I’ve enjoyed the music of Drew Jurecka and Rebekah Wolkstein in a variety of genres and formats; Payadora Tango Ensemble, Schmaltz and Pepper etc, but I’ve never heard their string quartet; the Venturi SQ.  But now I’ve had a chance to listen to their debut album which is due to be released next year on Leaf Records.  It features a new quartet by Drew Jurecka plus the Ravel String Quartet in F.  Besides Jurecka and Wolkstein the Venutis comprise Shannon Knights on viola and Lydia Munchinsky on cello.

Each movement of the Jurecka shows influences of one of the many styles that Drew and Rebekah play in but in a sort of classical string quartet wrapper.  So the first, allegro, movement is jazzy with the cello played like a string bass while the scherzo second movement is very playful and a bit weird with obvious Yiddish ovretones.  The third movement; marked “Indigo” is indeed bluesy and the fast fourth movement is more in a kind of free jazz style.  It’s interesting and enjoyable.

The companion piece is the somewhat longer Ravel quartet.  It’s a challenging piece with some very lyrical sections but also some quite virtuosic passages like the last movement marked “vif et agité”. It’s really well played here.  There’s also a bonus of The Spider; a 54 second long piece for guitar by Jurecka and Jay Danley, arranged for string quartet.

It’s a very clear and vivid recording and will be available as a physical CD and digitally including in 96kHz/24bit format, which is what I listened to.

Catalogue information:  It’s going to be distributed by Leaf Records and there’s a release party at Hugh’s Room on February 28th.  I’ll update this when I can.  Meanwhile you can listen to the scherzo with added lemurs and what may be a sneak preview of the new Jaguar here.