By Bill Forman
Last Word Features

The music industry has a long, storied tradition of taking original hits and transforming them into something else entirely. Who can forget Pat Boone, who topped the pop charts with his ultra-sanitized versions of Little Richard songs? Or 101 Strings, who turned the honky-tonk hits of Hank Williams into uplifting elevator music? Or Alvin & The Chipmunks, whose squeaky-clean covers of Lipps Inc.’s “Funkytown” and Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back” will live on in infamy?

Enter Vitamin String Quartet, a musical project that reimagines contemporary music through the lens of classical instrumentation. While the quartet has covered at least a few of the same artists as 101 Strings, the similarities end there. The group doesn’t simply transpose pop melodies for strings; they reconstruct the songs, bringing out nuances that might go overlooked in the originals.

“We specialize in translating pop, rock and hip-hop into what might sound like Baroque or Romantic pieces of music, but that are, from our perspective, a much more immediate version of that,” creative director James Curtiss said. “It’s still acoustic, but we want it to sound visceral and immediate and modern.”

Vitamin String Quartet will bring that sound to Colorado Springs on Monday for a 7:30 p.m. show at Pikes Peak Center. Tickets start at $30 on axs.com.

According to Curtiss, the quartet’s rotating lineup has recorded thousands of pop, rock and hip-hop songs, from Bjork to BLACKPINK, Kanye West to My Chemical Romance. Monday’s show is “Billie Eilish, ‘Bridgerton’ & Beyond.”

VSQ’s journey began in 1999, but it wasn’t until years later that the project adopted its current name. What started as a series of studio recordings has since grown into a collective of artists, producers and performers.