness, vitality—and is always trying new things.

“We went through a rock ‘n’ roll phase,” Balakrishnan says. “We were dressing wildly, gyrating around. … We were kind of losing our center.”

Balakrishnan says that now, more than ever, Turtle Island is going back to its string quartet mold, even while the musicians are grafting world music styles—African and Indian in particular—onto their jazz foundations.

“Jazz is the way we speak, the way we play," he says. "The others styles are built on top of that."