Instruments - Part 37

Violinist Chris Marchant

When producer Mark Cortale saw a young man playing Mozart and pop songs on the violin on a street in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 2010, he snapped photos and posted one on Facebook.  "My Facebook page exploded," Cortale recalled.  "I had a lot of friends in the classical world who wanted to know who this guy was."

The violinist was Christopher Marchant (above).  This isn't the Facebook photo (he wasn't playing naked on the street), but he was shirtless, and you can see why people were interested in him.

Cortale took Marchant to lunch, pitching the idea of performance that would mix pop and classical genres.  Marchant proposed doing it as a quartet.  Within a year, three more musicians were found and the Well Strung Quartet (above) was born.  From left: Trevor Wadleigh, viola, Edmond Bagnell, first violin, Daniel Shevlin, cello, and Chris Marchant, second violin.  All the musicians are young, gay and good-looking, but Marchant is the hunkiest.

Marchant is the only member of the quartet who has posed nude ...

though not full-frontal.

Another nude photo shoot ...

and another, this one by photographer Marco Ovando for a story called Grind n' Roll.

Another Grind n' Roll photo.  Marchant is at right.

Then a set of casting photos of Marchant was leaked, including this rear view ...

this side view ...

and finally, this front view.  Click on the photo for a larger image.

Oh, and in case you forgot, Chris Marchant plays the violin. The Well Strung Quartet does mashups of classical and pop music. This video is a mixture of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and Kelly Clarkson's Since U Been Gone. I extracted and merged some clips from the video to shorten the song, but it should give you an idea of what they sound like. You can see the full video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJTVSyt7eMQ. Chris Marchant is the violinist, second from the left.