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Mark Summer is the original cellist of the Turtle Island Quartet; he is a co-founder of the quartet and performed with Turtle Island (a.k.a. Turtle Island String Quartet) from its founding in 1985 until the fall of 2015.
Born on April 3, 1958, in Encino, CA, Summer grew up in Los Angeles, California, playing piano, guitar and, from the age of nine, cello. From the beginning he was very interested in alternative genres, and as a teenager playing in a rock band called The Purple Testament, later known as The Plague. Summer studied cello with Edwin Geber of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, then with Geber’s wife Gretchen Geber, and graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music, continuing his studies with the Geber family with Stephen Geber as a cello performance major. After conservatory, Summer worked in the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra for three years. Looking for alternative genres, he went on to play in an assortment of alternative ensembles until, in Winnipeg, he met the violinist Darol Anger. Shortly after, he was invited by David Balakrishnan and Anger to join Turtle Island, and moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1985 to perform permanently with the band. Summer left the band in 2015 to pursue a solo career. In 2011, Summer made his solo concerto debut with the Alexandria Symphony, performing Balakrishnan's Force of Nature, written especially for him. He has lived in the town of Novato, outside of San Francisco since 2009.
Besides the Turtle Island Quartet, which has released fifteen albums, Summer has played with many other crossover artists. He was a member of the Jazz Chamber Trio with the pianist Alon Yavnai and the Grammy-winning clarinetist Paquito D'Rivera which played primarily Latin jazz. He has also composed pieces for solo cello, including Kalimba and Julie-O, (both the solo and duo versions), the last of which has become very popular among cellists and was included in a 2015 advertising campaign for the Apple Watch. [1] He has also arranged pieces for solo cello including "Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming" and Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing". He currently performs in a trio with 7 time Grammy winning jazz vocalist Tierney Sutton and is featured on 4 tracks of Ms. Sutton's Grammy nominated recording, "AfterBlue". [2]
The cello ( CHEL-oh), properly violoncello ( VY-ə-lən-CHEL-oh, Italian pronunciation: [vjolonˈtʃɛllo]), is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, D3 and A3. The viola's four strings are each an octave higher. Music for the cello is generally written in the bass clef, with tenor clef, and treble clef used for higher-range passages.
The double bass, also known simply as the bass, amongst other names, is the largest and lowest-pitched string instrument in the modern symphony orchestra. Similar in structure to the cello, it has four, although occasionally five, strings.
Mark O'Connor is an American fiddle player and composer whose music combines bluegrass, country, jazz and classical. A three-time Grammy Award winner, he has won six Country Music Association Musician Of The Year awards and, was a member of three influential musical ensembles; the David Grisman Quintet, The Dregs, and Strength in Numbers.
Darol Robert Anger is an American violinist and founding member of The David Grisman Quintet.
Sérgio Assad is a Brazilian guitarist, composer, and arranger who often performs with his brother, Odair in the guitar duo Sérgio and Odair Assad, commonly referred to as the Assad Brothers or Duo Assad. Their younger sister Badi is also a guitarist. Assad is the father of composer/singer/pianist Clarice Assad. He is married to Angela Olinto.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is a Grammy Award-winning American cellist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey has an exclusive international recording contract with the Telarc label.
Gábor Rejtő, also known as Gabor Rejto, was a Hungarian cellist who performed with various artists and chamber music ensembles in the 20th century.
Emanuel "Manny"Ax is a Grammy-winning American classical pianist. He is a teacher at the Juilliard School.
Montreux was an American fusion band, specializing in the blend of jazz and bluegrass, with jam elements. The band was active from approximately 1982 until 1990, and recorded on Windham Hill Records. The name of the band came from the jazz festival in Switzerland of the same name, at which an early version of the band was formed under a different name.
Aoife O'Donovan is an American singer and Grammy award-winning songwriter. She is best known as the lead singer for the string band Crooked Still and she also co-founded the Grammy Award-winning female folk trio I'm with Her. She has released three critically acclaimed studio albums: Fossils (2013), In the Magic Hour (2016), and Age of Apathy, as well as multiple noteworthy live recordings and EPs, including Blue Light (2010), Peachstone (2012), Man in a Neon Coat: Live From Cambridge (2016), In the Magic Hour: Solo Sessions (2019), and Bull Frog's Croon (2020). She also spent a decade contributing to the radio variety shows Live from Here and A Prairie Home Companion. Her first professional engagement was singing lead for the folk group The Wayfaring Strangers.
Richard Dodd is an English cellist, recording artist and musician. He has appeared on numerous records beginning from The Three O'Clock's Album Sixteen Tambourines, and spanning different musical genres in Pop, with acts like Jonas Brothers, Vanessa Carlton, The Chicks Taking The Long Way album, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Taylor Swift. With Rock bands like Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, and on Aerosmith's album Music From Another Dimension. Alternative groups: Silversun Pickups, Sam Phillips, Ryan Adams, and Jenny Lewis just to name a few. British acts Robbie Williams, James Blunt, Snow Patrol, The Last Shadow Puppets, and Paul McCartney's Egypt Station. In Jazz he got to work with Jazz greats Eugene Wright, Al Viola, on the Hadda Brooks album "Time Was When". Current pop sensation Beyoncé's Lemonade. He appears on the song "I Corinthians 15:15" of Johnny Cash's posthumous album American VI: Ain't No Grave. He continues to contribute his cello sound to bands like Band of Horses, and artists Weyes Blood, Father John Misty.
Larry Gray is a Chicago musician known for his compositions and skill on the double bass and cello. His primary teachers were Joseph Guastafeste, longtime principal bassist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and cellist Karl Fruh.
David Balakrishnan is the founder of the Turtle Island Quartet.
Alan Shulman was an American composer and cellist. He wrote a considerable amount of symphonic music, chamber music, and jazz music. Trumpeter Eddie Bailey said, "Alan had the greatest ear of any musician I ever came across. He had better than perfect pitch. I've simply never met anyone like him." Some of his more well known works include his 1940 Neo-Classical Theme and Variations for Viola and Piano and his A Laurentian Overture, which was premiered by the New York Philharmonic in 1952 under the baton of Guido Cantelli. Also of note is his 1948 Concerto for Cello and Orchestra which was also premiered by the New York Philharmonic with cellist Leonard Rose and conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos. Many of Shulman's works have been recorded, and the violinist Jascha Heifetz and jazz clarinetist Artie Shaw have been particular exponents of his work both in performance and on recordings.
Tina Guo is a Chinese-born American cellist and erhuist from San Diego. Her international career as a cellist, electric cellist, erhuist, and composer is characterized by videos featuring theatrical backdrops and elaborate costumes, a range of genres, and an improvisatory style in film, television, and video game scores.
Mads Tolling is a Danish-American violinist, violist, composer and two-time Grammy Award-Winner.
The Turtle Island Quartet is a string quartet that plays hybrids of jazz, classical, and rock music. The group was formed in 1985 by David Balakrishnan, Darol Anger, and Mark Summer in San Francisco. They released their first album on Windham Hill Records in 1988 with Irene Sazer.
Quartet San Francisco is a non-traditional and eclectic string quartet led by violinist Jeremy Cohen. The group played their first concert in 2001 and has recorded five albums. Playing a wide range of music genres including jazz, blues, tango, swing, funk, and pop, the group challenges the traditional classical music foundation of the string quartet.
Svante Henryson is a composer, cellist, bass guitarist and double bassist, active within jazz, classical music, and hard rock.
Dmitry Albertovich Yablonsky is a Russian classical cellist and conductor, who was educated at the Juilliard School of Music and Yale University.
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