While tweens continue to mourn the breakup of One Direction, there’s another boy band—well, string quartet—touring the country and they also have a legion of devoted fans.
Violinists Edmund Bagnell and Chris Marchant, violist Trevor Wadleigh and cellist Daniel Shevlin are Well-Strung, the gay all-male string quartet, and they’re returning to South Florida next week with their holiday program, “A Well-Strung Christmas.”
The group became an internet sensation with their musical mashups of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms with the contemporary hits of Madonna, Lady Gaga and Ke$ha, and headline a sellout annual residency in Provincetown, Mass. during the summer season.
The foursome are all classically trained musicians, but according to Bagnell, they’re also “products of our generation,” seeking to bridge two musical worlds with their music.
The group traveled to Rome in September and even performed at a rally for presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton this year. They landed that invitation after recording a music video entitled, “Chelsea’s Mom.”
“A week later, we got asked to play at the rally,” said Bagnell. “We got to meet her, take some pictures and played our song. She talked about us for about an hour!”
Their second album, released in early October, landed Well-Strung on the classical, classical crossover and pop charts. Just last week, the group released a new music video track on YouTube, a signature interpretation of “Silent Night.”
Bagnell’s lips are tight when it comes to the pieces they have planned for Broward and Kravis Center audiences. He’ll only admit the program contain plenty of their pop/classical medleys with “some surprising Christmas choices.”
“Oh, they’re very much in the spirit of Well-Strung,” he said. “We’re pretty proud of what we came up with.”
Audiences in New Orleans and Chicago loved the program, so he’s confident they will be a hit in South Florida, too.
He will say that audiences who have seen them perform live in previous seasons will immediately appreciate the experience they’ve picked up on the road over the past couple of years.
“We’re performing so regularly and in so many types of situations that we’re looser. That ‘looseness’ reveals our personalities a little bit more, so the audience gets to know us better, also,” he explained.
In the meantime, the members of Well-Strung are enjoying their jet-setting life and the adoring fans are nice, too. Don’t look for this boy band to break up any time soon.
Well-Strung presents “A Well Strung Christmas” at the Broward Center in Fort Lauderdale on Friday, Dec. 18 and the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach on Saturday, Dec. 19. Both shows begin at 8 p.m. For tickets, go to BrowardCenter.org and Kravis.org.
