Quartet San Francisco presents Motown Unplugged: "An Intimate Evening of Soulful Melodies"
510 Embarcadero West, Oakland
September 22nd, 2025
Was it happy happenstance that the fiftieth reunion of the Oakland High School Class of 1975 coincided with the performance of a Motown Unplugged concert at Yoshi’s on September 22nd?
You’d have to ask one of the alumni, violinist and Oakland resident Jeremy Cohen, whose Quartet San Francisco anchored a show of delightful reimaginings of pop songs Cohen and his classmates would have been grooving to before they dispersed into diverse adult professions. The Class of ‘75 peopled a portion of the Yoshi’s audience, along with a number of music professionals from Cohen’s longtime musical career, including Grammy winning engineer Leslie Ann Jones (Jones recorded and mixed Cohen’s Raymond Scott Reimagined couple of years back).
As with the Kronos Quartet, the QSF has made a thing of disassembling stereotypes about the string quartet, including its confinement to the Western classical tradition. Cohen has been keen to apply his classical training with the likes of Itzhak Perlman and Anne Crowden to other genres. Regarding Motown and Soul, he testified to his discovery of the “awesome tunes combined with great string parts” in those forms of pop music.
The evening’s opening number, “Love’s Theme”, was perhaps the the program’s least awesome, but then I was never a Barry White fan—his stuff always sounded smarmy and reinforced in me an impression that strings should be kept out of pop music. This dated back to my disappointment that one of my rock idols, Buddy Holly, had decided to mess up his rocking quartet/trio sound with a string section on what turned out to be his final recording session.
The SFQ upgraded their sound with “My Girl”, the second-oldest of the evening’s offerings. (It was recorded by the Temptations in 1964, around 200 years after Franz Joseph Haydn had launched the tradition of string quartets.) There was a rather hoe-down feel to this SFQ arrangement, while the next number, Otis Redding’s “Dock of the Bay”, began in almost classical fashion, including a quote from a Brandenburg concerto and a trio voicing of the melody for both violins (Cohen and Cullen Luper) and viola (Chad Katlinger). Fond of jokes as Haydn was, Cohen, responsible for the quartet’s arrangements, worked in additional quotes from the Rice-A-Roni commercial and from jazz composer Joe Zawinul.
Cohen is also a generous curator, verbally providing program-note background information to his audience, including the Pagliacci reference in the lyrics to Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “Tears of a Clown”. Flutist and picolloist Nancy Stagnitta (who recently toured with Paul Simon), and Rufus Olivier (principal bassoonist with the orchestras of the San Francisco Opera and Ballet) each soloed, and there and elsewhere during the evening, the artfulness of the arrangements served to enhance a less than exciting original melody line.
SFQ sounded particularly fitting on Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me”, the oldest of the evening’s hits, written with Mike Stoller and Jerry Lieber in 1961. This rendition, vocalized in the high lonesome tenor of Kenny Washington, was dynamic and artfully paced. A surprising segue jumped fifteen years to Wild Cherry’s “Play That Funky Music”, with viola laying down the opening groove, Cohen’s violin (or fiddle?) sounding the melody line, and everyone, including cellist Tyler Devigal, unisoning the chorus. Violinist and fellow music journalist Rebecca Wishnia, sharing our booth, provided professional insight into the quartet’s use of percussion effects, including col legno, spiccato, and chopping. The irresistible dancey feel had my wife whooping and much of the crowd around us shouting and whistling.
Kenny Washington sings, with QSF, Larry Dunlap, Nancy Stagnitta, & Rufus Olivier Video by Jeff Kaliss
Washington and veteran jazz pianist and arranger Larry Dunlap bolstered a rendition of “I Heard It Through the Grapevine”. Personally, I'd have made more room for solos by Dunlap. “Sir Duke” was the first of the evening’s several Stevie Wonder numbers, a tour de force with a ticklish arrangement of the song’s kinky break. Flute, bassoon, and piano worked a whimsical intro to “What’s Going On”, and Washington’s channeling of Marvin Gaye’s lyrical message felt thrilling and timely. Cohen announced his inspiration for this number as inspired by the bloody People’s Park protests in Berkeley in 1969, adding, “I pose the [titular] question today.”
Stagnitta’s flute took the lead on Stevie Wonder’s “I Wish”, with the strings supplying merry, chatty backup and a swinging extension on the break. This was living proof that genre crossover can work. After an enthusiastic audience response to Washington’s question, “You having a good time?”, the less familiar Wonder tune “Lately” featured a gorgeous intro by all four strings. They went on to accompany ample evidence of the storytelling strengths of both songwriter and singer. “These are people who put everything they have in what they do,” testified Cohen.
The closer: "Boogie On, Reggae Woman" Video by Jeff Kaliss
The program concluded joyfully with yet another showpiece of Wonder’s diversity and the quartet’s tight and inspiring coordination and accuracy of intonation, “Boogie On, Reggae Woman”. “There are many classical musicians who ask, ‘How do you do that?’,” said Cohen. For my part, I simply hope that the SFQ keeps doing it, and I eagerly await whatever they do next.
