Real Vocal String Quartet

New article name is
Real Vocal String Quartet
In 2003, premier San Francisco improvising violinist, Irene Sazer, a gold record awarded original member of the Turtle Island String Quartet, http://www.stmoroky.com/reviews/music/tisq.htm began to write a new body of work. This music was for strings, but Sazer, also an accomplished pop and swing singer, was creating a synthesis between the violin and voice. Within a short time, she found three other bay area singers/string players who shared the vision and the global musical interest. These are Alisa Rose, Dina Maccabee, and Jessica Ivry. Rose also is a member of the Grammy nominated Quartet San Francisco, Maccabee had her own band as well as a project called Ramon and Jessica with Jesse Olson, and Ivry also plays with Amy X Neuberg and the Cello Chixtet.
The west coast of the US, and particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, has been a birthplace of exploratory string playing and string quartets who push the boundaries of what was a traditional classical music vehicle. Some of these groups are the Kronos String Quartet, the Turtle Island String Quartet, of which Sazer was a founding member, Quartet San Francisco, and the Del Sol String Quartet. These groups, along with the Real Vocal String Quartet, focus primarily on either new works by composers around the globe, or are self generating, the group members being the composers.
The Real Vocal String Quartet is a remarkable collaboration of four polished string players who all compose, improvise, arrange, sing and play.
This all woman group makes up an octet (strings+voices) which calls on musical influences from classical, jazz, pop, and traditional styles from all over the world.
The member write songs and pieces and study and arrange music from Mali, Appalachia, Brazil, and are always exploring new recordings and artists from all over. One focus of the Real Vocal String Quartet is to create the sounds of other instruments through their string instruments and voices. The wood of the violin, the sinew of the strings, the horse hair and wood of the bow get looked at with fresh eyes and fresh ears. A violin as a drum, and cello as a bass, and using new techniques to create unusual sounds and textures, is part of the journey in this band. To also use voices, adds 4 more instruments and the texture can thicken. http://www.amazon.com/Real-Vocal-String-Quartet/dp/B0030IXV3M/refsr_1_1?ieUTF8&qid1303668612&sr8-1
The group tours, playing live concerts, teaching college clinics, and collaborating with others, most recently playing and singing with Feist in preparation for her newest CD, yet to be released. The group is often featured on NPR on Morning Edition, Says You! and the California Report.
The boundaries for musicians raised in a classical playing tradition are stretching and radically changing. This is reflected in programs for string improvisation in places like the Berklee School of Jazz which offers a string program. http://www.berklee.edu/departments/strings.html
And another school in Berkeley CA, the Berkeley School of Strings and String Improvisation.
http://www.stringimprovisation.org/
Young musicians are being raised in a global culture and thus many are curious and adventurous. Many have been paving the way for the last decade or so, including the RVSQ.
The Real Vocal String Quartet is bursting with this imaginative approach by creative and accomplished individuals who are always looking around the world an introspectively for new sounds, new challenges, and invention in all ways possible.

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