For violinists, the unaccompanied literature often begins with Bach and ends with Bartók, with little or nothing in between. Of course, there’s much more available—Max Reger, anyone?—but Mimi Rabson wants more scores that reflect her eclectic contemporary tastes.

Rabson, who teaches at the Berklee College of Music in Boston and is the founder of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, loves music in any number of styles. A few months ago, she premiered a half-dozen short solo works she had commissioned, via grant money, from her Berklee colleagues. Some of the pieces use electronics, some are through-composed, and most provide opportunities for improvisation. The influences run the gamut from rock to Latin to jazz, but each item would be equally at home in small clubs and classical concert halls.

“It seems like the gold standard for solo violin is Bach, and those sonatas and partitas are full of dances, 18th-century dances like gigues and courantes and allemandes,” Rabson points out. “I thought it would be fun to have suites of contemporary dances—rock, hip-hop, jazz—so they would be more accessible.

“There’s often a big disconnect between what people study as violin players and what they listen to for fun.”

Rabson persuaded colleagues Norman Zocher, Winston Maccow, Victor Mendoza, JoAnne Brackeen, Neil Leonard, and Stephen Webber to write solos for her. It’s an eclectic group of composers, yet Rabson insists that “any style of music lends itself to the violin. [The violin] can play anything. I get antsy when people think some style of music is instrument-specific.

“You should be able to tell a good story whatever your instrument is.”

Composer Norman Zocher chose to “exploit the tuning and open strings of the instrument to try to create as full a sound” as he could (see “Rock Ethic” on pp. 40 and 41). He found the violin best suited for a rock sound in the keys of G and D. “Because of Mimi’s brilliance as a composer and ferocity as an improviser, I knew to end my piece with Mimi’s own, totally incredible cadenza, which is probably my favorite part of the whole thing,” he says. “Because of her technical virtuosity, I knew I could, quite literally, write anything and Mimi could play it.

“However, I tried not to abuse this privilege. There’s nothing worse than learning something that’s difficult and sounds ugly on the instrument. Since Mimi is a specialist in odd meters, ‘Rock Ethic’ has a much higher level of rhythmic difficulty than I would ever normally put in a piece.”

Says Rabson, “The point of this project was to get violinists into some more diverse musical styles and to create some new vocabulary for the instrument. Maybe you don’t sound like the most hip violinist on earth, but adhering to stylistic norms is not the goal. Just start with what you know and run with it.”

If all goes according to plan, she will have to keep adapting for years to come. “I’d like to do this every year,” Rabson says. “I have a long, long list of composers I want to continue this project with.”

Read about the other solo violin works commissioned by Mimi Rabson at AllThingsStrings.com.

Rock Ethic for solo violin

Composed by Norman Zocher

Bowings and Fingerings by Mimi Rabson

“Rock Ethic” for solo violin incorporates elements of jazz and rock without throwing itself fully into either genre. “For starters, I use a lot of perfect fifths in the low register, known in the world of rock as power chords,” Zocher says. “They are very difficult on the violin. Pentatonic scales, a rock staple, are incredibly well suited to the violin. I use pentatonic scales layered in fifths in many of the fast, linear sections. A good portion of the harmonic vocabulary is triadic, especially in the Led Zepplin/Bach-inspired intro anthem repeated throughout the composition. Also, some of the uses of odd meters were influenced by jazz-rock fusion and 1970s progressive rock.”

Rabson says the piece looks like trouble at the beginning, “The first chord is A on the G string and F#on the E string and the other two notes are on open strings,” she says. “That’s easy on the guitar, but on the violin it’s hard. I really had to work on it to get it in tune and make it playable.

“On the other hand, all those crazy runs look complicated, but they’re actually easy to do, with lots of open strings. The pattern looks complex, but it fits really nicely on the violin. The contrast between those two moments—the chords and the runs—is very exciting.” Does a violinist have to be a rocker in order to play “Rock Ethic”?

“Well,” says Rabson, “none of us knows what a courante or a gigue is really supposed to sound like, but we’re all playing that stuff anyway. So not being deeply into rock shouldn’t stop anyone from trying this piece.” —J.R.

For more information about “Rock Ethic,” visit normanzocher.com.

The Challenges for Violin

“Each piece has its challenges, which is great,” says Mimi Rabson of the six new items on her music stand. “It’s more valuable for the repertoire if the pieces develop some skills. There’s also the improvisational aspect of it, but you can address these pieces at whatever level of improvising you are.

“There are two technique ideas that have really helped to get my playing to not sound as classical in these other styles. First, be very sparse with vibrato. The big, heavy vibrato is something you don’t hear a lot in contemporary music. The other thing is keep the bow on the string all the time, especially on rests or at the end of notes. Usually when we have a short note we lift the bow so the string is ringing even during a rest, but if you leave the bow on the string, you get a nice clean end to your note, and that really punches up the piece and makes it sound more contemporary and less classical. Those two things can make a big difference in playing music of contemporary styles.”

There’s plenty of new and challenging territory that comes with contemporary music. One of the least traditional pieces was Webber’s “Flash Meets Miles,” which is based on looped samples manipulated with pedal-controlled electronics. At least Webber didn’t deliver it to Rabson in a traditional way.

“He put together clips of little pieces he liked, which is what turntablists do, find short phrases and layer them on top of each other,” Rabson says. “He handed me a CD one day and said, ‘Here’s your piece.’ He had a couple of mandolin licks, some synth bass and drums, a trumpet that had been altered to sound strange, and he layered them on top of each other. I ended up transcribing each two-bar phrase and improvising using that as a springboard and putting each idea into my looping pedal, so in the end I had the loop just the way he handed it to me. He gave me carte blanche about how to approach it. I could have put the loop all together and improvised on top of it. Or I could have taken loops in and out instead of making it one long build.”

The other scores required less sorting from Rabson, but all gave her opportunities to work her tastes and personality into the music, whether through sheer improvisation or simply employing techniques she likes, such as the rhythmic chop.

Neil Leonard says of his contribution, “Mimi’s Metamorphology,” “The piece is a tribute to Mimi’s ability to find links between classical, folk, and jazz traditions. I also wanted to showcase her work in combining interpretation, improvisation, and live electronics. I've followed Mimi's performances for years and I marvel at her ability to learn and adapt in order to play with the unique groups of musicians that she has encountered.

“About 60 percent of the violin part is very precisely notated. The remaining 40 percent is an improvisational recapitulation of those materials. When Mimi performs the work, the audience is unable to determine which parts are notated and which are improvised—where my pen leaves off and her bow continues the musical idea.” —J.R.