Supporting Acts: Sander Hicks The Tet Offensive The Tet Offensive are a string quartet rock band, led by composer and singer Brian Robinson. How does a person invent a string quartet rock band? Back in 1998 I was at a concert for the new music ensemble, Parnassus, listening to Gyorgy Kurtag's "12 Microludes for Mihaly Andras". That was it. That moment was the birth for an idea that has developed over the past decade. The Kurtag, scored for string quartet, was twelve movements - each of them no more than two minutes long, some as short as seventeen seconds. And each of them was brutal. Gnarly. Dissonant. Some short and violent. Some eerily elegant and serene. But after the third or fourth microlude, I realized. "This is punk rock". Kurtag probably had no intention of inspiring the Tet Offensive, but three years later, when I was asked to do a string quartet cover of Nirvana's "Stay Away" for a Kurt Cobain tribute concert, I remembered instantly the Kurtag, and saw the possibility for a synthesis between two worlds that I have constantly been at stray allegiances with: contemporary classical and rock. Since 2002, the Tet Offensive have played original songs and covers ranging from the BeeGees to Soundgarden to the White Stripes. Local to New Haven and New York City, the Tet Offensive have played CBGBs, the Knitting Factory and the Sidewalk Cafe, and in New Haven at Cafe Nine and the East Rock Festival. $5.00