Turtle Island String Quartet by Aaron

The combination of the cello and the violins made for one unique experience. Together David Balakrishnan, Evan Price, Mads Tolling, and Mark Summer made up the Turtle Island String Quartet. This made for a very enjoyable evening. I found that the different ways they used the stringed instruments to create different genres of music was very interesting. To be honest, I didn’t know that you could play Jazz with stringed instruments. But they were able to play all different forms of music such as folk, bluegrass, funk, rock and others. The music was very relaxing and really did give you that feeling of being in a bar or café.

The stringed instruments were played in other ways rather than just stroking it with the bow. Sometimes they plucked it or even beat on it like a drum. That was my favorite technique when they beat it like a drum. It made a very unique and interesting sound. It really added a beat, and an enjoyable sound to the whole performance. They even played the violin at some points like a guitar which also made a very unique sound. It was very amazing how they could improvise and make it sound very professional. It was basically impossible to separate the improvisational parts from the compositional parts. Overall, the sounds as a whole created a wonderful performance.

I enjoyed all the songs that they played. My favorite was the one that was the spelling of a person’s name backwards. That is because it had a faster tempo and involved the drumming of the cello. The quicker tempos were much more interesting then the slow drawn out performances. The musicians did a very wonderful, professional job.

Overall, the performance was pretty interesting. But it was not my favorite performance so far. I’m not really a fan of jazz. A lot of the songs they played were drawn out a little too long. To be honest it is not a show I would pay a lot of money for to see, but is something I would pay a little money to see in a café. The music of the Turtle Island String Quartet was a very unique and interesting experience.