Who we Are
Friction Quartet, lauded for performances described as "terribly beautiful" (San Francisco Classical Voice), "stunningly passionate" (Calgary Herald), and "exquisitely skilled" (ZealNYC), is dedicated to modernizing the chamber music experience and expanding the string quartet repertoire. The quartet achieves its mission by commissioning cutting-edge composers, curating imaginative concert programs, collaborating with diverse artists, and engaging in interactive educational outreach.
Friction made their debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016 as participants in the Kronos Quartet Fifty for the Future Workshop. They returned in March of 2018 to perform George Crumb’s Black Angels as part of “The 60’s” festival and their performance was described as, “one of the truest and most moving things I’ve ever heard or seen.” (Zeal NYC)
Since forming in 2011, Friction has commissioned 47 works for string quartet and given world premiere performances of more than 100 works. They developed the Friction Commissioning Initiative in 2017 as a way to work together with their audience to fund specific commissions. The money raised to date has helped Friction commission a total of 12 new works, including six by young composers between the ages 16 and 21. They were awarded a 2019 Intermusic SF Musical Grant to develop a participatory educational program with composer Danny Clay that is designed to be accessible and sensory-friendly. Friction’s past grants include a grant from Chamber Music America that was used to commission a piano quintet from Andy Akiho, which debuted in November 2016, as well as project grants from Intermusic SF and Zellerbach Family Foundation supporting special projects involving the performance of commissioned works.
While Friction has garnered international attention as commissioners and interpreters of new music, they are also devoted to performing masterworks of the string quartet repertoire at the highest level. They won Second Prize in the 2016 Schoenfeld Competition, they were quarter-finalists in the 2015 Fischoff Competition and placed second at the 2015 Frances Walton Competition
Friction has held residencies at the New Music for Strings Festival in Denmark, Interlochen Arts Camp, Lunenburg Academy of Music in Nova Scotia, Napa Valley Performing Arts Center, Old First Concerts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and was the first ensemble in residence at the Center for New Music.
Friction Quartet is dedicated to building new audiences for contemporary music through interactive musical enrichment programs. They participated for three consecutive years in the San Francisco Symphony’s Adventures in Music program, visiting over 60 public schools annually. They are Ensemble Partners with Young Composers & Improvisors Workshop, workshopping and premiering new works written by young composers in the Bay Area. They have also given presentations at Oakland public schools through KDFC’s Playground Pop Up program. In collaboration with Meridian Hill Pictures, they created a short documentary, titled Friction, that profiles their early educational outreach in Washington DC’s Mundo Verde Public Charter School. Their presentations regularly utilize Doug’s adventurous arrangements of pop songs alongside excerpts from standard string quartet repertoire to help young audiences build connections to musical concepts.
Friction appears on recordings with National Sawdust Tracks, Innova Records, Albany Records, Pinna Records, and many independent releases. They released their full-length debut album, resolve, in 2018 through Bandcamp. Friction has appeared on radio stations such as NPR, KALW, KING-FM, and KUT, among others.
Friction’s video of the second movement of First Quartet by John Adams was named the #2 video of the year in 2015 by Second Inversion. John Adams shared this video on his own homepage and called it “spectacular.” Their video for Andy Akiho’s In/ Exchange, featuring Friction and Akiho, was also chosen by Second Inversion for their Top 5 videos of 2016. The video was also featured on American Public Media’s Performance Today.
Friction Quartet takes risks to enlarge the audience’s understanding of what a string quartet can be using arrangements of pop music, digital processing, percussion, amplification, movement, and additional media. Their multimedia and interdisciplinary projects have received critical acclaim. In 2017 they produced Spaced Out, an evening-length suite of music about the cosmos that utilizes surround sound electronics and includes a Friction Commission written by Jon Kulpa. The San Francisco Classical Voice called it “accessible, yet surreal.” No matter where their musical exploration takes them, they never lose sight of the string quartet’s essence– the timeless and endlessly nuanced interaction of four analog voices.
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Violinist Otis Harriel earned his bachelor’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in spring 2013. He began his studies with Rob Diggins in his hometown of Arcata, CA. Under his teacher’s guidance he began performing with many local orchestras and chamber ensembles including the Eureka Symphony and Humboldt State Symphony. He attended the Sequoia Chamber Music Workshop, Idyllwild Chamber Music Program, Sphinx Academy of Music, Mendocino Music Festival and Castleton Festival. Otis studied with Wei He at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He has participated in master classes with the first violinist of the Shanghai Quartet, Weigang Li, William van der Sloot, and Pinchas Zukerman.
While at the conservatory he developed his love of chamber music under the guidance of coaches including Mark Sokol, Jennifer Culp, Jean-Michel Fonteneau and Jodi Levitz. He has a passion for reading, baking and Haydn.
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As a young violinist, works of composers such as Penderecki, Boulez, and Berio captivated Kevin Rogers long before his first exposure to even a complete Beethoven symphony, setting the groundwork for his passionate career in contemporary classical music. He is the founding violinist/violist of Nonsemble6, a contemporary Pierrot Ensemble based in San Francisco. As part of this group he has performed at the Astoria Music Festival as guest-artists-in-residence, at universities throughout the country, in unorthodox venues through Classical Revolution SF, and at the Kennedy Center.
He began his solo career at sixteen in South Carolina. His most recent solo performances have included the Lou Harrison Violin Concerto at the Hot Air Music Festival in San Francisco, and a premier of Manly Romero’s concerto for two violins and two trumpets titled “Doppelgaenger” with the Blue Print Series under the Baton of Nicole Paiement.
Kevin Rogers recently graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a master’s degree in violin performance. While there he received the award for Violin in New Music, and the award for Violin in the String departments. He studied with Bettina Mussumeli and worked closely with Jennifer Culp, Jodi Levitz and Mark Sokol. Having grown up on a farm, you can occasionally hear him slip into a southern accent after many hours of practicing or in moments of excitement.
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Mitso Floor is an avid chamber and orchestral musician from Seattle, WA. He has played with Friction Quartet since March 2022 and is a member of several Bay Area orchestras, including Santa Rosa Symphony as Assistant Principal Viola. An active freelancer, he substitutes with the San Francisco Symphony and other ensembles around the Bay Area. During his studies at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the University of Miami, he often worked with composers to expand the solo viola repertoire, premiering several works for the instrument (as well as one for solo cello). His past teachers include Matthew Young, Jodi Levitz, and Dimitri Murrath.
Other activities he enjoys, too numerous to fit into his free time, include arranging, recording, making pizza, knitting, 3D modeling, playing video games, hiking, and creating videos of himself playing many different instruments (and non-instruments) at the same time for his YouTube channel “Beanzo”. -
A native of Washington, DC, cellist Doug Machiz resides in Concord where he is co-founder, manager, and cellist of Friction Quartet. With Friction, Doug is extremely fortunate to perform old and new string quartets around the United States with amazing musicians. He is also grateful for the many opportunities Friction has to inspire young people with the power of music.
In addition to his work with Friction Quartet, Doug is an active freelance musician and teacher. He has participated in the Banff Chamber Music Residency, Deer Valley Music Festival with the Muir Quartet, the St. Lawrence Emerging String Quartet Program, Bang on a Can Summer Festival, Fontainebleau Conservatoire Americain in France, and the Zephyr International Chamber Music Course and Festival in Italy.
While beginning his cello studies at the late age of 14, he was able to progress quickly thanks to his previous experience studying classical and jazz piano, bass guitar and classical and electric guitar. He was fortunate to study with Mike Reynolds at Boston University despite his limited experience. He went on to earn a master’s degree from UT Austin with Bion Tsang, and a Professional Studies Diploma from the San Francisco Conservatory where he studied with Jennifer Culp.
In his spare time, Doug is an avid yogi, road cyclist, backpacker, traveler and weather geek. Since moving to San Francisco he has become severely addicted to the amazing coffee. He’s a big fan of Haruki Murakami novels and films by Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, and PT Anderson.
