For those who have not watched Bridgerton or found your parents’ soft instrumentals Pandora station playing the haunting melodies of “WAP,” the Vitamin String Quartet formula is thus summarized: Classical-esque arrangements of pop music on string instruments.
Surreal at times, but depending on which of the two genres you prefer, the results are more or less elegant. But when set in the Palace Hotel’s Garden Court, it is decidedly on the classy side.
Sponsored by Festival Napa Valley as part of a road tripping prelude to its titular July 6–21 event, the set I attended last month was equal to the gilded grandeur of the Palace’s beaux arts space. The Bold Italic also attended in 2023 and eagerly waits their return.
Though quite at home, I was told the group agreed to play here only if they could play for 300 kids up at St. Helena Elementary School, first. “Those kids were really kick-ass singers,” one of them laughs early in the evening as guests sit down beneath the thousand panes of the glass ceiling.
The Palace is dear to me: my first night in San Francisco was spent there, after a 60-hour drive from Ohio. Fellow Ohioan, president Warren G. Harding, spent his last night there. All and all, a good place to pass one evening. Every time I go to the Palace for a Boothby, I take time to detour down Stevenson Street, from which you can see the old Palace Hotel neon sign framed by buildings, picture-perfect and welcoming. They’re dark, now, for replacement — but there’s still time to save the lambent glow of the old neon tubes. Aaron Peskin has saved so many things, he might as well save these.
Anyway — Festival Napa Valley, in its efforts to establish the region as a locus of culture, did not let us forget the wine. Several good bottles from Boisset Collection, Hall Napa Valley and Treasury Wine Estates were featured. My expertise is more in whiskey, but I must note the Hall Sauvignon Blanc 2021 was particularly good: mineral-forward at first blush, washing out into a strong, ruddy sweet liminess — both stone and fruit (but not stonefruit).
Tonight was the fourth time the quartet has played as part of the Festival Napa Valley and its second time at the Palace. San Franciscans love a party and we were in form — more so than the St. Helena kids? — by the time the group finally mounted the stage. “I love this energy… it is the energy required,” one of the quartet members said mystically.
We kicked off with Billie Eilish’s “Bad Guy,” a good crowd-starter for the crowd of mostly thirty-somethings mixed with older Gen Zs and Boomers who swayed in their seats with hip understanding. But San Francisco is a nostalgic town, and Ah-Ha’s “Take On Me” got us whooping and singing and forgetting. Something about “classic-ification” — or was it the wine — makes each decade’s pop more enduring, reminds us that our songs can be hymns, too.
Nostalgia can only get you so far in live music, though, and Vitamin String Quartet doesn’t rely on it though they could. Ariana Grande’s “Thank U, Next,” a song from which I tune to 91.1 KCSM anytime it is on the radio, was agreeable, delightful even. Even Post Malone’s “Sunflower” took on a melancholic, ethereal vibration.
Post-Post Malone, the quartet sawed and plucked around the catalog of the year’s most topical artist, Taylor Swift. “Look What You Made Me Do” was a crowd and band favorite: “I have a freaking epic solo,” the bassist proclaimed, and so it was. Curious how many beauties in the vast garden court closed their eyes and bobbed along, my wife included.
“How many hearts have you broken?” I ventured. She closed her eyes, Taylor incarnate.
“Two?” The woman at the next table nodded approvingly.
Finally, the finale. The bassist checks, first: “Are you guys lubricated enough to sing along?” Yes. The quartet launches into Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Classic rock, classically. Of course, everybody belted out what lyrics they could remember.
Hopefully we were as good as the kids up in St. Helena.
M. T. Eley is a San Francisco-based writer.
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