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Motor City classic

Violinist Regina Carter bridges the old and new worlds
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November 14th, 2007 issue

By Patrick Sisson

For the Post

COURTESY PHOTO
Trained as a classical performer, Carter rediscovered her American roots in jazz.
Regina Carter

When: Sunday, Nov. 18, at 7:30
Where: Rudolfinum
Tickets: 300–900 Kč, available at the National Theater box office and at the venue

Like many American expatriates in Europe, jazz violinist Regina Carter sought perspective when she moved to Germany in 1987. After earning a double major in college, attending an intense arts high school in her hometown Detroit and wearing grooves in stacks of classical records as a child, she wanted time to figure things out.
“My mother was a schoolteacher, and she always did our homework with us,” Carter says. “She would mark it up and tell us what we did wrong. It was school after school.”
Carter loved her time overseas, performing with various ensembles and spending a carefree year falling in love with her surroundings. But then it was time to get serious. She started spending hours transposing Charlie Parker solos for violin, memorizing the Bird’s fluid melodic twists and setting a course for her career.
Those years brought out the two sides of Carter’s personality — student and adventurer — that have made her such a well-regarded jazz violinist and compelling performer. When she brings her quartet to the Rudolfinum this weekend, Carter will be in her element.
“I love what I get from the audience,” she says. “That feeds my soul. I love the energy and feedback.”
Though she has performed alongside jazz greats such as Ray Brown and Max Roach, and received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, often called the “genius grant,” Carter wasn’t immediately hooked by the genre. But when her high school friend Carla Cook, who’s now a jazz vocalist, started playing her jazz records, Carter’s interest was piqued. She asked her parents to buy her some vinyl for Christmas.
“I got Ornette Coleman’s Dancing in Your Head, Eric Dolphy’s Out to Lunch and some Miles Davis,” Carter recalls. “And I hated it. I thought they were noise. If this was it, I didn’t want it. Obviously, I didn’t leave it. It showed me that there were all kinds of styles that fall under the heading ‘jazz.’ Later on my ears developed, and those albums became some of my favorite recordings.”
Carter’s winding career path demonstrates a willful disregard for pigeonholing her sound. A classically trained violinist, she made the switch to jazz late in high school. She refers to the music she plays now as American classical music, and manages to balance the ambition and vitality of both classical and jazz styles with a rich, thick sound.
Her last few albums for the historic Verve label include a selection of standards dedicated to her late mother (I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey); a collection of jazz, funk and soul tracks by Detroit artists reworked for the violin (Motor City Moments); and Paganini: After a Dream, on which she plays Nicolo Paganini’s renowned Guarneri violin. Very few musicians are allowed to play the instrument, left by the Italian virtuoso to the city of Genoa upon his death in 1840, and Carter had to pass a stringent background check.
“They asked me what string and bow I use, who my teachers are,” she says. “They even dug up an interview from 10 years ago when I said I’d never play violin without a pickup. It was pretty serious. At first I was offended, thinking it was just because I was a jazz player. Then I figured out — it is a 300-year-old violin, and they have to make sure the player respects it.”
For the recording, Carter chose a wide-ranging selection of pieces that included classical, bossa nova, tango, movie soundtrack music and one of her own compositions. That’s a good indication of what to expect this weekend.
“There’s an attraction to performing songs I don’t want to analyze,” she says. “Some songs just have a great emotional connection. I don’t want to play anything that doesn’t excite me.”
Patrick Sisson can be reached at features@praguepost.com


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