Violinist without borders: Her music is all over the map and that’s how she likes it
As a child of Detroit, Regina Carter learned not to limit the range of the music she absorbed. Not surprisingly, that sense of artistic adventure also fuels her adult career as a violinist who feels no need to put blinders on the sounds, style and songs she explores.
“I grew up in Detroit in the ‘60s,” said Carter, who closes the second season of the Origins Jazz Series with a Friday evening performance presented in conjunction with First Presbyterian Church’s Music for Mission program. “The radio stations there weren’t run by corporations. You heard all kinds of music. Growing up in my house, I was listening to mostly to the European classical records my teachers sent home. But my brothers were listening to the Beatles and Motown. We had a great jazz station, WJZZ, that played everything. You just heard all these different styles on one radio station. Plus, Detroit was so ethnically mixed. I was going to school with kids whose parents or grandparents were from other countries and hearing their classical music and what they were listening to.
“There is so much music on this planet. I never wanted to box myself in. I just refused. I remember, actually, on my first album for Verve Records (1999’s ‘Rhythms of the Heart’), someone at the label said, ‘You know, your record is a little all over the map. People aren’t going to take you seriously.’
“I just feel like when people come out to hear music or put records on, they aren’t thinking, ‘Oh. I’m just going to listen to jazz.’ They might put on a Chicago record. Next they might to listen Ella (Fitzgerald) or they might listen to Motown. I don’t want to limit what I do. I don’t think it’s fair to force that on an audience.
Ella. One of the most beloved vocalists of any generation. While many inspirations went into Carter’s playing as she evolved from a classical player to a jazz artist (and the list is a long one, running from Motown to Paganini), the great Ella Fitzgerald was at the forefront. While she frequently peppered her recordings with Ella favorites, Carter’s most recent album, “Ella: Accentuate the Positive,” was devoted exclusively to less obvious fare from the great vocalist’s career. It earned the violinist a Grammy nomination.
“I fell in love with Ella when I was a child. We had her records playing around the house and I’d put them on. I remember hearing her voice and just falling in love with it. She was an amazing human being as well as vocalist and musician.
“When I put ‘Ella: Accentuate the Positive’ together, it was around her 100th birthday. I knew that probably several musicians would be doing tribute records to her. So I wanted to explore some of the music that wasn’t that well known to people or that people had forgotten about because Ella has recorded everything from doo wop to country/western to pop songs to bebop, so decided to call it, like, my B side record of songs that weren’t that well known. It also gave me more room to kind of mess around with the arrangements on those tunes because they weren’t so well known.”
For her first Lexington concert in over 15 years, Carter will perform a typically diverse repertoire as a duo with her longstanding pianist Xavier Davis. While the duo setting provides a spaciousness that larger band situations often can’t provide, what distinguishes a two-person lineup for Carter, especially when she works with Davis, is something more personal and involved – trust.
“I usually think of a violin/piano duo in the European classical sense. It’s pretty normal there, although I guess it is in jazz, as well. Whenever you’re in a duo setting, you want to make sure you have someone you can trust. At least I do. I have to know I can trust a person because there is so much space. With Xavier, I feel like there is a connection. We don’t even have to speak. There is just a connection musically and spiritually that happens where we can create magic.
“It’s like taking a painting part and putting it back together. There is no fear in just trying something new and going somewhere new with him without having the support of all the other instruments. I know that he’s got me.”
If you go: Regina Carter and Xavier Davis
When: 7:30 p.m. May 3
Where: First Presbyterian Church, 171 Market St.
Admission: Free. Donations will be requested to benefit the Central Music Academy
Call: 859-252-1919
Online: originsjazz.org, reginacarter.com
This story was originally published May 1, 2019 at 10:12 AM.