[Dixielandjazz] Regina Carter - Best Jazz Violinist today

[Stephen Barbone]

I think I posted an article about this genius six months ago or so. She
is an incredible jazz violinist and an incredible lady. Great story.

Cheers,
Steve barbone

November 2, 2003 - New York Times

Regina Carter Keeps in Touch With a 260-Year-Old Friend

By TERRY TEACHOUT

Regina Carter has been cheating on her regular violin. So far, she's had
two flings with another, older instrument, and she'll be having a third
tomorrow night at Alice Tully Hall — in public, no less. You can't
exactly blame her for being disloyal, though. The instrument in
question,
known to connoisseurs as "Il Cannone" ("The Cannon") because of its big,
booming tone, is a priceless 1743 Guarneri belonging to the city
of Genoa, Italy, to which it was bequeathed in 1840 by Nicolò Paganini,
the greatest violin virtuoso in history.

At 36, Ms. Carter is widely considered the finest jazz violinist of her
generation, a hard-charging soloist whose precisely focused tone and
graceful
way with a ballad hint at her long years of classical training. She was
the first jazz musician ever to be invited to use Paganini's violin, on
which she
performed in Genoa two years ago. She used it again 10 months later to
record her latest CD, "Paganini: After a Dream" (Verve), and it has just

been flown to New York City under armed guard especially for tomorrow's
concert.

"My own instrument is just an old German violin," she confessed in a
recent interview at her Central Park West apartment. "I didn't feel
unfaithful
to it while I was playing the Cannon, but when I came back to it, I
went, `Ooh, what happened to you?' " Then she giggled. "I mean, I knew
who
Paganini was, I knew all about the violin, but when you actually touch
it and you know that he literally has touched this instrument, and now
you're
touching it — I felt like I was touching him."

A tiny woman with a nose ring, a charmingly gap-toothed grin à la David
Letterman and a face whose smooth planes might have been carved by
Brancusi on one of his very best days, Ms. Carter plays an instrument
that inspired some of the hottest improvisers of the 20th century. Yet
even
though Stéphane Grappelli, Stuff Smith and Joe Venuti played it
unforgettably well, the violin still strikes many people — some of whom,
it seems,
live right here in New York City — as not quite the thing for swing.

As a black woman who plays jazz violin, Regina Carter has had to contend
with three interlocking stereotypes. (Most jazz instrumentalists are
men,
most string players white, most violinists classical.) But she doesn't
waste time complaining about them, or anything else, though she has a
no-nonsense way of making her feelings known, especially when it comes
to those who wrongly suppose that you can't play real jazz on a violin.
"Back home in Detroit," she said, "everybody was positive and
supportive. But when I came to New York, I remember going to a certain
club to sit
in — I don't want to say which one — and I went in with a girlfriend of
mine, a great vocalist from Detroit. We signed up, but they kept on
bypassing our names. It was so lame. I remember the guy at the club
saying: `Oh, she's got this little violin. Now what's she going to do
with that?'
New York has to have an attitude — you're in the big city now, can you
hang?"

Ms. Carter's unwillingness to back down is all the more impressive
because she came to jazz comparatively late — and, like Miles Davis
before her,
over the stern objections of her mother, who thought playing jazz was no
way for a nice middle-class girl from Detroit to earn a living. "We
didn't
listen to jazz in my house," she recalled. "My dad liked easy listening,
and my mom wasn't musical. Now I buy CD's and take them home to her,
and she's so cute — she called me one day and said, `You know, I think I
like the blues!' But not back then. She was a kindergarten teacher, and
she
definitely believed in education. She checked our homework, knew all my
teachers, had their home phone numbers, and she thought music was
something I needed to have, so I started piano at 2 and violin at 4. I
was playing in the Detroit Civic Symphony when I was 12. I was the
youngest
person to join — everyone else was in college already. It was a very
structured life, all my life."

When Ms. Carter turned 16, everything changed. For her birthday, she
went with a schoolmate to hear a concert in Detroit by Grappelli, the
elegant
French violinist whose long artistic partnership with the fiery gypsy
guitarist Django Reinhardt established both men as Europe's first
world-class
jazz soloists. "That was what really pushed me over the edge," she said.
"Seeing how much fun he was having. So I went home that night and said,
`I want to play jazz,' and my mother said: `No, you're not. You're going
to get in someone's orchestra and have health insurance and a pension.'
We
fought and fought and fought."

Anyone capable of staring down an adamant mother and a clubful of
attitude-ridden New York City musicians is clearly well equipped to deal
with
recalcitrant record-company executives. As it turned out, that was
exactly what Ms. Carter had to do when Verve, her record label, showed
no
interest in recording her on the Cannon, even though her 2001 concert in
Genoa had attracted worldwide media attention.

"They didn't know who Paganini was," she said matter-of-factly. "They
couldn't have cared less. But it was so important to me to make that
record
that my family was actually going to pay for it if they had to. It was
just something I needed to do, period — and that's what sold them. Ron
Goldstein of Verve finally wrote me a letter and said, `I still don't
get it, I don't understand it, but I've never seen this kind of passion,
so that's why
we're going to help you.' I'm grateful, but I still don't really know
that they get it. What they're looking at is sales, and the sales are
great. Which is
fine, but if `After a Dream' had only sold one copy, I'd have been
disappointed, but it wouldn't have mattered, because I needed to do it.
It would
have haunted me if I hadn't." (As of now, the album has sold more than
50,000 copies, an impressive number for an instrumental jazz recording.)

On "Paganini: After a Dream," Ms. Carter plays warmly burnished versions
of such classical staples as Fauré's "Après un rêve" and "Pavane,"
Debussy's "Rêverie" and Ravel's "Pavane pour une infante défunte" (with
Luiz Bonfá's "Manha de Carnaval" and Astor Piazzolla's "Oblivion" to
add a touch of equatorial spice), accompanied by a string section. In
the hands of a lesser artist, the results might have been Muzak-bland,
but she
weaves sinuously in and out of Jorge Calandrelli's lush pop-jazz
arrangements, scattering beauty all along the way and sounding as though
she'd
been playing the Cannon since childhood.

This seeming confidence, she freely admits, was an illusion. "The Cannon
is a difficult instrument to get a tone out of," she said. "It doesn't
speak as
easy as my violin does, and it has a little bit of a gruffness — a much
darker tone — so you have to give yourself time to know how much bow
pressure to use. Also, it's bigger than my instrument, so none of the
higher notes are where I think they should be. On the recording, I had
enough
time to adjust to it, because I had it for four or five days, and maybe
by the third day I felt really comfortable with it, playing on it for
hours at a time.
For the concerts in Genoa and here in New York, where they give you two
hours in the morning, two hours at night, that's never enough time. And
then all the history that surrounds the instrument, and the guards in
the room with you at all times — well, you just feel like you don't even
want to
touch it. I was petrified!"

Petrified, but not intimidated. You can't talk to Regina Carter for very
long without realizing that her open, uncomplicatedly friendly manner is

wrapped around a hard core of determination, the vehicle that has taken
her from Detroit to Genoa to Alice Tully Hall. "As soon as we say we
want
something, the universe says O.K., and it's like an obstacle course gets
set up for you," she said. "Some people get part way through it and say,

`Never mind,' but if you really want it, you've got to be willing to dig
in and go through the whole course, no matter what. You have to have
blind
faith that you'll come out on the other side. It's especially difficult
in a world where everything is fast and in your face. Kids aren't taught
that if you
want something, you have to work for it. If you want it to last, you're
not going to get it fast. Anything you get fast is not yours to keep."  

(Terry Teachout, the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the
music critic of Commentary)