Primary genres: Fusion, Modern Jazz
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 One of my all-time favorite groups, TISQ was formed by Darol Anger, David Balakrishnan, and Mark Summers. Balakrishnan temporarily left the group (spending some time teaching at the Stanford Jazz Workshop), being replaced by Tracy Silverman, and each album seemed to bring a new violist until they found Danny Seidenberg, who appears to be staying with the group. That lineup recorded two albums (Who Do We Think We Are? and By The Fireside), only to change again. Balakrishnan has now rejoined the group, Tracy has moved on to work within the rock and avant-garde styles, and Darol has left to pursue his solo and Psychograss projects. The newest member of the group is violinist Evan Price.But in any incarnation, TISQ is very much worth listening to for their very original take on jazz. They've highly refined a style that includes many percussive and rhythmic strokes you don't generally hear from violins and cellos (Summers does some amazing solos that combine string bass slapping and plucking technique with the strong higher registers of the cello), and combine that sound with fantastic arrangements of primarily original tunes. They do have a number of albums with standards, but even there the arrangements are so original and interesting that you almost forget it's a cover. My recommendations: Anything. It's all fantastic. If you're looking for standards in particular, get Who Do We Think We Are? or On the Town. For their original stuff, get their first album (which is self-titled), or Spider Dreams, the latter of which is an extended composition for jazz quartet by Balakrishnan. Here's the title track from "Skylife":
"Skylife" copyright © David Balakrishnan.
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http://home.earthlink.net/~tisq/index.ie.html Discography
THE TURTLE ISLAND STRING QUARTET: A WINDHAM HILL RETROSPECTIVE (1997)
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Skylife (.AIFF format, 380K, 32 second clip)