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My first album didn't come out until I was 27, which in pop years is late, you know. But when it came time to arrange it, I became a kid in a toy shop. I had a harp and a saxophone quartet and a symphony orchestra. I went berserk for a time.
The Third Quartet I made the instruments in pairs - Two different pairs - Violin and viola, and violin and cello. They played very different things from each other all through the whole piece.
My grandmother would sing in the choir, while my dad - while he was in college - sang and recorded with a quartet. So yeah, it was definitely my dad's Southern side that impacted on me musically.
My mom was a folk singer and Celtic harpist. My dad was in a barbershop quartet and my great grandma was an opera singer. As I grew up, I discovered pop music and Top 40 radio, but it was in the '90s, so music was very different then - it was really lyrical.
The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.
Growing up in the Bay Area, I played early on with these quartet groups who set guidelines for me. I remember the guys would all have the same clothes and shoes, like these uniforms. I was in awe.
And over the last ten years, after my work with the Brodsky Quartet, I had the opportunity to write arrangements for chamber group, chamber orchestra, jazz orchestra, symphony orchestra even.
I'll tell you what I would do in a shot if I could. I would sing in the barbershop quartet in The Music Man.
My family was very encouraging, and both of my grandparents were both beautiful singers. My grandmother was a coloratura soprano, and my grandfather was an Irish tenor in a barbershop quartet.
One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.
