Biography
Since 1966, when Elektra Records staff producer and arranger Joshua Rifkin seized upon the era's renewed fascination with 17th-century repertoire to assemble The Baroque Beatles Book, the notion of classically trained players tackling rock & roll has largely been regarded as a gimmick. The Kronos Quartet's 1980s habit of closing concerts devoted to 20th-century works with their own arrangement of Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" similarly carried an air of playful irony. A handful of more earnest exchanges between the two worlds have nevertheless surfaced, among them pianist Christopher O'Riley's solo-piano reworkings of songs by Radiohead and Elliott Smith, along with Philip Glass's 1986 song cycle Songs from Liquid Days. The Los Angeles-based Section Quartet pursues an analogous impulse, further dissolving boundaries that separate pop from concert-hall traditions.
The ensemble came together in 1998, its membership consisting of violinists Eric Gorfain and Daphne Chen, violist Leah Katz, and cellist Richard Dodd. While sustaining an identity as a classically oriented string quartet, the four musicians also functioned as session players, contributing to film scores such as I Heart Huckabees and Saw and appearing on pop releases including Christina Aguilera's Stripped. Their participation on that album's 2002 hit single "Beautiful" drew the attention of its songwriter and producer, Linda Perry. After issuing the self-released albums No Electricity Required in 2004 and Lizards Like Us in 2006, and after delivering favorably received sets at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, the Section Quartet signed with the reactivated Decca label under Universal Music Group. Their first major-label effort, the Perry-produced Fuzz Box, presents freshly arranged interpretations of material by acts that span the Strokes, the Postal Service, Led Zeppelin, and David Bowie.
The ensemble came together in 1998, its membership consisting of violinists Eric Gorfain and Daphne Chen, violist Leah Katz, and cellist Richard Dodd. While sustaining an identity as a classically oriented string quartet, the four musicians also functioned as session players, contributing to film scores such as I Heart Huckabees and Saw and appearing on pop releases including Christina Aguilera's Stripped. Their participation on that album's 2002 hit single "Beautiful" drew the attention of its songwriter and producer, Linda Perry. After issuing the self-released albums No Electricity Required in 2004 and Lizards Like Us in 2006, and after delivering favorably received sets at the Coachella Music and Arts Festival, the Section Quartet signed with the reactivated Decca label under Universal Music Group. Their first major-label effort, the Perry-produced Fuzz Box, presents freshly arranged interpretations of material by acts that span the Strokes, the Postal Service, Led Zeppelin, and David Bowie.
Albums