Real Vocal String Quartet

Saturday Nov 14 2009 8pm

Violins, viola, cello, voices, thumps,
thunks, and plucks.

• The Real Vocal String Quartet plays a brilliant and beautiful synthesis of world and roots music with jazz, classical, and pop sensibilities. The music is a stirring mix of genre hopping originals and arrangements. From Kenyan songs, to Brazilian choros, American and Irish fiddle tunes, the group travels the world.Voices weave in and out of the musical texture Percussion and rhythm on string instruments add surprise and spice to the sound. Add songs backed up by the quartet, the band grooves and soothes.
• Jessica Ivry (cello) is a freelance musician who plays and composes a myriad of styles including Classical, Balkan, East European and improvisation. She is also an instructor of music at the College of Marin. Jessica plays with the Real Vocal String Quartet, an original music string and vocal ensemble and with avant-cabaret composer and singer Amy X Neuburg and the Cello ChiXtet. Jessica has also performed and toured with the Beth Custer Ensemble (music for silent film), with singer/songwriter Vienna Teng and with Balkan women's choir, Kitka. For San Francisco's A Traveling Jewish Theatre's 2005 and 2007 seasons, Jessica scored and performed original music for The Bright River, a hip-hop retelling of Dante's Inferno, and for Arthur Miller's classic drama, Death of a Salesman. Jessica recorded on Grammy nominated album, "Blueprint of a Lady" for jazz vocalist, Nneena Freelon. Recently Jessica performed with ARK, a conglomerate of Bay Area and New York Klezmer musicians at the 18th Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow, Poland and for the final concert of the 23rd Annual Jewish Music Festival in San Francisco. This project was a feature on "Spark", KQED public television series about Bay Area artists. Jessica holds degrees from Skidmore College and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
• Bay Area native Dina Maccabee performs with many Bay Area ensembles on violin and viola. In 2007, she toured in Russia and Europe with Beth Custer's live film score project, "My Grandmother," and songwriter Vienna Teng. In addition to her own songwriting group Ramon and Jessica, she performs with The German Projekt (songs of Kurt Weill), Howard Wiley's Angola Project (contemporary spiritual-inspired jazz), the Japonize Elephants (circus-klezmer-bluegrass), Evie Ladin's Evil Diane (original old-timey folk), and the Middle-Eastern psychedelic ensemble Khi Darag. Her interest in traditional fiddle styles has led her to study with Bay Area fiddle hero Chad Manning, fiddle lessons in Ireland, as well as forays into Cajun and French Canadian styles. Performance highlights include appearances with Donovan, Sufjan Stevens, and Tin Hat Trio, and her playing is featured on numerous successful records with artists such as Vetiver, The Cuts, Vienna Teng, Spencer Day, the Shotgun Wedding Hip Hop Symphony, and Carla Bozulich. She has also composed and recorded scores for Shotgun Players, Just Theater, and several San Francisco filmmakers.
• Violinist Alisa Rose is a member of the Picasso Quartet, the Real Vocal String Quartet, Homespun Rowdy, Forty-Nine Special, and A.J. Roach and the Strange Pilgrims. Alisa performed recently at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, Strawberry Music Festival, the Olympic Music Festival, Blue Highways Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands, Reinberger Chamber Hall, and in Carnegie Hall. She has also recorded and/or performed with Mars Arizona, Matt Bauer, Rachel Ries, Nels Andrews, Anais Mitchell, ALO, Train, and Bauhaus. Alisa’s chamber music collaborators include Jean-Michel Fonteneau, Martha Katz, Jodi Levitz, Bettina Mussumeli and Ian Swensen and she has premiered works for the 5C Composers Collective, David Graves, and David Garner. Alisa received her Bachelor's degree and Master's degree in Chamber Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she studied with Camilla Wicks and Bettina Mussumeli. She currently teaches privately, at the SF Friend’s School, and runs a San Francisco Conservatory of Music outreach program for young disadvantaged violinists.
• Irene Sazer is a violinist, composer, arranger and singer. Irene has developed a unique style of putting world and roots music together with her classical, jazz, and pop sensibilities. It's rare to find such a fine instrumentalist so diverse as a musician. Known best to international audiences as one of the founding members of The Turtle Island String Quartet, Sazer has also served as concertmaster with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra as well as the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic, and has performed with The Oakland Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra. She has performed as soloist with The Peninsula Orchestra, The Rohnert Park Chamber Orchestra, and at the Cabrillo Music Festival. Educated with a performance degree from the Peabody conservatory, she became fascinated with improvisation, and furthered her evolution at the Banff Centre of Fine Arts where she worked with Frank Foster, Slide Hampton, and the Vancouver Ensemble of Improvisation. Her violin expertise has made her an in demand genre-hopping player as well, recording and/or performing with, to name just a few, Jai Uttal, Ali Akbar Khan, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, Natalie Cole, Frank Sinatra, Kitaro, Smoky Robinson, David Grisman, Linda Rondstadt, Bjork, Maria Marquez and Billy Joel.
• Irene's CD of original songs, "First Things First", will be followed up shortly with the first Real Vocal String Quartet release due in 2009.
• Instrumentation: Irene Sazer, violin and voice Alisa Rose, violin and voice Dina Maccabee, viola and voice Jessica Ivry, cello and voice

Real Vocal String Quartet

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