Friction Quartet Talks Creating the Strings on “The Knight’s Tour”
“It’s really an ideal collaboration for us,” Doug Machiz, the cello of Friction Quartet, says about their partnership with 3232 Music. “It’s rare to be given an opportunity to have a beautiful production and presentation of music that we feel passionate about.”
Friction Quartet has worked with 3232 Music on Attention Economy, composed by Mario Godoy, Chuhayster, composed by Roman Baranskiy, and, most recently, The Knight’s Tour, composed by David Garner. For The Knight’s Tour, Friction Quartet played alongside Marcus Finnie on the drums and Scott Pingel on the bass, who, Kevin Rogers, the quartet’s violinist, says, both elevated the composition to the next level.
“There was this dynamic interplay between the performers and the composers,” Machiz recalls. He describes Pingel as “the highest quality musician” and says that the bass added a depth of sound, almost orchestral, with harmonies that felt broad and deep.
“Marcus Finnie is just an incredible drummer,” smiles Rogers. “He’s just super cool, like the coolest man on the planet, who just exudes coolness, which comes through in his music when you play with him. It’s infectious and inspiring. We don’t normally play with jazz drummers, so it was a unique opportunity to work with an artist like him.”
Friction Quartet is one of the Bay Area’s most prominent string quartets and has been playing together, commissioning composers, collaborating with artists, performing, and recording for over 15 years. Kevin Rogers and Otis Harriel are the quartet’s violinists. Mitso Floor plays the viola, and Doug Machiz commands the cello. Their speciality and focus is contemporary music, but they are passionate about collaborating across different genres, as they did for The Knight’s Tour.
Behind the Scenes on The Knight’s Tour
Rehearsals of The Knight’s Tour came with both challenging moments and rewarding moments. Machiz says there was a pure logistics challenge of finding a rehearsal space that was suitable for a string quartet, drums, and a bass, especially since Finnie was flying in from out of town. Luckily, they found a space that worked for them and were able to get rehearsals underway, where they did a lot of translating of what was on the score into the final product.
Machiz also recalls the unique challenge of acoustic instruments with drums, where the volume levels of the instruments vary, but says that he appreciated how sensitive and understanding Finnie was to it. “All the musicians just kept making it work in this unconventional instrumentation,” he says.
Rogers nods his head in agreement with Machiz and delves into the way Friction Quartet’s instruments and a drum set differ in the way they create sound. “A drum set is way quicker to get the sound out,” he says. “It’s very pointed, whereas strings can have a bit of a fuzzier entrance. With a drum kit, it’s such a different physics that we had to take some time to figure out. Marcus was flexible about changing his sound to match what we were doing, so it was a very easy process.”
When asked what’s something about quartet rehearsals that people don’t realize, Machiz thinks for a moment and then says, “People would be surprised by how quickly it comes together. We’ve been doing this for a long time and are great players who listen to each other and can communicate nonverbally through breath and movement. We can anticipate how each of us will interpret their parts of a composition.”
Mitso Floor, the quartet’s viola, agrees that people are usually surprised by the short amount of rehearsal time. He states that rather than dozens of hours for rehearsal, they might have four rehearsals with a new program every week. “The years of practice and training help us prepare for things quickly with a decent approximation of the piece at first reading,” he states before smiling and saying while the rehearsals may be work, they do have a lot of fun.
The Begininngs of Friction Quartet
The origin story of Friction Quartet is one of friendship and a love of music. Rogers and Machiz first met at a summer festival in North Carolina called the Eastern Music Festival. They lost touch but were reunited at another festival, this time in Italy in 2010, where they were placed in a quartet together. After a successful performance, Machiz approached Rogers and asked if he would like to start a quartet together. Rogers said he would love to, and they moved to San Francisco to make it happen, where Machiz studied at the San Francisco Conservatory. Harriel joined the quartet soon after, and Floor became the newest member in 2022. Since forming in 2011, Friction Quartet has commissioned 47 works and given over 100 world premiere performances.
While their music now speaks for itself, it took plenty of hard work to get to where they are today. In the early days, Friction Quartet spent a lot of time going to workshops and seminars to polish their sound. They always had a strong foundation of what Machiz says is “fire, grit, and power,” but took plenty of rehearsing and performing together to become more polished. “What’s special about us,” Machiz says, “is that we have both sides of the coin — both the vigor and rhythmic precision paired with the warmth, beauty, and tenderness of a classical quartet.”
Rogers and Machiz each have unique stories for how they fell in love with their instruments. Rogers says that his initial foray into the world of the violin was because his parents required every one of their kids to play a musical instrument, and he chose a violin. “I always loved the sound of strings in movie and video game soundtracks,” he says. The soundtracks motivated him to learn the instrument so he could make those sounds too. He then signed up for orchestra in middle school and “hasn’t put down the instrument since.”
Before his older brother recommended that he try the cello at age 13, Machiz played the piano, bass guitar, and guitar with ska and punk bands. The high school orchestra that he wanted to join needed cello players, and so Machiz took a few lessons. What began as a way to join the orchestra soon turned into a love for the instrument.
When asked about who inspires them, Floor smiled widely and immediately delved into his obsession with the Austrian violin and cello duo Bartolomey Bittmann, whom he got the other members of Friction Quartet to listen to as well. Rogers says that Heifetz was his inspiration when he was younger, and that he was drawn to his fire and power. Now he loves Oistrakh, and his favorite quartets are Quatuor Ébène, Artemis Quartet, and Kronos Quartet, who inspired him to do contemporary music and start a quartet in the first place. Rogers says that composers Samuel Adams, John Cage, and Anna Meredith are also huge inspirations.
Friction Quartet also strives to give back with their music. For the past year, they’ve been working with an organization called Project: Music Heals Us, which is a nonprofit bringing music to people in hospitals, prisons, and isolated international communities. Friction Quartet has been teaching composition courses to inmates who will then write a piece for the quartet to perform in a final concert. “I’m really excited to see what they come up with,” says Floor. “Most of the people in the program have very little musical background, and it’s inspiring to see how they’ve taken their difficult circumstances and channeled them into music.”
A Wrap on The Knight’s Tour
“I just want people to enjoy it,” says Machiz about The Knight’s Tour. “It’s a really fun and dynamic work that does a lot of things really well in terms of different styles and characters. It’s a great synergy of different parts of the music industry that have come together for an innovative piece.”
Floor also looks forward to people seeing Friction Quartet perform a new sound with different contexts and combinations of instruments. “I hope people enjoy the wild ride across the chessboard,” he says.
Next Up for Friction Quartet
Friction Quartet has many exciting projects coming up that you can look forward to, including a full-length album called Proper Nostalgia with Aerocade Records and composers Andrew Rodriguez, Alex Dowling, and Isaac Schankler, which is the culmination of a multi-year project of commissioning and recording. They are also collaborators on an EP that’s coming out by Annika Socolofsky and have their hands full with plenty of performances. Their upcoming shows include two shows in their Friction Presents: Inspiration series on April 17 and April 19.
Want to see more? Watch them in The Knight’s Tour.