Date: Saturday, November 5, 2011
Time: 7:30 pm
Location: Goddard Auditorium, Carpenter Hall
Tickets needed (see below)

The reimagined music of legends Jimi Hendrix and John Coltrane will fill Goddard Auditorium as the Grammy-award winning Turtle Island Quartet takes the stage on Saturday, November 5.

The Artist and Lecture Series event begins at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are required and cost $8 for adults and $5 for students and seniors. Tickets are available by calling Earlham’s Office of Events at (765)983-1373.

Turtle Island has created bold trends

Since its 1985 inception, Turtle Island has created bold trends in chamber music for strings. Winner of the 2006 and 2008 Grammy Award for the Best Classical Crossover category, Turtle Island fuses the classical quartet aesthetic with contemporary American musical styles. For the Earlham performance, the Quartet recreates Coltrane’s enduring jazz recordings and Hendrix’s legendary masterpieces.

Quartet founder and violinist David Balakrishnan says he thinks that given the proper conditions, a work of art can transcend both genre and era, and such is the case with Coltrane’s jazz epiphany, A Love Supreme.

In exploring Coltrane’s musical legacy, Turtle Island continues its tradition of employing the string quartet form to shed new light on the timeless joy and beauty of American jazz music. The concert presents an in-depth look at this landmark recording in the greater context of the music that preceded and followed, a time many consider to be the last great evolutionary period of jazz.

Balakrishnan considers Hendrix one of his biggest musical influences

During an interview with National Public Radio, Balakrishnan says that while listening to Electric Ladyland a few years ago he was struck by how Hendrix’s writing for guitar suited the style of string quartets.

“(He) wasn’t playing a bunch of chords the way a guitar player would normally play,” he says in the August 2010 NPR interview. “But with Electric Ladyland, he was really layering melodies, and the way he played the guitar, he could really get that sinuous vibrato that creates this texture and bed of melodic fragments laid on top of each other — perfect for a string quartet like Turtle Island.”

In addition to the Hendrix pieces from Electric Ladyland, Turtle Island has tackled a solo cello rendition of “Little Wing” and a crowd-pleasing, slower, more ballad-like rock treatment of “Hey Joe.”

Turtle Island Quartet original members Balakrishnan and cellist Mark Summer are joined by Danish jazz violinist Mads Tolling and U.S. National Scottish fiddle champion Jeremy Kittel.
Ticket Information

Tickets are required and cost $8 for adults and $5 for students and seniors. General admission tickets will be available beginning August 15.
Contact

For information on the purchase of tickets, reservations, credit card purchases, special seating or hearing needs, contact Director of Events Coordination Lynn Knight by e-mail or at (765) 983-1373.