Turtle Island Quartet Have You Ever Been

2011 GRAMMY NOMINEE: BEST ENGINEERED ALBUM, CLASSICAL

Have You Ever Been...? explores and celebrates the legacy of guitar rock icon Jimi Hendrix in grand TIQ style. At the peak of his creative powers in the late 1960s, Jimi Hendrix redefined the potential of not only the guitar but the entire genre of rock. Armed with an unprecedented combination of technical skills and compositional insight, he drew a blueprint that continues to challenge guitarists in particular and musicians of all stripes more than four decades later.

In many ways, Turtle Island Quartet - led by founding violinist David Balakrishnan, a Hendrix fan since his teenage years - has taken Hendrix's cue in the course of their 25-year career by reexamining and reconstructing conventional genres of music and seeking new permutations of style, technique and composition. This ongoing mission of exploration and innovation was most recently exemplified in their Grammy winning 2007 recording, A Love Supreme: The Legacy of John Coltrane, in which the quartet reinterprets the music of one of the most pivotal figures in the history of jazz by injecting it with their own signature rhythmic innovations and multicultural influences.

Three years later, TIQ - whose current lineup includes Balakrishnan along with co-founder cellist Mark Summer, violinist Mads Tolling and newcomer violist Jeremy Kittel - pushes the edge of their stylistic comfort zone a step further with their latest recording, Have You Ever Been...?, an exploration of the music of Hendrix coupled with a cross genre twist on an old story, Balakrishnan's Tree Of Life. "A stellar recording and achievement," says guitarist Andy Summers, one of the many high-profile heirs to the Hendrix legacy through his work with the Police and beyond, and author of the liner notes to Have You Ever Been...? The genesis of Have You Ever Been...? can be traced back to the two Hendrix concerts at the L.A. Forum - one in 1969 and the other in 1970 - that Balakrishnan attended as a teenager. Within days, he was practicing Hendrix guitar riffs on his violin. Decades later, around the time of the release of A Love Supreme, Balakrishnan visited the Woodstock Museum in Bethel, New York, and watched a video of Hendrix's legendary performances at the three-day rock festival in 1969 that defined a generation.