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Turtle Island Quartet (TIQ) have been redefining the string quartet format since their inception in 1985. Led by violinist David Balakrishnan, TIQ classically interpret a broad range of genres including jazz, bluegrass, folk, R&B, new age, and hip-hop by “transcending style,” a philosophy Balakrishnan established in a master’s thesis he wrote while attending Antioch University West.
TIQ’s unique approach to string quartet music has earned them two Grammy Awards in 2006 and 2008 for Best Classical Crossover Album. TIQ are currently wrapping up a European tour with American trumpeter, pianist, and composer Terrance Blanchard before making an appearance at this year’s Savannah Music Festival.
Blanchard is an eight-time Grammy Award winner and two-time Oscar nominee who has scored films for Spike Lee and George Lucas, written operas, and collaborated with jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Art Blakey. His broad approach to jazz and classical music philosophically gels with TIQ’s omnivorous string quartet style.
“We fit each other really well because he understands so much about the tradition of classical music with all the work he’s done in film scores, but also with his opera writing,” Balakrishnan said of Blanchard in a phone interview. “Of course, he loves us because we can swing.”
‘Through a door that had never been opened’
TIQ gained acclaim at the beginning of their career for their adventurous and barrier-breaking interpretations of jazz standards like “A Night in Tunisia,” from their 1988 debut self-titled album. Balakrishnan and his quartet found the perfect home for their music on the legendary Windham Hill record label, which specialized in instrumental acoustic music and gave TIQ the freedom to innovate.
“It was right at a fortuitous time for both sides,” recalled Balakrishnan. “They were a gigantically successful business and model for music, and they had built this whole reputation around artists like George Winston, Michael Hedges, and Montreux, who were good friends of mine. From the get-go in the mid-’80s, where the idea of a string quartet playing jazz was not a known thing at all, we were really coming from a clean slate, through a door that had never been open.”
Windham Hill placed TIQ alongside artists like Anthony Braxton and Billy Childs on a sub-label called Windham Hill Jazz, where their music was well received by the press and altered the image of Windham Hill as being a lightweight, fluff label.
Part of TIQ’s appeal was their ability to improvise as a string quartet, a skill that they trace back to the apocryphal creation of the string quartet form by composer Joseph Hayden 200 years ago.
“It’s part of the process of this group’s evolution that it would connect to a tradition rather than being a departure from it,” explained Balakrishnan. “You have this form that is the greatest compositions of the masters of the European style—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky. What we were trying to say is this is returning the form to the players a bit. In Classical music we took the composer and separated it from the player, so improvising fell out of classical music.
Part of TIQ’s mission has always been to educate other musicians and teach them that string quartets are not just for playing Mozart.
“The biggest thing is to not be trapped by the note on the page,” said Balakrishnan. “That’s how it’s returning to Haydn’s day where they did improvise, and over time it got more complicated, and the composers wanted more control.”
“It makes composing into an interesting proposition because you are dealing with three other composing, improvising musicians and you want to make sure when you’re writing that the story being told is their story, as well. Their improvising and creative force is deeply felt in the music and serves in that way, as opposed to purely playing every note.”
TIQ’s line-up has changed constantly throughout their nearly 40 years, but with Balakrishnan at the core, the group’s spirit has remained the same, even as its music has evolved thanks to the welcome input of fresh players.
“It feels like holding on to a tiger’s tale and just feeling like you’re about to be whipped out of existence,” said Balakrishnan. “One of the aspects I didn’t foresee when forming this group was that the kind of musicians that would fit this music approach were highly creative, independent souls who would not last. They would need to move on. The other aspect is that the music is more dependent on the players, in a way, because we are improvising, and it shapes the sounds and tone of the group more than a classical group.”
That said, working with Terrence Blanchard, and the COVID pandemic, shifted Balakrishnan’s focus from playing standards to representing the exciting original music that was happening now. It was time to reshape TIQ into the modern repertoire quartet Balakrishnan always envisioned.
Newly commissioned works feature into Savannah Music Festival
For their appearance at Savannah Music Festival, Turtle Island Quartet will be presenting an original program called Island Prayer, which features new commissions by several outstanding and diverse contemporary composers, and compositions by Balakrishnan himself.
Turtle Island Quartet got their name from a Native American creation myth that portrayed North America as being built on the back of a giant turtle. Balakrishnan was inspired by the book, Turtle Island, by poet Gary Snyder which examined European culture coming to America.
“We wanted to be about a European form playing in an American accent. Years later you get confronted with a way that that could be seen as a cultural appropriation, and I had never thought of it. Then I realized that was something that should be addressed head on and make it a positive strength.”
TIQ reached out to Native American composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate who is from the Chickasaw Nation in Oklahoma. Tate wrote an original piece for Island Prayer entitled “Little Loksi” that combines Native American tradition with classical music.
Island Prayer also includes an original piece by MacArthur Genius Fellow and Pulitzer Prize-winner Rhiannon Giddons, a singer and banjo player who draws from African music and Appalachian bluegrass.
“We’ve always had a bit of a bluegrass aspect, but Rhiannon is more representative of the African American element of that,” said Balakrishnan. “She’s such a complete channel for that, and she wrote us some amazing, bare-bones piece, that to me is the equivalent of a medieval renaissance piece where you’re playing something that is from the early 1800’s, before there was blues or jazz. That’s an amazing piece to play and people love it.”
Balakrishnan even swayed Blanchard (after incessant begging) to compose an original piece of music for the program called “Turtle Trajectory.”
“He wrote that piece after playing with us for two years, so he gets us,” said Balakrishnan. “The experience of working with these three composers, all from different places in the music world, and then me as the fourth part, I think it really works and tells this story, this prayer, that we could have this inclusive diverse music environment and a string quartet could be a part of that.”
If You Go >>
What: Savannah Music Festival: Turtle Island Quartet presents Island Prayer
When: 3-5 p.m., April 13
Where: Trustees Theater, 216 East Broughton St.
Cost: $52
Info: savannahmusicfestival.org
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