This is not your ordinary string quartet. How? You ask. Why Y?You ask. Beneath their seemingly straight-laced shell/facade, lies many surprises. That's Y.
This group of string players, all proponents and practitioners of the Freedom String Movement, is bringing a refreshing new sound into town. Led by Fiddler For Peace, Kailin Yong and Berklee alumni, Felix Phang, they are taking the tried-and-true classical string quartet model and stretching it beyond it's stylistic and sonic possibilities/comfort zone. Sounds a little like “A Little Nightmare Music”? Not to worry. These cats can groove. Really.
The Y String Quartet doesn't think in genres. Therefore you cannot put them in a box. I mean, you can try, but they are not too concerned with what people call them.They are only interested in making genre-defying good music and surprising each other with arrangements of musical gems that they unearth to share with each other and their audience.
From Bach to Bossas, from the Beatles to Bulgarian folk songs, their unique and organic approach to music transcends all cultural and stylistic boundaries. The result is a sound that is always curiously authentic (stylistically or emotionally) but manages to retain a child-like joy and buoyancy.
