THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
I don't think I realized until I looked you guys up just how long the Vitamin String Quartet has been going. You've been a huge presence, particularly recently, and I thought it would be great to give our readers an insight into who you are, what you're about, and what drives you. So let's start with that.
Derek: Well, my name is Derek. I play cello. I grew up in a little town in Kansas. My father had taken me to visit my older brothers when I was about 12 years old, they all lived in Southern California, and two of them were professional string players. They told me about all the stuff they were doing in Southern California, and that's when I decided that's where I wanted to be. So I used my life after high school to move in that direction, starting with Arizona State University and then the California Institute of the Arts, before I finally made my way down into Los Angeles.
When I was in high school, I stumbled upon the Vitamin record for a tribute to No Doubt – that was my favorite band. And I remember thinking when I finished at Cal Arts, it would be cool if I could play with those guys, The Vitamin String Quartet, that is. A few years later I was in the middle of doing a performance with another group that I still play in, called Wild Up, and the personnel manager at the time came into our green room and said, Hey, I just got an email from a guy that got an email from a guy that says The Vitamin String Quartet is looking for new string players.
Of course, I jumped on that opportunity! Not long after that, I played my audition, and the rest is history. That was late 2011 or early 2012 and I've been with the group ever since.
What about that album drew you to the Vitamin String Quartet?
Derek:
It was hearing some of my favorite music being performed by a String Quartet. It was one of the first times that the two musical worlds I lived in – the classical world that I was being brought up in and the music that I'd grown up listening to – combined to make a new style of music. Hearing those two things existing together was very intriguing. And after I found that first No Doubt album, I tried to go out and find as many others as I could.
James: Funny enough, I was never really planning on being in the music industry or working in music, although I did have somewhat of a background in music. My childhood was basically all about trying to become a filmmaker, and I mean that literally. From the age of six on, I just wanted to make movies, but I was also really into theater and Broadway musicals. It's funny, when people meet me, they're like, oh, you're a Broadway kid, but I listened to a lot of metal and a lot of other things that look very extreme.
I was also in a bunch of choirs. Then I got into playing drums, I did some jazz drumming and drum line, but none of that was what I was looking forward to as a profession, I was just doing it with friends, or as a gas, essentially. At a certain point in my late teens, early 20s, I had to get a more stable job. I was trying to make films, and I bounced around doing a bunch of different stuff. Eventually I wound up working at a record store part time, mainly I was there to stock the store with heavy metal and hip hop and work as a customer service representative. I really got into it, I loved the record store lifestyle, and eventually I'm buying for the store and doing all the store's promo, working full time. Then the store thing became, maybe I should get a label job or work at a distribution company or promotion company
.
The film thing got sidetracked, and I found myself at CMH, the parent company for Vitamin Records and Vitamin String Quartet. I started working in online spaces. I was the first person hired to do internet marketing and customer service back in the mid 2000s. We were part of the first wave of people to put music on the internet, and marketing it online when there wasn't even social media – we were marketing to official band websites and blogs, going into chat rooms and stuff.
After doing that for a few months, I decided I really wanted to work in the creative side of the label and start working with the different music that was being put out, including what at that time wasn't even called Vitamin String Quartet. It was a series of string quartet albums akin to what Derek had mentioned he'd heard with that No Doubt Tribute. And that was not alien to me, because I was a music geek. I had also already done college radio, and there was a group called Apocalyptica, who played Metallica on four cellos which I used to use sometimes as bumper music. I would do trivia with it. Sometimes I'd just play it. I also had already known who The Corona Quartet was from when I worked record retail, they'd done Jimi Hendrix covers, so this was not unusual to me.
Me and a couple other guys said we should give this thing a name, so if someone finds 'String Quartet tribute to Metallica', they can click on the name and find all the other albums. Eventually I decided to call it Vitamin String Quartet, because the company was called Vitamin Records. I thought Vitamin String Quartet sounds cool and slightly mysterious. People wonder what it means. I'm okay with that. I like a little ambiguity in my art.
Concurrent with that, Leo Flynn, the brand manager, started working together as the co creative directors. We started seeing all these things we wanted to do besides recorded music. I knew there were people who wanted to buy our sheet music, there were people who wanted to hire the string quartet to play their wedding, we had people writing to say hey, come play this club in our town
. And I had a film background, so I wanted to make music videos with the group and get it all onto social media.
I've been with the company for about 20 years, and the Vitamin String Quartet as an entity has existed for about 19 years total. It was a slow, steady escalation. We'd had hits with Westworld and Modern Family and Gossip Girl, we were the house band for another period piece show called Rain, then it really exploded massively with Bridgerton.
Has there been a revolving membership?
James:
Yes, we tend to look at Vitamin String Quartet as a collaborative effort between the people at the label, producers, arrangers and musicians and then other creatives that we engage, depending on whether we're putting together a live show or a video shoot or a social media team. Some people have been with the project for quite some time so you could look at them as the regular leads, and Derek is one of them, because he's been doing this since we started doing the live shows. But it's a rotating cast of players, label people, producers, arrangers, etc..
Are most of the players from LA or from all over the world?
James:
They tend to be from LA mostly, because a lot of the stuff that we're doing is Los Angeles based. The label is LA based so a lot of our recordings and a lot of the prep work that we do for the live shows are in LA, but there are some exceptions. We have a cast of players who work out of New York and other parts of the East Coast. There was a period where I worked with a handful of players and an arranger who were Boston based – they were actually the first people that actually did anything live for VSQ.
The very first live thing we ever did was kind of huge. We got asked by 30 Seconds to Mars to play with them on their MTV Unplugged. They knew us, because we'd covered their material and Jared (Leto) and the management for the band really liked what we'd done, so they reached out to us, and they said, hey, would you want to play as a string ensemble supporting the group for MTV Unplugged?
And we're like, sure.
Now we have to find people to do that, because by that point, all we'd ever done was made records. Because it was being filmed on the East Coast, it worked out that I had already been working with a producer and arranger named Mary Bichner, who was based out of Boston, and she had players that I liked. Almost immediately after that there were a bunch of other shows that we got asked to play, and things that we wanted to generate for ourselves. The first big showcase that we did for ourselves was at The Troubadour here in LA. Derek was on that. We got invited to do corporate gigs and play NAMM, which is a big musical merchandiser show out here in Orange County, Southern California.
I first heard you after my wife had finished bingeing Bridgerton and something was playing out of our Alexa speakers. I thought there was a really cool energy to it and I realized it was a Billy Eilish song. My wife said Oh, that's the Vitamin String Quartet. They did the soundtrack for Bridgerton!
What do you think the appeal of your sound is?
James:
One thing is always that novelty moment. I hate to say it that way, because it makes it sound a bit low brow, but there is a novelty to hearing something on strings and then going, wait a minute, I know this!
. I think a lot of people, when they were watching Bridgerton – and it's not like these string arrangements were being advertised in the marketing for the show – all of a sudden they'd go, is that Ariana Grande... and it's on strings?
. But then once you get past the novelty, what you're hoping for is something that is more engaging than just that initial spark. It'd be very easy for music like this to slide into a passive approach, and that's never been what we wanted to do. When Leo and I first started talking about what we could do with the project, we kept talking about making sure that even on record it sounds like four people in a room really going for it, and it being something that is as energetic as pop or rock or whatever it is that we're translating.
Derek:
I think that a lot of people are unfamiliar with what a string quartet is, and there's a certain amount of intimidation that they feel. But when a person hears a little bit in context, then it becomes less intimidating and more intriguing. We have heard sentiments at our shows about becoming more interested in what a string quartet actually is because of what we do.
It does feel like there's a subversive energy that feels almost punky, a kind of against the grain sort of feel to it. Is there something to that?
James:
There is something! Anachronistic approaches to things always have that subversive energy. A good example is the Kronos guys [The Kronos Quartet, based out of San Francisco]. Those guys came out of a slightly punk New York scene, and worked with punk and avant-garde composers. It's slightly subversive to take pop or rock music and do it the way we're doing it, for sure.
Do you feel like you are attempting to break down barriers?
Derek:
Well, I don't know that there really is a very large barrier between someone that listens to classical music and someone who listens to pop music. I think people who are avid musical listeners probably travel between the genres. I think what's really exciting is that a lot of people come to see us play who obviously know what The Vitamin String Quartet is and what we do, but there are also people who come to see us with no idea what we do and tell us that they don't even know a lot of the songs that we play.
James:
Even if the approach might seem a little unusual, subversive or novel, once you actually start to get into it there's the familiarity the music that people are already fans of. You're constantly trying to make sure you're making something that somebody wants to hear... even if it's just yourself. I've been asked why have you done what you've done?
and I've said because I wanted to do it
.
I spend my life selling people music, in the sense of saying Oh, you like this? Well, here's a whole other world of stuff I think you would like
. Even if people don't necessarily know what a string quartet is, it's not like they haven't heard music on strings before. I mean, the most prevalent art form of the 20th century was films, and you don't watch films and not hear strings and classical music in some form. I would say film is probably the way that most people heard classical music the first time, whether that's traditional string composition or film compositions, John Williams or Bernard Herman or something like that. Or they actually hear Strauss or Stravinsky because a filmmaker like Stanley Kubrick said, they didn't want new music, they wanted familiar classical music for a specific reason. Funny enough, that's kind of the whole point of what we do in Bridgerton – the filmmakers have a specific point in using that music because it is familiar, but done in a different context.
I think it's very easy for both of these things to coexist. Think the initial response sometimes is like, that's unusual, but once they get over the unusual or the novel, then it's like peaches and cream. It just goes together.
There's a group in the UK called The Basement Orchestra that did a Christmas concert in East London. The atmosphere at the concert was intentionally very different from what you would expect from a classical concert. People getting up and getting drinks and coming back down to their seats; people singing along because it was a Christmas concert. The division between low brow and high brow and the expectations around what we expect from a classical concert are challenged.
James:
Our whole thing is trying to poke holes in that. Derek and the musicians that are on stage now, especially, actively tell people this is not a classical show, you can clap, you can hoot, holler, sing along!
. But it's also something as simple as when we do live shows, the players all stand – except for Derek with the cello, that's a little difficult – but the rest of the Quartet stands. That, in and of itself, is incredibly subversive compared to most other string quartets or classical music, Right there, just in a moment of physical engagement, the act of standing up, it's a little bit more rocking. Now this idea is even more comfortable with some of our players, some of our them are doing a lot more than standing, they're practically dancing around the stage. Very rocky.
There was a period where we did a handful of Christmas shows too, and it wasn't all Christmas music, because we tended to want to weave things in and out, but, seeing a string quartet do The Pogues' or Queen's Christmas music, is definitely not the same old Christmas concert either.
You guys have done soundtracks so much, when you create together as a group, to what extent does narrative come into it?
James:
When it comes to television shows, most of the time they're coming to us. They understand the conceit, and the conceit is built into their narrative. I would love to be able to sit down with a film and television producer and start thinking about the narrative of what we do. I think it depends on who's coming in and playing what part. I'm very narrative driven, whether that's an album or the live show. The show is structured in the repertoire, who it is you're covering and why you're covering them, and what story you want to tell by covering that artist. Or maybe you're not covering an artist, but doing something theme based or genre based, or maybe even pop culture based. But coming from my background of film interests, I always look at things story wise, even if I don't always share that with everybody else. I think Derek's heard me have those moments when we're in rehearsals, getting a little pretentious and highfalutin about how I want a song to make you feel.
Derek:
Those are very important things to consider when putting a live set together. You don't want to throw whatever at the wall and see what sticks. James will often put a set list together and then send it to me and ask, how does this look? If I ever have notes, it's only something like, it'd be nice to not play five big, loud songs in a row. Usually, what he puts together a really beautiful set that moves nicely through all kinds of different emotions and feelings.
Derek, as a player, do you ever feel like you are reinterpreting a story that's already been told in one way? Does the story or the tone of the song change at all?
Derek:
Because we're now starting to have more players, and the four people on stage aren't always the same, we can change the way a piece begins or ends based on our own desires. That, to me, is part of what makes Vitamin Street Quartet so special. And even when it's the same four people playing together, the experience from one night to the next could be different, because we may make different decisions in the moment while we're playing. Thankfully, we all have known each other for long enough that we trust each other and if we just decide in the moment to do something a little bit different, it won't derail the whole performance. It will just make it more exciting!
What's the difference between a Vitamin String Quartet studio recording versus versus a live show?
Derek:
A studio recording is what a studio recording is meant to be. It's as perfect as it can be, it's as clean as it can be, it's as polished as it can be. And the live show is none of those things. There's a raw live energy. In a studio recording, you don't really take a lot of risks. On stage, we all take chances. We all attempt to do things that we've never done before. I remember the first time I heard a live recording of a band that I liked, I listened to the whole live album and they didn't play any of the songs the same way they played on the studio albums. It really moved me. And that's what I want the people who come to see our shows to experience. If they're very familiar with how our studio recording version of 'Thank U, Next' I want them to hear that, but also to hear new things that they haven't heard before.
James, is that the impression you get when you're in the shows?
James:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. You're trying to leave room for them to be the musicians that they are. If I go see a band, I don't want to necessarily hear what I heard on the studio recording. I want to hear a band live. Most people will get that, but there are those people who are just like, I can't handle that. I need to hear the exact same thing I heard on the record. But it's the same reason why I don't like going to see bands who go out and play their whole record from top to bottom. Unless you're doing something really interesting with that, I'm not into it. I need to have spontaneity. I need to have that strange alchemy that comes from something that I'm not ready to hear.
It's a balance between familiarity and the potential for surprise?
James:
Exactly! And you do have to be conscious of that. You don't want to go out and do something that, really, for lack of better term, disturbs the audience. You can change things up, but you do want to make sure you're not necessarily shaking somebody's tree too much. It's a balance. And also, you structure the set that allows for those kind of moments. The key thing is to put on a show that's going to surprise people.
One thing before we go, and this is something we ask all our interviewees: what is the best thing about being Derek Stein right now?
Derek:
That's such a great question. Well, first of all, touring with The Vitamin String Quartet is something that I've been dreaming, I've been talking about it since my first gig with the group, which was playing a wedding in Austin, Texas in 2012 or 13. I've always felt this bubbling momentum right under the surface that was just getting ready to explode. And so getting to travel all around, and this trip to the UK is going to be my first time in the UK, I can't even describe how excited I am. And then there's another group that I play with, we just gave a very wonderful performance at Disney Hall as part of the LA Phils Green Umbrella series. And I'm heading to a studio session now to record our next album. All the musical aspects of my life are right in place, it's very satisfying and it makes me feel really good about myself.
And finally, what's the best thing about being James Curtiss?
James:
I'm trying to say this in a way that doesn't sound negative, because I don't want it to feel like I'm actually resting on my laurels. But for the first time in a long time, I'm pretty comfortable with what I'm doing. I think that I spent a good chunk of my life trying to prove myself, especially as I was in a field I was not expecting to be. And I'm not very deferential when it comes to the whole music thing. That's why, when most people ask me if I'm a musician, I'm like, no, because I work with real musicians, and that's not what I do. But I'm also very comfortable now knowing what it is that I do and what I bring to the table. After all these years of trying to figure out what it is that we're doing here, and the other stuff that I do with the label and the company, I'm much more at ease with my abilities. At the same time you constantly want to keep yourself engaged, and you want to even surprise yourself, so you're constantly looking for things to do, and that's just me in general. I will never, probably sit on my hands, but I'm a lot less toothy about myself. I'm not as driven to prove that I can get the job done, because I've been doing it for so long now. So... comfortable, I'm comfortable right now.
VSQ hits Britain in May 2025 with their tour Vitamin String Quartet: The Music of Taylor Swift, Bridgerton, and Beyond
May 20, The Bath Forum, Bath
May 21, Birmingham Town Hall, Birmingham
May 22, Albert Hall, Manchester
May 23 & 24, Union Chapel, London
