Michael Fraser learned classical violin, then jazz, gypsy and swing. He also busted out breakdancing moves that led him to pursue DJ-ing.
Now the 23-year-old musician complements house beats he spins with live violin.
Fraser will perform a backyard show dubbed Drop the Needle with Juno-award winning hip-hop artist Moka Only, Saturday, June 2, as part of the In the House Festival.
It's the first time the ninth annual festival that animates homes and yards near Commercial Drive will include a show that highlights DJ-ing.
"They're using a live instrument or they're singing along with the DJ so it's not just somebody in the booth spinning a record- there's that mixed element to it," said the festival's artistic director, Myriam Steinberg.
Signed up before he was born, Fraser attended the Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»Academy of Music for violin lessons from age four. He started busking with his acoustic guitar-wielding father, Don Fraser, at age nine.
Breakdancing lessons at General Gordon elementary school in Kitsilano spurred Fraser to learn how to cut up music and scratch. When he got sick of scratching, he started producing music, and the young man who had performed several times as a guest with his father alongside legendary bandleader Dal Richards, recorded music with San Francisco Bay rapper Dru Down.
"Basically I could stop making beats at that point because he was an inspiration for me for the work that he'd done in the '90s," Fraser said.
Fraser subsequently learned new DJ mixing techniques at Strathcona's School of Remix, where he taught production.
"I'd been asked to play violin with my beats and DJ stuff for years and thinking it would never sync up or work. I didn't understand why I would try and do that," he said. "But it just seemed really natural once I learned how to mix. I felt like I had so much time while the record was playing, I had all this time that I could be spending playing a musical instrument, so why not use this skill that I had."
He's since played the Shambhala electronic musical festival in Salmo, B.C.
"There's something that is very old school about the violin in the sense that it's not like the electric guitar, which basically transcends virtually every style of music," Fraser said. "Solo violinists, they really have to be captivating for me to go, 'Wow, I could really listen to this for a long time,' and I'm trying to achieve that, but I realize that a lot of listeners love the violin but will take it in small doses."
Fraser previously played the In the House Festival with flamenco fusion act Tambura Rasa. He's excited to perform on the same bill as Moka Only from Swollen Members, someone he's admired for a long time.
Fraser was busking with his father on Robson Street in his early teens when he spied Moka Only. He asked the rapper to lend them an ear because Fraser had learned a Henry Mancini song that Swollen Members had sampled.
"He came and listened and was very supportive," Fraser said. "I haven't played a show with him but that was a funny memory that I had of the past."
Also new at this year's festival is a showcase of magic.
"Because it's really fun, honestly, and there's different styles of magicianship as well," Steinberg said. "You have the more comedy style magician, which is like Clinton W. Gray; Vitaly [Beckman], he makes up all his own tricks, and it's much more cerebral- Often people associate magic shows with kids' shows- This is really exploring what magic can do."
The festival includes more than 70 acts in 20 shows June 1 to 3 in 13 homes and yards. It includes storytellers, poetry, puppets, dance, theatre, comedy and circus. For more information, go to inthehousefestival.com.
Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi
