LA Times Article featuring Jim's work with the Vitamin String Quartet
By Randall Roberts
NOVEMBER 25, 2016
On a recent afternoon at a studio just south of Leimert Park, four string players of the Vitamin String Quartet did a first-run through an arrangement. Today’s assignment? Radiohead’s “True Love Waits.”
In 2014, the Vitamin String Quartet — a rotating collective of players — sold out the Troubadour even though the group itself is anonymous. Haerle was dumbfounded: “People were lining up to see the Vitamin String Quartet. And I know that sounds rather basic, but they were up at the front of the stage cheering and singing along.”
The Vitamin String Quartet has turned contemporary pop into instrumental string works for the last 17 years — consider it an updated take on elevator music of yore. Sneak in its version of Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” onto your Auntie Gwyneth’s cocktail party playlist, for example, and the irony might fly right past her.
Like the Blue Man Group or Menudo, Vitamin Records’ Vitamin String Quartet is a brand first and
foremost, and since its creation it has issued hundreds of recordings. Earlier this month its version of another Radiohead song, “Motion Picture Soundtrack,” played during a key scene in HBO’s hit series “Westworld.”
In the second floor loft space overlooking South Los Angeles, the Quartet working out “True Love
Waits” included four string players — cellist Derek Stein; violinist Rachel Grace; bassist Thomas Lea, and violinist Hiro Goto — whose session work has appeared on projects by artists including Britney Spears, Usher, Harry Partch, Josh Groban, Juanes and Yo-Yo Ma.
Sitting in a semi-circle, the quartet moved through the parts for the Radiohead song under the guidance
of longtime Vitamin String Quartet arranger and conductor Jim McMillen. He’s responsible for notating and arranging Vitamin String Quartet’s versions, which it sells commercially as sheet music.
The professorial McMillen can extrapolate in great detail on the ways in which superstar rock band 21 Pilots’ music is more sophisticated that it might first appear, and he can compare it with hits from decades before.
Also wandering the room was Leo Flynn II, who flies in from New Jersey about once a month for sessions. A Berklee School of Music grad, Flynn oversees the Vitamin String Quartet brand and, along with a few others, produces and arranges recent Rockabye titles.
Flynn and his peers love debating the merits of would-be projects. The central concern? “Would this be exciting to hear this done on strings?” Flynn said.