Danielle Walczak

Staff Writer

The two-time Grammy Award-winning Turtle Island Quartet with special guest Tierney Sutton celebrated the solstice and “Festival of Lights” in their performance Saturday night at the Collins Center for the Arts.

The California-based string quartet joined forces with jazz vocalist Sutton to celebrate many holiday traditions and the Festival of Lights, representing different cultures including Jewish and Hindu practices through song.

“It’s purely about a party — a really fun party,” David Balakrishnan, the group’s creator, violinist and baritone violinist, said in an interview. “It’s a celebration that is there for a good reason. Jazz, having fun, we love to play together.”

The performance featured songs from John Coltrane’s “Love Supreme,” Vince Guaraldi’s “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and Joni Mitchell.

During the show Sutton, a 5-time Grammy Award nominee announced her most recent album, “After Blue,” a compilation of her own renditions of Mitchell’s songs with musical help from TIQ, was nominated for another Grammy Award for best jazz album.

Balakrishnan and Sutton agreed it was a natural transition for the two entities to work together on Solstice Celebration.

“It’s about finding the right chemistry and finding the chemistry that wouldn’t be predictable,” said Balakrishnan, who said Sutton is committed to being part of a “team of players.”

“It’s like she’s a fifth instrument; not many jazz singers can operate on that level,” Balakrishnan said.

The center of the performance focused on Mitchell pieces such as “Little Green.” A song Sutton contended to be “the most important Joni Mitchell song ever.”

“No one’s argued with me yet,” Sutton said of the song Mitchell wrote regarding giving up her child for adoption.

The performance featured creative renditions of a variety of classics like “Silent Night,” “The Beatles,” “Within You Without You” and Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower,” made famous by Jimi Hendrix.

Cello player Mark Summer introduced TIQ’s version of the Jewish classic “Oh Chanukah” as “Rio de Janeiro–style.”

Next came a song from the Bollywood tradition which in translation means, “You light the lamp of the person next to you until the whole world is lit and we can join together,” according to Balakrishnan.

The quartet also includes violinist Mateusz Smoczynski and Benjamin Von Gutzeit on viola.

The performance closed with Smoczynski’s piece “Bouncing with Bud” a celebration of Bud Powell the jazz pianist. The group then returned for an encore of “Charlie Brown’s Christmas.”

The TIQ was praised by Yo-Yo Ma as “a unified voice that truly breaks new-ground-authentic and passionate-a reflection of some of the most creative music-making today.”

“I think the TIQ strives to be something outside of the tradition of string quartets — and they accomplish this surely,” Sutton said.

“I also hope to use my voice in a way that is different from other singers — my approach is often more instrumental. So I think this has made this collaboration especially satisfying,” she said in an interview with The Maine Campus.

Balakrishnan hopes that college-age musicians can find a place where they can hone their skills without the interruptions of technology. “To find a place you can focus down hard in and get to the nitty-gritty, that’s what is all about, without the distractions,” he said. “Being able to learn elements of style of one area. Don’t forget that part. When you’re out of college, having a place you can live in, you can hear all these different things coming at you and make sense of them.”