Bio:
Trying to fit Regina Carter into a neatly defined musical category is pointless. She enjoys performing many styles of music—jazz, R&B, Latin, classical, blues, country, pop, African, and on and on. In each she explores the power of music through the voice of the violin.
A recipient of the MacArthur “genius” award and a Doris Duke Artist Award, Regina has been widely hailed for her mastery of her instrument and her drive to expand its possibilities. In 2018 she was nominated for a Grammy for Best Improvised Solo for “Some of That Sunshine,” the title track on vocalist Karrin Allyson’s album. Besides performing, Regina is artistic director of the Geri Allen Jazz Camp, a unique summer immersion program sponsored by NJPAC for aspiring women jazz professionals. She is on the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music and is artist in residence at the Oakland University School of Music, Theatre, and Dance. Past positions have included resident artist for San Francisco Performances and resident artistic director for SFJAZZ.
Born in Detroit, Regina began studying violin at the age of four using the Suzuki method. She attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit, and her training continued at the New England Conservatory of Music and at Oakland University in Michigan for jazz. She taught violin in public schools in Detroit and on a U.S. military base in Germany. She first gained attention with Straight Ahead, an all-female jazz quintet that celebrated its 25-year reunion at the 2018 Detroit Jazz Festival. She also recorded and toured for six years with The String Trio of New York.
In 1995 Regina released her self-titled solo debut on Atlantic Records. Three more albums followed in rapid succession: Something for Grace (1997), Rhythms of the Heart (1999), and Motor City Moments (2000), all on Verve. Traveling to Genoa, Italy, and making history by being the first nonclassical violinist to play Niccolò Paganini’s Il Cannone (“The Cannon”), the legendary violin built by Giuseppe Guarneri in 1743, inspired her next effort, Paganini: After a Dream (Verve, 2003). I'll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey (Verve, 2006) became a powerful and heartfelt tribute to her late mother. The connection to family, history, and tradition continued in Reverse Thread (E1 Music, 2010) and Southern Comfort (Sony Masterworks, 2014), drawing ties between her own African heritage and her family’s history. Her most recent release, Ella: Accentuate the Positive (OKeh, 2017), celebrates the music and spirit of her inspiration, musical legend Ella Fitzgerald.
Regina also can be heard on such albums as Arturo O’Farrill’s Fandango at the Wall: A Soundtrack for the United States, Mexico and Beyond; Stefon Harris’s Sonic Creed; John Beasley’s MONK’estra, volume 2; and James Carter’s Caribbean Rhapsody, along with Eddie Palmieri's Listen Here!, which won a 2005 Grammy award for best Latin Jazz album, and the Grammy-nominated Freefall with Kenny Barron.
She has performed at numerous jazz festivals, including Monterey, Newport, Detroit, New Orleans, Atlanta, Bern, Montreux, Miami, Rochester, Montreal, Mid-Atlantic (Washington, DC), PDX (Portland, Oregon), Vitoria-Gasteiz (Spain), and North Sea (Rotterdam, the Netherlands). Among the orchestras she has appeared with are the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony, the Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado de São Paulo, the Atlanta Symphony, the Knoxville Jazz Orchestra, and the Chicago Sinfonietta. Particularly thrilling was her participation in the 2017 International Jazz Day All-Star Global Concert in Havana, Cuba.
A winner of multiple readers’ and critics’ poll awards from DownBeat, JazzTimes, and other publications, Regina tours with her own group and has appeared frequently as a guest soloist, including with such performers as Kenny Barron, the late bassist Ray Brown, Akua Dixon, Steve Turre, Stefon Harris, George Wein, Mary J. Blige, the late Aretha Franklin, Joe Jackson, Billy Joel, Dolly Parton, Omara Portuondo, Cassandra Wilson, Sweet Honey In The Rock, Rhiannon Giddens, and Chieli Minucci and Special EFX.
Regina has twice been a Pulitzer Prize jurist and has served as a Film and Music panelist for the Kresge Artist Fellowships. She received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from Albion College in 2006.
Along with performing, recording, teaching, and mentoring, Regina is passionate about bringing music into nursing homes and hospice settings. As part of that commitment, she trained to be a hospice volunteer at Hospice of New Jersey, in Bloomfield.
Regina lives in Maywood, New Jersey, with her husband, drummer Alvester Garnett.
The Recôncavo is an almost invisible center-of-gravity. Circumscribing the Bay of All Saints, this region was landing for more enslaved human beings than any other such throughout all of human history. Not unrelated, it is also birthplace of some of the most physically & spiritually uplifting music ever made. —Sparrow
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers: Personal recording engineer for Prince, inc. "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"... Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay. They paid.
MATRIX MUSICAL
The Matrix was built below among some of the world's most powerfully moving music, some of it made by people barely known beyond village borders. Or in the case of Sodré, his anthem A MASSA — a paean to Brazil's poor ("our pain is the pain of a timid boy, a calf stepped on...") — having blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south, before he was silenced. (that's me left, with David Dye & Kim Junod for U.S. National Public Radio) ... The Matrix started with Sodré, with João do Boi, with Roberto Mendes, with Bule Bule, with Roque Ferreira... music rooted in the sugarcane plantations of Bahia. Hence our logo (a cane cutter).