This isn’t crossover; it’s meeting in the middle. The Turtle Island String Quartet has long specialized in not specializing; the group plays (mostly) original or new music inspired by a variety of non-classical American traditions, particularly jazz. The Ying Quartet, on the other hand, is a strictly classical group, although it’s well known for its innovative outreach programs.

The Yings get secondary billing (and just a small photo on the back) on this new Telarc disc, but as performers, they’re equal partners with the Turtle Island guys.The music itself, most of it composed by Turtle Island members, is carefully tailored to let each quartet do what it does best in concert with the other, although the Turtle Island players have nothing to be ashamed of in terms of tone and technique, and the Yings can swing quite naturally.

The disc opens with the Oliver Nelson standard Yearnin’, in which the full octet turns in an idiomatic if not obviously improvised performance; no doubt the Turtle Islanders are responsible for the more wailing lines. Julie-O, by Turtle Island cellist Mark Summer, is heard here in its cello duet form, with Summer joined by David Ying; it’s the sort of contemporary Americana you’d expect to hear from Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer. Mara’s Garden of False Delights, by Turtle Island first violinist David Balakrishnan, would fit nicely onto a program of mainstream classical music, despite (or because of) its various cultural points of reference. We get the syncopations of American folk music, hints of Indian scales, a touch of minimalism in a couple of spots (again, something that can be traced to India), and some swinging jazz. And that’s just in the first of the three movements. In terms of style, the brief second movement almost could have been lifted from Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2. The finale has jazzy intricacies of interdependent lines bracketing another quasi-Indian section.

Despite having about one-third of its content shaved off, this version of Milhaud’s La création du monde is one of the more atmospheric on disc, although the ensemble, surprisingly, does not make quite as much of the music’s jazz inspiration as some conductors have. Violinist Evan Price contributes the amusing Variations on an Unoriginal Theme, sort of a battle of the quartets, in which the Ying Quartet plays variations on the Haydnesque theme in various classical styles, alternating with the Turtle Islanders’s vernacular treatments; at one point, quasi-Stravinsky turns into a mambo. The disc ends with an arrangement of the Beatles’s Because, almost in the style of Piazzolla.

This is a disc that seems dull if you play it as background music, but is really quite striking if you sit down and pay attention. The musicians all play idiomatically, which is tough when you’re dealing with so many idioms, and Telarc’s surround DSD recording makes them sound quite lovely and present. The rear channels are used only for ambience, which is probably a good thing (although Telarc once used them quite effectively as direct sources in a Los Angeles Guitar Quartet SACD). Still, I wish the two ensembles were just a bit more clearly differentiated from each other up front.
James Reel, FANFARE

“

If you're looking to label this music as one sort or another--classical, jazz, bluegrass--you're bound to get into trouble. The two Quartets at work here--the Turtle Island String Quartet and the Ying Quartet--are innovators, blending absolutely classical training with a love of experimentation, improvisation, and an ear for unusual textures. The CD begins with a cool, swinging, true jazz classic ("Yearnin'") for the full octet and ends with a version of John Lennon's "Because" which captures the piece's melancholy in just the right manner. Along the way, an original work by the Turtle Island cellist, "Julie-O," discovers the darker and more virtuosic reaches of the pair of cellos. Darius Milhaud's "La Creation du Monde," a 1923 piece that explored the combination of European classical music and jazz, gets a new arrangement, and another original piece, "Variations on an Unoriginal Theme," pits one quartet against the other in a friendly competition that touches on R&B and Samba. This is a unique CD--entertaining and original. --Robert Levine

”

Tracklist:
1. Yearnin' (Oliver Nelson)
2. Julie-O (Mark Summer)
3. Mara's Garden of False Delights: Sri-Jo (David Balakrishnan)
4. Mara's Garden of False Delights: Doughboy (David Balakrishnan)
5. Mara's Garden of False Delights: Snakes and Ladders (David Balakrishnan)
6. La Création du Monde, op.81 (Darius Milhaud)
7. Variations on an Unoriginal Theme (Evan Price)
8. Because (John Lennon- Paul Mc.Cartney)

Personnel:
David Balakrishnan: violin, baritone violin
Evan Price: violin
Mads Tolling: viola
Mark Summer: cello

with Ying Quartet
Timothy Ying: Violin
Janet Ying: Violin
Phillip Ying: Viola
David Ying: Cello