February 9, 2010

Sweet Bouquet

The appelative chick flick should not be wielded as a critical put-down of a film with a gentle and positive tone, romantic premise, and prominent roles for women. Some chick flicks are quite good. So let’s be careful about stereotyping this eponymous, self-produced recording debut as a “chick disc,” just because it shares some of the above-mentioned attributes, as well as other arguably feminine qualities: charming, unaffected singing by these four Bay Area women who offer up a user-friendly bouquet with sprays of American folk and pop and world music, as well as a bounty of originals, mostly by violinist and founder Irene Sazer. That’s alongside their virtuosic instrumental performances and mostly ingenuous arrangements, credited in large part to Sazer. Overall, it’s sweet and playful.

The classical training shared by Sazer, fellow violinist Alisa Rose, and cellist Jessica Ivry is evident most obviously on Sazer’s Chorale, with those players and violist Dina Maccabee also vocalizing early-music–style close harmonies evocative of the a cappella group Anonymous 4. The Quartet’s additional outside experience in a variety of ethnic ensembles informs the moodily enchanting opening track, Kothbiro, by Kenyan composer Ayub Ogada (with pizzicatos emulating the sound of Ogada’s nytatiti, an eight-stringed plucked lyre), as well as Maccabee’s dancey arrangement of the Celtic/bluegrass tune Kitchen Girls and a pairing of percolating choro numbers from the late Brazilian composer Pixinguinha. The stringed instruments themselves second as a percussion ensemble on Sazer’s Talking String Talking Drum.

In places, the women seem overly eager to dress roots music up in cute contemporary garb, or to embrace simplistic melodies and sentimental lyrics at the expense of innovation and poetry. Yet their sincerity is undeniable and often affecting. And I suspect that both the showiness and the sentiment work best in live performance, where the audience can also experience the sort of sophisticated and well-structured improvisations represented on a couple of the album’s tracks. On Feb. 11, the Quartet plays the Freight & Salvage in Berkeley, where this CD will be available for sale.