College Times

Issue date: 1/10/08 Section: Music

Media Credit: Colin Lane

The Section Quartet call themselves "the loudest string quartet on the planet," and judging by their latest album, Fuzzbox, they might be right. The album features the group's takes on popular rock songs by such bands as Queens of the Stone Age, Soundgarden and Led Zeppelin.

The LA-based group got their start as session musicians, providing string arrangements for a diverse list of artists including the Foo Fighters, Fiona Apple and Kanye West.

"I wanted to create a group of young string players that would walk into a session and know and respect the artists we were recording with and not just be there like the typical session violin player looking at his watch going 'When do I get out of here so I can go practice my Paganini scales?' or whatever," said violinist and founding member Eric Gorfain.

According to Gorfain, the Section Quartet never intended to become a touring act.

"The group was originally conceived as a recording studio entity, so we weren't really planning on making records or playing live," he said. "We started off as a group that would play on recording sessions for (other artists') albums, TV shows, movies, et cetera, and when we were asked to play our Radiohead OK Computer set live back in like 2002, all of a sudden, we turned into a band. So, that part was kind of a fluke."

Writing their own arrangements is one thing that makes the band unique from any other classical group, according to Gorfain.

"Just like any other band, we work up our own version of a song. A lot of groups in the past have hired outside arrangers to bring something to them, just as if they're reading a Beethoven piece for the first time," he said. "They're just reading someone else's arrangement of some song. So what we do is, we feel, very individualistic and it's our own personalities that go into the arrangements and the performances. Whether it's Radiohead or Zeppelin, it's coming from the four of us and it sounds the way it does because of the four of us."

The group got its start playing on the string quartet tribute albums that seem to proliferate on record store shelves, with everyone from Slayer to Enya receiving the orchestral treatment. The Section Quartet eventually struck out on their own due to the anonymity and questionable choices involved with the various tributes.

"The straw that broke the camel's back was the 'String Quartet Tribute to Clay Aiken,'" Gorfain said. "That was the moment where I just said 'You know what? We don't want to be associated with this anymore.' I look at it as, it was like nude modeling. We were young and needed the money. But the upshot is that the Section Quartet was born out of doing these albums and I think we've taken it 100 times further than any of those tribute records by the song selection, by the way play, the attitude, the fact that we play live. We're not just in the studio overdubbing stuff to make it sound like a string quartet. We're an actual string quartet turning up the volume, playing it loud and really rocking out."

The Section Quartet, Rhythm Room, 1019 E. Indian School Road, Phoenix, 602.265.4842, January 16, 7 p.m., $12 adv, $15 dos

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