About The Section Quartet
Hometown
Los Angeles, CA, United States
Formed
1998
Genre
Rock
At least since 1966, when a staff producer and arranger at Elektra Records named Joshua Rifkin took advantage of the then-current revival of interest in 17th century music to create The Baroque Beatles Book, the idea of classical musicians playing rock & roll has generally been treated as a novelty. Even when the Kronos Quartet used to encore their recitals of 20th century music with a reconstruction of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" back in the 1980s, it was done with a nod and wink. However, there have occasionally been more serious crossovers from classical into pop, such as classical pianist Christopher O'Riley's CD of solo piano reinterpretations of Radiohead and Elliott Smith songs, or Philip Glass' 1986 song cycle Songs from Liquid Days. The Los Angeles-based Section Quartet work from a similar aesthetic, blurring the demarcations between pop and "serious" music even further. The Section Quartet formed in 1998, composed of violinists Eric Gorfain and Daphne Chen, violist Leah Katz, and cellist Richard Dodd. While maintaining a career as a classically-oriented string quartet, the four also worked as session musicians, performing on soundtracks including I Heart Huckabees and Saw and working on pop albums like Christina Aguilera's Stripped. Gorfain and Dodd's work on that album's 2002 smash "Beautiful" brought the Section Quartet to the attention of the song's writer and producer Linda Perry. Following two self-released efforts, 2004's No Electricity Required and 2006's Lizards Like Us, as well as a pair of well-received performances at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, the Section Quartet were signed to Universal Music Group's revived Decca imprint for their Perry-produced major-label debut Fuzz Box, including new versions of songs by artists ranging from the Strokes and the Postal Service to Led Zeppelin and David Bowie. ~ Stewart Mason
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