LIZ CARROLL

At age eighteen, Liz Carroll won the Senior All-Ireland Championship and ever 

since has amazed audiences with her fiddle playing. Carroll’s music was nominated

for a 2010 Grammy with John Doyle for their duet album, Double Play. In April 2011,

she received the CumadoirTG4 prize and became the first American-born composer

honored with Ireland’s most significant traditional music award.

Carroll’s recordings of her own compositions mirror the quality of her live

performances. She is known to invigorate the traditional styles ofIrish music, and 

her tunes have entered into the repertoire of Irish and Celtic performers throughout the world. Her highly praised, solo recording, On the Offbeat (2013; produced

by Seamus Egan of Solas), is a collection of twenty-four original compositions —

twenty-three ofthem by Carroll.

Carroll’s book of compositions, titled Collected (2010), is now in its second printing

and includes the music she composed as a child. Her compositions and performances

on stage, television, and radio have established her as one oftraditional music’s most

notable performers. Neil Tesser ofthe Chicago Reader marvels that “her quicksilver lines

can captivate violin admirers way beyond the bounds of Hibernia.” P.J. Curtis ofthe

IrishAmerican says that Carroll “conjures up a dizzying mixture ofthe sweetest tones, 

the fastest runs, and the most dazzling display ofmusicianship imaginable.”

Carroll has been a frequent artist at folk festivals sponsored by the National

Council for the Traditional Arts, including those in Richmond, Virginia; Bangor,

Maine; and Butte, Montana. In recent years, she has appeared as a special guest of

well-known Irish music groups celebrating St. Patrick’s Day with tours in the United

States. She has toured with Altan in 2015 and with Cherish the Ladies in 2016. In 1994,

the National Endowment for the Arts awarded her a National Heritage Fellowship for 

her significant influence on Irish music in America, as a performer and a composer.

Admission to the National Gallery ofArt

and all of its programs is free of charge,

except as noted.

The use of cameras or recording equipment during the performance is not

allowed. Please be sure that all portable 

electronic devices are turned off.

The department of music produced 

these program notes. Copyright © 2017

Board ofTrustees, National Gallery of

Art, Washington

Concerts are made possible in part

through the generosity of donors to 

the National Gallery ofArt through

The Circle. Reserved seating is available

in recognition of their support. Please

contact the development office at

(202) 842-6450 or circle@nga.gov for

more information.

nga.gov/music

76TH SEASON OF CONCERTS

DECEMBER 17, 2017 / NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART
Program

Turtle Island Quartet

Alex Hargreaves, violin

David Balakrishnan, violin, baritone violin

Benjamin von Gutzeit, viola

Malcolm Parson, cello

With special guest Liz Carroll, violin

DECEMBER 17, 2017/4:00 PM

WEST BUILDING, WEST GARDEN COURT

Winter's Eve

The program will be announced from the stage.

Cover Cornells Ploos van Amstel after

I lendrick Avercamp, The Winter King on

the Ice (detail), 1766, National Gallery of 

Art, Gift of Sherwood B. Smith,Jr.

The Musicians

TURTLE ISLAND QUARTET

Since its inception in 1985, Turtle Island Quartet has been a singular force in the

creation of bold, new trends in chamber music for strings—an initiative befitting

the derivation of its name from Native American creation mythology. Winner of the

2006 and 2008 Grammy award for Best Classical Crossover category, Turtle Island 

Quartet fuses the classical quartet esthetic with contemporary American musical 

styles, and by devising a performance practice that honors both, the ensemble has

redefined the state of the art. Yo-Yo Ma has proclaimed Turtle Island Quartet “a

unified voice that truly breaks new ground—authentic and passionate—a reflection

ofsome ofthe most creative music-making today.”

The quartet’s birth was the result of violinist David Balakrishnan’s brainstorming

explorations and compositional vision while writing his master’s thesis at Antioch

University West. The journey has taken Turtle Island Quartet through forays into

folk, bluegrass, swing, be-bop, funk, R&B, new age, rock, and hip-hop, as well as the

music of Latin America and India—a repertoire consisting of hundreds of ingenious

arrangements and originals. The ensemble has produced more than a dozen recordings on the Windham Hill, Chandos, Koch, and Telarc labels, as well as soundtracks

for major motion pictures. The group has also participated in television and radio

programs, including the Today Show, All Things Considered, Prairie Howe Companion,

and Morning Edition, and has been featured in People and Newsweek magazines/Turtle

Island Quartet has collaborated with such renowned artists as clarinetist Paquito

D’Rivera, vibraphonist Stefon Harris, guitar legends Leo Kottke and the Assad

Brothers, The Manhattan Transfer, pianists Billy Taylor, Kenny Barron, Cyrus

Chestnut, and Ramsey Lewis, singers Tierney Sutton and Nellie McKay, the Ying

Quartet, and the Parsons and Luna Negra Dance Companies.

Another unique element ofTurtle Island Quartet is its revival of venerable,

improvisational, and compositional chamber traditions that have not been explored

by string players for nearly two hundred years. At the time of Haydn’s apocryphal

creation of the string quartet form, musicians were more akin to today’s saxophonists

and keyboard masters of the jazz and pop world—that is, improvisers, composers,

and arrangers. Each Turtle Island Quartet member is accomplished in these areas of

expertise, as well as having extensive conservatory training.

As Turtle Island Quartet members continue to refine their skills through the

development of repertory by some of today’s cutting-edge composers, performances

and recordings with major symphonic ensembles, and a determined educational

commitment, they stake their claim to being the quintessential “New World” string

quartet of the twenty-first century.