Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. Early jazz violinists included: Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; and Claude "Fiddler" Williams. Joe Venuti was popular for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Improvising violinists include Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. In jazz fusion, violinists may use an electric violin plugged into an instrument amplifier with electronic effects.
Jazz violin began in New Orleans in the early 1900s. [1] Arrangements for ragtime orchestras had parts for violins in which they were as important as the other instruments. [1] The violin was a lead instrument in the recordings of A. J. Piron, [2] whose trumpeter Peter Bocage also played violin. [1] Alphonso Trent and Andy Kirk employed violinists in their territory bands. [1] Stuff Smith played violin as a member of Trent's band in the 1920s and tinkered with acoustic and electric means of increasing the volume of the instrument. [1] Claude Williams alternated between guitar and violin when as a member of the Count Basie orchestra. [1] In Chicago, Eddie South was violinist and music director for Jimmy Wade. [1] South was accompanied by Juice Wilson when both were members of the Freddie Keppard band. [1] Violin is one instrument Edgar Sampson performed on as a member of the Fletcher Henderson band in the 1930s. [1] Angelina Rivera was a classically trained violinist who worked with Josephine Baker and Spencer Williams. [1] W. C. Handy conducted an orchestra with a three-violin section that included Darnell Howard. [1] Paul Whiteman's jazz orchestra a had a string section that was led by Matty Malneck. [1] The bands of Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, and Earl Hines had string sections, though they didn't improvise. [1] Bandleaders who were also violinists included Leon Abbey, Clarence Black, Carroll Dickerson, and Erskine Tate. [1]
Violin became a solo instrument in jazz largely through the efforts of Stuff Smith, Eddie South, Stephane Grappelli, and Joe Venuti. [1] [2] Venuti was in a popular duo with guitarist Eddie Lang beginning in the 1920s. [1] [2] Grappelli was a member of the gypsy jazz group Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt. [1] [2] In the 1930s when swing was dominant, other violinists included Darnell Howard, Ray Nance, Ray Perry, Svend Asmussen, [1] and Michel Warlop. [2] Perry and Ginger Smock provided a link from swing violin to bebop. [1] Examples of bop violin in the 1950s include Dick Wetmore and Harry Lookofsky, who was in the NBC Orchestra led by Arturo Toscanini. [1] Jean-Luc Ponty played bop violin in the 1960s as did Elek Bacsik in the 1970s. [1]
The violin is well-represented in modern jazz and improvisational music. [3] Mark Feldman is one of the leading performers in modern and contemporary jazz violin, along with Scott Tixier, Mat Maneri, Billy Bang and Jean-Luc Ponty. Adam Taubitz founded The Berlin Philharmonic Jazz Group. With this group he played -and still does- as a soloist on the trumpet and the violin in Europe and the Far East. Regina Carter regularly appears in readers' and critic's polls at Downbeat magazine while playing in an earthy, R&B-influenced style. [4] [5] In gypsy jazz, contemporary violin players include Romanian born Florin Niculescu, Belgian Tcha Limberger, and French violinist and guitarist Dorado Schmitt. [6]
Big bands are loud, but the violin is quiet. One person to address the problem was Augustus Stroh, who invented the Stroh violin in the 1890s that was inspired by the gramophone, [1] with a horn connected to project the sound. In the 1930s, Stuff Smith experimented with electric amplification. [1] [2] Since the 1980s an electric violin has been used in which a transducer is built into the instrument. [1]
Jean-Luc Ponty's attraction to jazz was influenced by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, which led him to the electric violin. Critic Joachim Berendt wrote, "Since Ponty, the jazz violin has been a different instrument" and compared his phrasing to Coltrane's. [7]
Jean Reinhardt, known by his Romani nickname Django, was a Romani-French jazz guitarist and composer. He was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and has been hailed as one of its most significant exponents.
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals.
Jazz guitar may refer to either a type of electric guitar or a guitar playing style in jazz, using electric amplification to increase the volume of acoustic guitars.
Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist. He is best known as a founder of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands. He has been called "the grandfather of jazz violinists" and continued playing concerts around the world well into his eighties.
Eddie Lang was an American musician who is credited as the father of jazz guitar. During the 1920s, he gave the guitar a prominence it previously lacked as a solo instrument, as part of a band or orchestra, and as accompaniment for vocalists. He recorded duets with guitarists Lonnie Johnson and Carl Kress and jazz violinist Joe Venuti, and played rhythm guitar in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra and was the favoured accompanist of Bing Crosby.
Jean-Luc Ponty is a French jazz and jazz fusion violinist and composer.
Giuseppe "Joe" Venuti was an American jazz musician and pioneer jazz violinist.
Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith, better known as Stuff Smith, was an American jazz violinist. He is well known for the song "If You're a Viper".
Svend Asmussen was a Danish jazz violinist, known as "The Fiddling Viking". A Swing-style virtuoso, he played and recorded with many other notable jazz musicians, including Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Stephane Grappelli. He played publicly until 2010 when he had a blood clot, his career having spanned eight decades.
Biréli Lagrène is a French jazz guitarist who came to prominence in the 1980s for his Django Reinhardt–influenced style. He often performs in swing, jazz fusion, and post-bop styles.
Elana James is an American songwriter, Western swing, folk and jazz violinist, vocalist, and a founding member of the band Hot Club of Cowtown.
Tim Kliphuis is a Dutch violinist renowned for mixing gypsy jazz with classical and folk music, whose recent works have been dedicated to raising awareness about climate change.
Jazz guitarists are guitarists who play jazz using an approach to chords, melodies, and improvised solo lines which is called jazz guitar playing. The guitar has fulfilled the roles of accompanist and soloist in small and large ensembles and also as an unaccompanied solo instrument.
Didier Lockwood was a French violinist. He played in the French rock band Magma in the 1970s, and was known for his use of electric amplification and his experimentation with different sounds on the electric violin.
In the 1970s in jazz, jazz became increasingly influenced by Latin jazz, combining rhythms from African and Latin American countries, often played on instruments such as conga, timbale, güiro, and claves, with jazz and classical harmonies played on typical jazz instruments. Artists such as Chick Corea, John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola increasingly influenced the genre with jazz fusion, a hybrid form of jazz-rock fusion which was developed by combining jazz improvisation with rock rhythms, electric instruments, and the highly amplified stage sound of rock musicians such as Jimi Hendrix. All Music Guide states that "..until around 1967, the worlds of jazz and rock were nearly completely separate." However, "...as rock became more creative and its musicianship improved, and as some in the jazz world became bored with hard bop and did not want to play strictly avant-garde music, the two different idioms began to trade ideas and occasionally combine forces." On June 16, 1972 the New York Jazz Museum opened in New York City at 125 West 55th Street in a one and one-half story building. It became the most important institution for jazz in the world with a 25,000 item archive, free concerts, exhibits, film programs, etc.
Wild Cat is an instrumental duet for violin and guitar, composed by jazz guitarist Eddie Lang and violinist Joe Venuti.
The history of jazz in Belgium starts with the Dinant instrument maker Adolphe Sax, whose saxophone became part of military bands in New Orleans around 1900 and would develop into the jazz instrument par excellence. From then on the early history of jazz in Belgium virtually runs parallel to developments in the country of the birth of jazz, from the minstrel shows in the late 19th century until the first Belgian jazz album in 1927 and beyond.
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