THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, September 1, 1995 TAG: 9509010057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MARVIN LAKE, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEW YORK. LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
``STEPHANE GRAPPELLI. John Blake. Jean-Luc Ponty. . . . ''
Regina Carter is ticking off the names of well-known jazz violinists.
``There are a few out there,'' she says, with a sigh.
The list, the Detroit-born violinist notes, is pitifully short. And don't mention female violinists. They're really scarce. ``The violin,'' she notes, ``is a very male-dominated instrument.''
It's also much misunderstood, Carter says, explaining: ``People in the industry still react very - I don't want to say coldly - but they're very shy; they're very afraid of the violin. I think a lot of people look at the violin and they get a bit nervous. They have a stereotype of what the violin is - very high, kind of shrill sounding with long notes and lots of vibrato.
``It doesn't have to be that way at all. It can be a very fiery percussive instrument, and that's how I like to use it.''
Regina Carter wants to change the way many people think of the violin. After several years with Straight Ahead, the critically acclaimed all-female jazz group, the violinist is flying solo.
Hits magazine calls Carter, 30, ``a musician unafraid of boundaries.'' On her self-titled CD for Atlantic, Carter, who has studied with classical violinists Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin, calls on musical muses from funk to Latin to fusion to gospel.
``I don't label myself a jazz violinist,'' Carter says. ``My music has an R&B flavor to it because I grew up listening to a lot of Motown. But I was exposed to a lot of different kinds of music, so I just tried to take all of those elements and put it on this record.''
But she meets some resistance.
``I still get radio stations that get the CD and when they find out I'm a violin player, they say they won't play it. So the company has to really harp on them to play it, and then they play it and they say, `Oh, OK, it's not what we thought.'''
Carter knows that being female makes her something of a novelty. ``I think it definitely helps,'' she admits.
Carter was a child prodigy who could play her oldest brother's piano lesson by ear at age 2. Her mother enrolled her in violin lessons, but the teacher suggested that she play at home on her own.
``At that time,'' Carter recalls, ``I was just really creative. I wanted to write my own tunes, and the teacher didn't want to stifle that creativity.
``When I was 4, the same teacher called and told my mother there was a method for violin called Suzuki that she thought would be very good for me.''
Essentially, the students learned violin not by reading music but by playing by ear. ``Which is what I was doing anyway,'' Carter recalls.
``It was a very loving type of system that really helped my ear,'' she has said.
At Cass Technical School, a college prep school, Carter majored in music, played in the orchestra and a chamber group, and sang in the choir.
Weaned on European classical music, Carter decided early she wanted to be a soloist with major symphonies. ``Then when I was switching over and playing jazz and other music, I wanted to record and be a solo recording artist. So I just sort of worked toward that.''
She studied at Boston's New England Conservatory of Music, rooming with keyboardist Rachel Z (who plays on Carter's debut LP), taking classes with hornmen Najee and Nelson Rangell, and studying with pianist Fred Hirsch. She later attended Oakland University in Rochester, Mich., where she majored in classical and African-American music.
She later spent two years in Munich, Germany, largely transcribing jazz classics and trying to find herself, before returning to Detroit in 1987.
A telephone call from Miche Branen, a vocalist and Straight Ahead founder, changed Carter's life. Branen will appear with Carter in Norfolk.
``They were looking for a horn player,'' Carter recalls. ``They didn't find one, so they called me and asked me if I would be interested in joining the group. I told them, for a while, because my plan then was that I'd be moving to New York the following year.''
The group, which began as a straight-ahead jazz ensemble but gradually metamorphosed into a melding of various musical influences, gained critical and commercial success with two Atlantic albums.
When the group got ready to do a third CD, Carter decided to jump ship. She had earlier rejected Atlantic's offer to record solo, fearful that she might bomb and that her departure might wreck the group's success.
She really wanted to do a solo recording while staying with Straight Ahead. But her move to New York in 1991 put a crimp in those plans.
``A lot of times, I was getting a lot of work offers from people here that I really admired, and so sometimes the dates would start to conflict,'' Carter says. ``I just felt like it wasn't really fair for me . . . to keep calling to say I can't make that gig. And I wasn't going to cancel what I had here with people, 'cause you do that and people stop calling you.''
So she split, taking the solo deal.
Will her efforts open doors for young violin players much like Wynton Marsalis' did for horn players?
``We'll I'm trying to,'' she says. ``The thing is Wynton was playing an instrument that was already accepted.
``I don't see the industry opening up and trying to track down a whole bunch of violin players. I think we're still having a very difficult time. But I know we're not going to give up.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Regina Carter will perform today at Town Point Park in Norfolk.
KEYWORDS: PROFILE BIOGRAPHY JAZZ VIOLIN by CNB