Making music from scratch
Afiara Quartet joins forces with four young composers and Canadian DJ Skratch Bastid in new musical genre
Afiara Quartet, the string ensemble in residence at the Royal Conservatory of Music, wanted to create a new, exciting form of music.
Its mission is to reach out to young audiences, in bars and hotel lounges, as well as program dramatic concerts to draw them into performance halls.
This is why they created Spin Cycle, a year-and-a-half-long project in which young four Toronto composers were commissioned to write original classical material. They raised $25,000 to pay the composers, brought in a DJ, and produced a CD and documentary.
After the musical pieces were memorized and recorded by Afiara, DJ Skratch Bastid, whose only musical training was playing the euphonium in high school, put his scratchings on the new classical pieces.
This recorded version went back to the original composers, who created a new hybrid of their works that is being called, collectively, Spin Cycle.
The three versions of each composition — classical, scratched, classical/scratched — will be performed in sequence at Saturday’s concert in Koerner Hall as part of its 21C Music Festival. Afiara Quartet Adrian Fung, cello; Valeri Li, violin; Timothy Kantor, violin; Eric Wong, viola. Founded in 2006, the Toronto quartet ranges in age from 28 to 34, travels extensively and has commissioned 25 new pieces of music.
Original members Fung and Li met while playing at their siblings’ wedding. They have served residencies at the Juilliard School, where two of them studied, and San Francisco State University. They have collaborated with jazz and Latin musicians. The composers The four Toronto composers are Sri Lankan-born Dinuk Wijeratne, Laura Silberberg, Kevin Lau, Rob Teehan. Their works are performed in major concert halls around the world and range from movie scores to ballets.
Their affiliations as composers range from the Toronto Symphony Orchestra to the Cantabile Chamber Singers. They are involved in arts festivals including Nuit Blanche and the Toronto International Film Festival and are known as solo musicians in their own right playing violin, tuba and piano. The DJ Halifax native Skratch Bastid (Paul Murphy), 32, has been a turntable artist for almost half his life.
Now living in Toronto, he travels extensively throughout Asia and Europe working in many different styles including disco, funk and hip hop.
He’s also a music producer with credit for Situation with Buck 65 (which received a Juno nomination) and Shad’s Flying Colours. Used to working quickly and on the fly, Skratch found the lengthy classical process eye-opening. The timeline April 2014: Project begins. November 2014: Compositions are completed, learned by the quartet, recorded and filmed.
January 2015: Skratch records, films and returns his version to the four composers.
February 2015: Final, third version is recorded at Mazzoleni Hall.
May 12, 2015: CD Spin Cycle is released.
May 23, 2015: Premiere moved from Mazzoleni Hall to larger Koerner Hall at Royal Conservatory.
March 25, 2016: Afiara and Skratch to be joined by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra in a symphonic adaptation by composer Lau. Spin Cycle is at Koerner Hall on Saturday at 8 p.m. Go to https://tickets.rcmusic.ca or call 416-408-0208.