Whirled Chamber Music

Album Review

String quartets playing anything but classical music, while not commonplace, are also not unique — see Kronos, Turtle Island, Max Roach's Double Quartet, or Quartette Indigo for a few examples. In the case of Quartet San Francisco, their repertoire is all over the map, from cartoon jazz to standards, American popular songs, tango and disco, the latter being throwaways. This group led by Jeremy and Joel Cohen (violin and cello, respectively) let musical styles fly by, pluck one, play it, and move on to another. Their penchant for the music of Raymond Scott is most evident, as seven of these selections are his. Of the more challenging picks, "Peter Tambourine" swings hard and sways, "Siberian Sleighride" evokes a definite wintry motif, and "The Penguin" is a layered, sophisticated, daring interpretation that yields great listening throughout. Several other Scott covers have a distinct country flavor. A twangy, skittering, fiddled, chicken-fried feeling is stapled into "Powerhouse," "Boy Scout in Switzerland," and "Toy Trumpet." David Grisman's "dawgrass" concept is modified in a Philip Glass minimalist level for Grisman's "Dawg's Bull." For the jazz oriented portion of the program, you hear the yearning strings sighing during Duke Ellington's "The Mooche," holding a compact, precise, sweet line on Chick Corea's "Spain," and stalking slinky and stealth for "Harlem Nocturne." The lone original, "Tanguori," is the tango flavored Astor Piazzolla influenced singleton. QSF can be polite, poetic, stoic, or even a bit wild, while staying within the framework of the original works, emphasizing stylistic elements rather than stretched jamming or pure improvisation. Clearly this group is capable of much more exploration and hopefully innovation, as this recording hints and winks at. ~ Michael G. Nastos, All Music Guide