Elvis Costello, singer, co-writer/arranger
When I wasn’t on the road I would go five or six days a week to classical concerts. The Brodsky Quartet were playing the complete Shostakovich quartets in London one season and I went to hear them all. After one lunchtime concert, I met the group and we got on immediately. They were down to earth and we discovered a shared love of football and cake. We started talking about doing something together as a quintet – something other than just attaching a string quartet to a pop song like a varnish.
