TURTLES PLAY TRANE

COURTESY PHOTO The Turtle Island Quartet: Mads Tolling, violin, David Balakrishnan, violin, Mark Summer, cello, Jeremy Kittel, viola, plays the Phil in Naples, Jan. 7 and 8. L IKE EVERYONE ELSE, THE TURTLE ISLAND STING QUARTET HAS TO GO through customs when traveling, but when it comes to music, they simply don't recognize borders.

Musically, the quartet plays everything from Robert Johnson to Chick Corea to Miles Davis. Yes, they play Vivaldi. They also play Jimi Hendrix. And original compositions.

"We're a classically trained ensemble in which we're all jazz improvisors," says cellist Mark Summer, a founding member of the group.

He doesn't see their expansive repertoire as anything out of the ordinary.

"It's a typical evolution for a string quartet, going from music played from hundreds of years ago to playing music in the styles that my generation grew up listening to: jazz, blues, rock 'n' roll, fiddle music, using all those elements together.

"It's not all that uncommon now," he says, citing musicians such as Yo-Yo Ma and Edgar Meyer. "There's a whole wonderful contingent of musicians who disregard these borders and broke them down."

COURTESY PHOTO The quartet, which began 23 years ago, perform on violins, viola and cello, tunes that were originally played on tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums. Doing so, he says, brings jazz audiences, rock audiences and classical audiences all into the same room to listen to their music.

They plan to draw a similarly diverse audience Jan. 7 and 8, for their four performances in the Daniels Pavilion at the Philharmonic Center for the Arts in Naples. (The quartet will play twice nightly, at 6 and 8:30 p.m.)

"The audience for classical music is getting older and older," Mr. Summer notes. "If you want to keep chamber music thriving, it has to be relevant to the audience. There are all sorts of ways to do that. We play the music we love. We're championing jazz, blues, and also even such elements as music from India."

The group's main composer, violinist David Balakrishnan, has a love of classical, jazz, and Indian music. (His father's from South India.)

"He puts it all together, and it's something quite unique and potent," Mr. Summer says.

The quartet, which began 23 years ago, now consists of Evan Price on violin, Mads Tolling on viola, Mr. Summer and Mr. Balakrishnan. They'll play John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" at the Naples concerts, in addition to other music. Not only is "A Love Supreme" heralded as one of Coltrane's best works, but is typically mentioned on lists of the greatest jazz albums of all time.

Mr. Summer sees Trane's iconic 1976 album as "a jazz musician's search for God and meaning, and putting it into his music. On 'Psalm,' he's actually praying on his saxophone. He wrote a prayer to God. He's kvelling, he's praying to God through his saxophone."

Mr. Balakrishnan took Trane's improvised solos and composed music for the string quartet to reflect them.

"It was a great challenge," Mr. Summer says. "He's got a lot of compositional chops anyway; he has a master's degree in composition."

Mr. Summer is no slouch either; a crack composer himself, he arranged "Moment's Notice," the opening cut on their latest album, "A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane." The group received a Grammy for the CD. (It's their second; they also received one for their "4 + Four" album recorded with the Ying Quartet.)

The album pays tribute to Coltrane, from "'Round Midnight," (a Theolonius Monk composition) on which Trane soloed, playing with the Miles Davis Quintet, to "Moment's Notice," from Coltrane's classic 1957 recording, "Blue Train," to "Countdown" and "Naima" from his 1959 album "Giant Steps."

The Turtle Island String Quartet perform on violins, viola and cello, tunes that were originally played on tenor saxophone, piano, bass and drums.

"The selections we play are not completely representative of his whole career," Mr. Summer says. "We picked music we liked and give some kind of picture of his whole oeuvre. I love 'Moment's Notice' and wanted to arrange it. It's not his most important piece, but it's on 'Blue Train,' and he considered that his best recording."

The quartet have played all over the world, continuing to expand people's opinions of what a string quartet is and what kind of music they can play. When they performed at the Carnegie Hall recital hall in New York City Mr. Summer says he overheard an elderly person exclaim after the concert: "I can't believe I liked it, but I liked it."

He says he also overheard someone say: "So, have you heard of this Coltrane fella?"

"We're doing our job if people who didn't know who Coltrane was are now thinking about John Coltrane," he says.

He explains that their performances are a revelation to some people: "'I didn't know jazz pieces could be in four sections, a suite modeled upon classical compositional modalities.' They have a lot of power and impact."

When Mr. Summer was a teen, he studied classical cello with one of the top cello teachers for young people in Los Angeles. But he was also in a rock band, playing drums, guitar, keyboards.

"It really did prepare me for being in Turtle Island," he says. He studied at a music conservatory, then played in an orchestra. Then he quit.

"I started improvising spontaneously with a friend," he says. "The fact that I played guitar, sang songs, helped enormously. For a classically trained musicians to play our music, to improvise, is challenging.'

He notes that a friend who plays cello finds it difficult to play his composition "Julie-O," because it draws on fiddling styles, jazz and rock 'n' roll.

"These are styles that she's not very comfortable playing on the cello," he says.

But, he insists, the music they write and play is still chamber music.

"We're sitting in chairs paying in concert halls," he says. "We're drawing upon a great deal of the classical idiom. Our arrangements are very intricate. Our composition takes advantage of a lot of counterpoint and harmony you'd find in a classical string quartet."

The group is constantly pushing the boundaries and often collaborate with different artists. They've played with the Assad Brothers, a guitar duo who just recorded with Yo-Yo Ma, and performed with Paquito D'Rivera, who played clarinet with them.

"It just changes everything," Mr. Summer says. "It gives us a new body that's not a string player to play off of… It's really exciting. We keep coming up with all these interesting collaborations."

For example, in the near future they plan to play with jazz pianist Cyrus Chestnut.

Whether collaborating with other musicians or performing as a foursome, the Turtle Island String Quartet continues to ignore musical borders.

"It's pretty wonderful," Mr. Summer says. "It's like great theater: you have four people, minimal staging: four music stands, four chairs, four people. We're doing a musical dance while never leaving our chairs."

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>> When: 6 and 8:30 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, Jan. 7 and 8 >> Where: The Daniels Pavilion of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts, 5833 Pelican Bay Blvd., Naples >> Cost: $39 >> Information: For tickets or more information, call (239) 597-1900 or go to www.thephil.org