‘Culture Kin’ taps talent from far-flung sister cities
String quartet project embraces diverse rhythms
As a budding violinist growing up in Los Angeles, Irene Sazer experienced distant cultures without ever having to leave her Silver Lake home. Her mom kept the radio tuned to the eclectic programming of KPFK, which allowed Sazer to soak up sounds from Brazil, Kenya, Ireland, India and beyond.
She’s been an intrepid musical explorer ever since, though these days Sazer, who now lives in Berkeley, brings the world to her doorstep. On Saturday, May 25, Sazer premieres music from her ambitious new album “Culture Kin” at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Forum, a project that taps into far-flung pools of talent from San Francisco’s sister cities.
Featuring a new incarnation of her Real Vocal String Quartet with Santa Cruz five-string violinist Sumaia Jackson and two Angelenos, cellist David Tangney and bassist Sam Shuhan, the album was recorded at Women’s Audio Mission in San Francisco, an organization that played an essential role in landing the Gerbode Foundation grant supporting the project.
Working with composers and instrumentalists from South Korea, Brazil, Spain, Ireland, Italy and West Africa, “Culture Kin” offers an embracing utopian vision. Rather than forging various kinds of fusions, Sazer and the quartet create a permeable template in which
musical traditions interact without shedding distinctive modes and sonorities.
“I’ve always been involved with music from all over the world,” said Sazer, during a recent conversation in her backyard studio in Berkeley. “That was the idea behind Real Vocal String Quartet from the beginning, honoring and engaging with all the different kinds of music we love.”
The album’s first track, “Woui Le M’en Fe,” sets the collaborative agenda, with bassist Shuhan contributing to a song by Fely Tchaco about finding hope amid war, environmental degradation and displaced families. A longtime Bay Area resident who hails from the Ivory Coast, Tchaco sings in Guro and represents the sister city of Abidjan.
A model, clothing designer and songwriter, she revels in the transformation of her piece. “I’m used to very percussive, upbeat arrangements, but the experience with the strings is so mesmerizing,” Tchaco said, noting “Culture Kin” also introduced her to Berkeley saxophonist-composer George Brooks, with whom she hopes to work in the future. He contributed the Carnatic-influenced composition “Ananta,” featuring Seoul’s Soo Yeon Lyuh on traditional Korean violin, or haegum.
Japanese artist Seiko Tachibana provides another component with her striking album cover art and CD graphic. Sazer, an accomplished visual artist, has designed outfits for the band that riff on Tachibana’s syncopated motif. For Saturday’s concert, Tachibana has also created “large panels on rice paper that will be the backdrop behind us,” Sazer said.
The premiere features the extended cast from “Culture Kin,” including Barcelona cellist Marta Roma, Sicily’s Laura Inserra on the metallic Hang drum, Irish vocalist Máirtín de Cógáin and Brazilian pandeiro expert Roberta Valente, each of whom developed an arrangement with a Real Vocal String Quartet musician.
“Everybody got to partner up with at least one of our collaborative artists,” Sazer said. “I’m so excited about this new version on the band. They’re rhythm masters and so creative and play in a lot of different styles. They just blow me away.”
In many ways, Sazer has prepared for “Culture Kin” her entire life. Raised in a highly musical family — her father, cellist Victor Sazer, spent decades as a first-call Los Angeles studio musician — she graduated from Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory. Weeks after moving to the Bay Area in 1985, she found her musical tribe as an early member of the jazzsteeped Turtle Island String Quartet.
Looking to jump back into collaborating after several years concentrating on raising her two children, Sazer launched Real Vocal String Quartet about 12 years ago with violinist/violist Dina Maccabee, cellist Jessica Ivry and violinist Alisa Rose. The band got its widest exposure after holing up in Big Sur with Feist to record her 2011 album “Metals,” followed by performances at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and on “The Tonight Show.”
A brilliant collection of singing string players has cycled through the Real Vocal String Quartet in recent years. The “Culture Kin” cast represents the youngest version since Sazer formed the ensemble. While she’s been working on the sister cities concept since 2012, the connection with Women’s Audio Mission brought the project to life.
“If we see an artist or project that’s interesting to us, that really embodies diversity, we want to work with them,” said veteran sound engineer Terri Winston, who created Women’s Audio Mission in 2003 to train and promote female sound professionals. “Irene had this amazing idea for bringing together all these different artists together, which allows us to get work and training for women engineers.”
It’s a collaboration that sounds like win-win, in any language.