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Jazz Violin photo: violinist Mark Feldman
The current variety would have been unthinkable only a decade ago. There are welcome new releases by old masters such as Johnny Frigo (see "Nice ’n’ Easy Does It," March 1998), whose polished, detailed style can be heard on Debut of a Legend (Chesky Records JD119) and Johnny Frigo with Bucky and John Pizzarelli: Live from Studio A (Chesky JD1), or Joe Kennedy Jr., the first great bebop violinist, who swung and arranged for the early Ahmad Jamal groups and who appears with Dr. Billy Taylor on the Concord Jazz release Where’ve You Been? He has two new releases of material recorded in the early 1960s, Accentuate the Positive (Consolidated Artists Productions CAP923), with Toots Theilemans and a jazz ensemble, and Strings by Candlelight (CAP 924). There is also a steady stream of high-quality output by accomplished and emotive players. Violinist John Blake has been fighting the good fight in the jazz-violin trenches for years, since his stint with McCoy Tyner in the late 1970s. His warm personality and humanity suffuse his musical statements with beauty. One of his best recordings is Quest (Sunnyside SSC 1058). His latest release is a recording of duets with bassist Avery Sharpe, Epic Ebony Journey (Jade Records AS89893). Regina Carter is tearing things up all over the country as the new jazz violinist of note; her terrific, matter-of-fact stage presence and virtuosic playing charm everyone. After many struggles with various record companies that tried to cast her in some kind of pop mold, her bodacious new release, Rhythms of the Heart (Verve Records 3145471772), is the most jazz-oriented yet. Cellist Eric Friedlander is an excellent and valuable player in the riproaring New York downtown and uptown scenes. His new release is Topaz (Siam Records SMD 50003), and another recording to look for is Watchman (Tzadik; both available at www.CDNow.com). Hank Roberts is a major voice in jazz cello, currently working in upstate New York. He can most easily be heard on the groundbreaking Bill Frisell ECM recordings of the early 1980s, such as Lookout for Hope. And don’t forget the ever-fascinating (certainly to me, as a former member) Turtle Island String Quartet, with six releases on Windham Hill Records, a new live recording, The Hamburg Concert (CCn’C 00282), and the forthcoming Art of the Groove (both available through www.tisq.com). Then we have interesting jazz-rock acrobatics by the protean Didier Lockwood. His most recent, excellent recording is Storyboard (Dreyfus 36582). There is promising work from new players such as Diane Delin on Origins (Blujazz Records YLJ3305, available from PO Box 578720, Chicago, IL 60657, or at www.mcs.net/~blujazz/); Cathy Morris on It’s About Time, a self-produced CD (available from www.cathymorris.com); and Jenny Scheinman on Giant Trio, another self-produced effort (GT Productions GT0001, available from 371 30th St., San Francisco, CA 94131). Lesa Terry and Diane Monroe appear on the two historic Uptown String Quartet releases, Presenting the USQ (on Polygram, but now out of print) and Just Wait a Minute! (Rhino Records 79174). Exciting, tantalizing glimpses of Karen Briggs’ playing can be had on the otherwise depressing Yanni video debacles. Joe Deninzon has released a self-produced CD called Shock Therapy (available by e-mailing JDeninzo@aol.com). The exciting but underrepresented Matt Glaser appears on many important Rounder new-acoustic records, including his duet recording with Kenny Kosek, Hasty Lonesome (Rounder 0127), a group effort on Fiddle Fever (Flying Fish 303), and his solo recording, Play Fiddle Play (Flying Fish 555). And as if that weren’t enough, there has been a flood of releases from the many technically accomplished New Agey players trying to gain a foothold in that focus-group–dominated market. This is an abundance of riches. And yet, during all the listening I’ve been doing lately, I haven’t been rocked back on my heels. I was hoping for a release in this encouraging list that would have the same world-breaking impact on me as Jean-Luc Ponty’s nuclear explosion Sunday Walk, a 1971 European release that was distributed in the states as Critics’ Choice (Transamerica Records; out of print) or his 1971 Frank Zappa collaboration, King Kong (Blue Note 89539). (If you can’t find it, an OK substitute for Sunday Walk is Live at Donte’s, a more fusiony performance with George Duke from about the same period rereleased by EMD/Blue Note.) Or I would have welcomed something on the order of the first time I heard Stuff Smith, Stéphane Grappelli, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, or artists of that order. With so much talent out there, I was looking for the recordings that will lead us to a new place. Maybe I was asking for too much. My disappointment could be ascribed to jaded age, or the vagaries and depressions of the music business. And yet, I’m hearing things in bluegrass and some of the new folk-derived styles that are thrilling. Stuart Duncan is represented on numerous CDs in his bluegrass hat with the Nashville Bluegrass Band, but some of his best work is on banjo great Bela Fleck’s new Acoustic Planet 2: Bluegrass Sessions (Warner Brothers 47332). His jazzier work appears on the Flecktones’ Live Art CD (Warner Brothers 46247) and my own recent Diary of a Fiddler (Compass CQM4275). Kaila Flexer is wonderful on Compass’ Listen (CQM74226) and Next Village (CQM4259). Natalie MacMaster exhibits eyeball-bugging rhythmic intensity and flawless accuracy on No Boundaries (Rounder 617023). Martin Hayes, perhaps the most transcendently musical traditional fiddler ever, surpasses his idiom on The Lonesome Sound (Green Linnet) and other CDs on the same label. And of course, the unique Mark O’Connor has produced any number of jaw-dropping recordings over the last 15 years; most recent is his solo Midnight on the Water (Sony Classics 62862). For an example of something new, take the Swedish group Vasen, whose latest release is Spirit, Essence, Whirled (Northside Records, 530 3rd St., Minneapolis, MN 55401; www.noside.com). Pronounced "vessen," vasen means noise, spirit, or hullaballoo. The lead instrument is a Swedish stringed instrument called the nyckleharpa, or key fiddle, which is related to the hurdy-gurdy in that it uses levers and keys to stop the strings, but it is played with a bow. It has an incredibly haunting, almost frightening sound and a long tradition of dance and ceremonial music, often in combination with a regular fiddle. Vasen’s nyckleharpa player, Olav Johannsen, is a Swedish national champion, and he does things with it that seem barely possible. The guitarist, Roger Tallroth, plays mostly rhythm, which consists of everything from delicate counterpoint lines to violent groove strumming. The "secret weapon" in the group, and the player who should make jazz fiddlers sit up and take notice, is Mikael Marin, the violist, who is responsible for much of the harmonic feeling in the group. All three players are excellent and hugely creative, but the fascinating counterlines and textured harmonies provided by the viola lift both traditional and original pieces out of the realm of folk music and into the realm of the most compelling compositional art. This is possibly some of the most driving and forceful acoustic string music ever recorded, rivaling the best bluegrass in rhythmic intensity and precision, but with a completely different sound, perhaps "infra-Celtic," something darker and more somber than Celtic music but just as wildly danceable and possessing the same potential for reharmonization and structural manipulation—which is applied to its fullest extent by this amazing group. This is music that has to be heard to be believed, and I predict that there is much here to learn from for any string player. Turning back to jazz, I admit that violinists face a specific problem: we all know that the jazz idiom was developed on the backs of horn and piano players, and there is a natural difficulty in physically transferring the jazz sound to bowed instruments. But when we look at the problems imposed by Paganini, to say nothing of the modern composers, we just can’t use that as an excuse for mediocre tone and lack of harmonic sophistication in jazz violin playing. Bebop string crossings are thorny and hard, but so is the Bach Chaconne, and Baroque players are as sensitive to the subtleties of swing as anyone. With players like Marin transcending their genres, I still find myself wondering, where is the truly amazing new stuff in jazz? One of the problems for me with many jazz recordings is the continuing difficulty with the sound of the electric violin. In order to achieve a smooth sound and get rid of the ugly scraping distortion that apparently is inherent in the piezo bridge pickup, treble response is sacrificed and we often get an emotionally distanced sound that seems like it’s coming from another room through a bad speaker. Even passionate, nuanced playing is sabotaged by this amplification problem. We need better pickups. So it was interesting that just as I was about to give up on hearing anything really groundbreaking in the bowed-jazz arena, I received a CD from Germany that featured a quartet (piano, drums, string bass) with Manhattan violinist Mark Feldman, who has been on the front lines of jazz-violin development for years. Expecting to hear more amplified violin mixed far back amid the piano and drums, I put Extroversion (Timescraper Records, available from Fidicinstr. 24, 10965 Berlin, Germany; www.timescraper.de) in my CD player and finally found what I’d been looking for—from a violin recorded with a mic, not a pickup. This recording of Feldman’s band, the Chromatic Persuaders, is a step forward in the string-jazz concept equivalent to Ponty’s Sunday Walk. I believe Extroversion belongs on the shelf of every jazz string player who is interested in the state of the art. Feldman has managed to internalize horn-based bebop jazz language but doesn’t overuse it, instead relegating it to a color in his personal palette. He has developed a new violin-friendly jazz concept that freely uses all of the violin’s sonority and history but is not enslaved by any part. The most exciting thing about the cliché-free playing on this recording is that Feldman uses just about every possible tone or sound that can be extracted from a violin to make this music. One hears a constant stream of echoes of other artists, other styles, veiled melodic references, and quotes of everyone from Monk to Beethoven to Wieniawski. But it still has a huge core jazz ethic and it swings—swings intensely. In fact, "intensity" describes this entire recording. The sheer quantity of harmonic and rhythmic creativity packed into each moment of the music is electrifying, comparable to some of the work of the great jazz ensembles—dare I mention the great Coltrane/Tyner/Jones/Garrison quartet? In these days of copyists and cheap comparisons for the sake of hype, I want to say that this music doesn’t sound like that group, but the energy level and jazz feeling is absolutely in the same ballpark. Led by New York pianist Neal Kirkwood, the group recorded these tunes in Germany. Feldman’s sound on this CD is some of the best recorded jazz-violin tone I’ve ever heard. A fine acoustic violin, close-miked, is intense; all the detail of bow and box is there in your face, beautifully blended with the equally bodacious sound of an incredibly tight and spunky jazz group tearing its material to shreds and reassembling it on the spot. And with tone goes great intonation: technically, Feldman is as good as any jazz violinist ever. This kind of technical display could be annoying in the wrong situation, but the sheer ferocious joy and humor of this band comes through so strongly that one is left feeling that it could never have been played any other way. So for all my complaining, we have a wonderful, hopeful situation for improvising string players, a huge expansion in educational resources, and increasing acceptance of string players in every music style. We have lots of raw talent and potential among players, and slowly improving technical means. And we have a document showing just how far this instrument can go, and promising much more to those who are willing to devote a lifetime to exploring the violin’s jazz potential. —Darol Anger
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Jazz-violin
lovers have never had a richer field to choose from. There has been an
impressive groundswell of jazz-violin CD releases in the last year, as
the work begun in the early 1970s by fiddlers and young string teachers
to bring stringed instruments out of their folk and classical "boxes"
into the contemporary-music mainstream is finally producing a flood of
jazz, near-jazz, new acoustic, and similarly unclassifiable musical projects
that bode well for the future of string playing.