REGINA CARTER

Violinist
September 15th, 8:00pm, Bates College Chapel

As her self-titled debut on Atlantic jazz demonstrates, Regina Carter is on a mission to change the way most people think about violin. "I think a lot of people look at the violin and they get a little nervous," Carter notes. "They have a stereotype of wh at the violin is - very high, kind of shrill-sounding with long notes, and a lot of vibrato. It doesn't have to be that at all, it can be a very fiery persuasive instrument and that's how I like to use it. I don't think of the music trying to fit the viol in," she continues, "or how to make the violin work in this music. For me, it just does. I'm not playing it as a violin. Instead of being so melodic, which I can be, I tend to use the instrument in more of a rhythmic way, using vamp rhythms or a lot of sy ncopated rhythms, approaching it more like a horn player does. So, I don't feel that I have a lot of limitations - I feel like I can do anything."

Carter, wrote music journalist Charlie Hunt in the Detroit Free Press, "plays a mean and feisty violin." Until 1991, the violinist was based in Detroit, where she gigged tirelessly, determined to make it as a full-time performer of improvised music. Carte r was heard regularly all over town - sitting in on jam sessions, as part of the annual jazz festival, and in bands with trumpeter Marches Belgrave, drummer Lawrence Williams, saxophonist Donald Walden, keyboardist Lyman Woodard and clarinetist Wendel Har rison. In 1987 she joined the Detroit-based quintet Straight Ahead. Carter moved to New York in 1991, and by 1993 she was respected among New York's creative musical vanguard as a thoughtful improviser who is also a superb technician. The following year she left Straight Ahead.

A direction as unique as Carter's usually roots itself early. She was only 2 years old when she was playing her older brother's piano lesson by ear. She also recalls the Suzuki method as a particular influence when she began violin lessons at age 4. "It w as a different way of learning that didn't force reading. Basically you were just playing the instrument and having fun with it. It was a very loving type of system, that really helped my ear. For me now, it's great for improvising because I do most of th at by ear. I notice a lot of people are trying to do that," she adds. "I followed a more non-traditional route. I initially learned by ear, then later learned to read, then learned theory. I think that kind of experience has freed my playing up a lot more, so I'm not stuck on the page. A lot of people are afraid not to have a piece of music in front of them. "I knew I wanted to play improvised music after I heard a record by violinist Jean-Luc Ponty (another Atlantic jazz artist). Ever since then, I've been dreaming of my f irst solo project."

When her first solo recording was realized, Carter felt it was important to meld the diverse musical elements she had the fortune of encountering up to that point. "Coming up in Detroit, there were so many different types of music going on live," she obse rves. Parliament/Funkadelic, the Symphony Orchestra, Motown - just about anything. So, I didn't get just one point of view growing up musically, I had the opportunity to absorb a lot of things. This record is Regina Carter," she declares. "It's a lot of t hings - African beats to Billie Holiday, but it's not all over the place. Each tune naturally leads right into the next. I feel a natural progression throughout the recording and I'm extremely happy with it."