Shelling Out a Variety of Genres

The Turtle Island String Quartet has an 11-year history of genre-hopping. Since its founding in 1985, the quartet has built a sizable following with classically influenced arrangements of jazz standards (and the occasional rock tune) orchestrated for the traditional string quartet: cello, viola and two violins.

A sign of the foursome’s versatility was seen Friday when it appeared on a double bill with classical guitarist Eliot Fisk at El Camino College in Torrance. Turtle Island was right at home as it joined Fisk for an arrangement of 18th century composer Luigi Boccherini’s “Fandango for Strings,” playing with its usual animated competence and good-natured warmth. When the tables were turned, and Fisk joined the quartet for the jazz standard “On Green Dolphin Street,” the usually confident Fisk seemed tentative as he tried to improvise.

Obviously, the members of Turtle Island are no strangers to classical music. In addition to its jazz repertoire, the quartet performs original pieces that explore new music vistas and the 20th century classical forms, often with jazz and bluegrass touches. Teaming with a symphony orchestra, as the foursome will do tonight and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center when it joins the Pacific Symphony, is a natural.

Proof of this can be heard on the Chandos recording “A Night in Tunisia, a Week in Detroit,” which documents a 1994 collaboration between the quartet and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Jarvi. The two entities combine to perform works by Bach, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis and Tower of Power, along with the impressionistic suite “Spider Dreams” by founding Turtle Island member David Balakrishnan.

Balakrishnan, who no longer performs with the group but continues to write and arrange for it, originally composed “Spider Dreams” for quartet only. Adaptation of the piece for complete orchestra has widened Turtle Island’s musical scope to include more such pieces, according to the group’s violist, Danny Seidenberg.

“It’s given us the idea to do more of this kind of thing and open it up to outside composers,” Seidenberg said by phone during a concert stop last week in Los Angeles. “The idea is to get jazz-oriented composers to write for string quartet. There are lots of works for solo brass, or other jazz instruments, and orchestra. But it’s uncommon to have string players and orchestras doing this kind of music.”

One of the reasons for this, Seidenberg offered, is that the quartet sound can be overwhelmed by the symphony. “But because we use microphones and can amplify our sound, we’re able to play in the relaxed, comfortable way we normally do.”

Although the Turtle Island members--violinists Darol Angor and Tracy Silverman, cellist Mark Summer and Seidenberg--have dual backgrounds that allow them to work easily in the classical music format, it’s much more difficult, as in the case of Fisk, to get classical players to improvise, let alone swing.

Playing Turtle Island’s music “is always unexplored territory for them,” Seidenberg said of the orchestra members. “But we encourage them to get into it. It’s a matter of being liberated, of being allowed to do it. We never have a problem getting the stylistic thing happening. The pieces are constructed so that you don’t have the whole orchestra doing what we do. For them, it’s like doing a pops concert; only a slight adjustment is needed. And the string players always have a good time.”

Pacific Symphony musical director Carl St.Clair agrees that his ensemble is perfectly capable of moving outside its usual territory.

“There’s a great deal of flexibility with our orchestra. We perform seven pairs of pop concerts each year, with people from Dionne Warwick to the Oakridge Boys, from Mandy Patinkin to John Denver. So this kind of thing is really no problem.”

St.Clair also has respect for the Turtle Island String Quartet. “They are masters at what they do and have complete artistic integrity,” he said. “After their big success in Detroit, they are a hot item and a welcome point of departure in programs for symphony halls.”

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In addition to selections from “Spider Dreams,” the combined ensembles will perform jazz trumpeter Jeff Beal’s “Interchange,” an impressionistic piece inspired by Southern California freeways; Gillespie’s “Night in Tunisia”; and other works. The symphony opens the program with a performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6.

“We’re trying to . . . be a vehicle for new, unusual music,” Seidenberg said. “But we come from a different place, the jazz-oriented, improvisational side of music.”

* The Turtle Island String Quartet and the Pacific Symphony directed by Carl St.Clair appear tonight and Thursday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $15-$43. (714) 755-5799.