A 'Supreme' Surprise: Turtle Island String Quartet

LEGENDS FILL THE JAZZ REALM, but few have ascended to sainthood like John Coltrane.

No other jazz musician provokes so much mystical fervor as the pioneering tenor saxophonist, who delivered spiritual-minded masterpieces as "Om," "Meditations" and of course, "A Love Supreme."

So it's quite fitting that "A Love Supreme," his most famous suite, will be performed at Washington National Cathedral 40 years after his death. But there won't be any tenor saxes summoning Coltrane's forceful "sheets of sounds" and improvisational wizardry — or even a rhythm section, for that matter. Instead, his music will come to life thanks to the esteemed Turtle Island String Quartet.

"We've found a way to play jazz as a string quartet and still remain a string quartet," says violinist and TISQ founding member David Balakrishnan. "We've figured out how to play like a rhythm section so that we don't have to import bass and drums. We can pretty much create all the rhythms and swing."

Balakrishnan's claim is certainly made on TISQ's magnificent new disc, "A Love Supreme," on which it interprets that work and other Coltrane compositions such as "Moment's Notice" and "Naima." It also delivers fine renditions of Miles Davis' "So What" and Thelonious Monk's "'Round Midnight" — two classics Coltrane played on — as well as Stanley Clarke's "Song to John" and John McLaughlin's "La Danse du Bonheur," gripping tone poems written for 'Trane. "We didn't want to limit ourselves to playing Coltrane's compositions, but to show a more complete picture of him musically," Balakrishnan explains.

Renowned for its impeccable intonation and improvisational pliancy, Balakrishnan argues that articulating Coltrane's music was no small feat. "'A Love Supreme' is about as far away from a piece that you can imagine a string quartet performing," he says.

"Playing Coltrane's music really forces us to stretch our limits in terms of what we can do as a string quartet. The great classic group that he had really pushed the boundaries, in such a beautiful way, to the point where it was difficult to call the music jazz anymore."

» National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW; Fri., 7:30 p.m., $25-65; 202-537-2229.

Written by Express contributor John Murph
Photo by Jay Blakesburg