The disc opens with the Oliver Nelson standard Yearnin’, in which the full octet turns in an idiomatic if not obviously improvised performance; no doubt the Turtle Islanders are responsible for the more wailing lines. Julie-O, by Turtle Island cellist Mark Summer, is heard here in its cello duet form, with Summer joined by David Ying; it’s the sort of contemporary Americana you’d expect to hear from Mark O’Connor and Edgar Meyer. Mara’s Garden of False Delights, by Turtle Island first violinist David Balakrishnan, would fit nicely onto a program of mainstream classical music, despite (or because of) its various cultural points of reference. We get the syncopations of American folk music, hints of Indian scales, a touch of minimalism in a couple of spots (again, something that can be traced to India), and some swinging jazz. And that’s just in the first of the three movements. In terms of style, the brief second movement almost could have been lifted from Prokofiev’s String Quartet No. 2. The finale has jazzy intricacies of interdependent lines bracketing another quasi-Indian section.

Despite having about one-third of its content shaved off, this version of Milhaud’s La création du monde is one of the more atmospheric on disc, although the ensemble, surprisingly, does not make quite as much of the music’s jazz inspiration as some conductors have. Violinist Evan Price contributes the amusing Variations on an Unoriginal Theme, sort of a battle of the quartets, in which the Ying Quartet plays variations on the Haydnesque theme in various classical styles, alternating with the Turtle Islanders’s vernacular treatments; at one point, quasi-Stravinsky turns into a mambo. The disc ends with an arrangement of the Beatles’s Because, almost in the style of Piazzolla.

This is a disc that seems dull if you play it as background music, but is really quite striking if you sit down and pay attention. The musicians all play idiomatically, which is tough when you’re dealing with so many idioms, and Telarc’s surround DSD recording makes them sound quite lovely and present. The rear channels are used only for ambience, which is probably a good thing (although Telarc once used them quite effectively as direct sources in a Los Angeles Guitar Quartet SACD). Still, I wish the two ensembles were just a bit more clearly differentiated from each other up front.

James Reel, FANFARE