CURATION
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from this page:
by Matrix
Network Node
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Name:
Regina Carter
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City/Place:
Maywood, New Jersey
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Country:
United States
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Hometown:
Detroit, Michigan
Life
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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.
More
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Quotes, Notes & Etc.
ENDORSEMENTS
VIOLIN
R.S. Berkley
New Jersey, USA
www.reginacarterviolincollection.com
CARBON BOW
Les Nouveaux Materiaux, Marseille, France
www.carbow.com
Clips (more may be added)
The Integrated Global Creative Economy
Wolfram Mathematics
This technological matrix originating in Bahia, Brazil and positioning creators around the world within reach of each other and the entire planet is able to do so because it is small-world (see Wolfram).
Bahia itself, final port-of-call for more enslaved human beings than any other place on earth throughout all of human history, refuge for Lusitanian Sephardim fleeing the Inquisition, Indigenous both apart and subsumed into a sociocultural matrix comprised of these three peoples and more, is small-world.
Human society, the billions of us, is small-world. Neural structures for human memory are small-world...
In small worlds great things are possible.
Alicia Svigals
"Thanks, this is a brilliant idea!!"
—Alicia Svigals (NEW YORK CITY): Apotheosis of klezmer violinists
"I'm truly thankful ... Sohlangana ngokuzayo :)"
—Nduduzo Makhathini (JOHANNESBURG): piano, Blue Note recording artist
"Dear Sparrow: I am thrilled to receive your email! Thank you for including me in this wonderful matrix."
—Susan Rogers (BOSTON): Director of the Berklee Music Perception and Cognition Laboratory ... Former personal recording engineer for Prince; "Purple Rain", "Sign o' the Times", "Around the World in a Day"
"Dear Sparrow, Many thanks for this – I am touched!"
—Julian Lloyd Webber (LONDON): Premier cellist in UK; brother of Andrew (Evita, Jesus Christ Superstar, Cats, Phantom of the Opera...)
"This is super impressive work ! Congratulations ! Thanks for including me :)))"
—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
"We appreciate you including Kamasi in the matrix, Sparrow."
—Banch Abegaze (LOS ANGELES): manager, Kamasi Washington
"Thanks! It looks great!....I didn't write 'Cantaloupe Island' though...Herbie Hancock did! Great Page though, well done! best, Randy"
"Very nice! Thank you for this. Warmest regards and wishing much success for the project! Matt"
—Son of Jimmy Garrison (bass for John Coltrane, Bill Evans...); plays with Herbie Hancock and other greats...
Dear friends & colleagues,
Having arrived in Salvador 13 years earlier, I opened a record shop in 2005 in order to create an outlet to the wider world for Bahian musicians, many of them magisterial but unknown.
David Dye & Kim Junod for NPR found us (above), and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (he's a huge jazz fan), David Byrne, Oscar Castro-Neves... Spike Lee walked past the place while I was sitting on the stoop across the street drinking beer and listening to samba from the speaker in the window...
But we weren't exactly easy for the world-at-large to get to. So in order to extend the place's ethos I transformed the site associated with it into a network wherein Brazilian musicians I knew would recommend other Brazilian musicians, who would recommend others...
And as I anticipated, the chalky hand of God-as-mathematician intervened: In human society — per the small-world phenomenon — most of the billions of us on earth are within some 6 or fewer degrees of each other. Likewise, within a network of interlinked artists as I've described above, most of these artists will in the same manner be at most a handful of steps away from each other.
So then, all that's necessary to put the Bahians and other Brazilians within possible purview of the wide wide world is to include them among a wide wide range of artists around that world.
If, for example, Quincy Jones is inside the matrix (people who have passed are not removed), then anybody on his page — whether they be accessing from a campus in L.A., a pub in Dublin, a shebeen in Cape Town, a tent in Mongolia — will be close, transitable steps away from Raymundo Sodré, even if they know nothing of Brazil and are unaware that Sodré sings/dances upon this planet. Sodré, having been knocked from the perch of fame and ground into anonymity by Brazil's dictatorship, has now the alternative of access to the world-at-large via recourse to the vast potential of network theory.
...to the degree that other artists et al — writers, researchers, filmmakers, painters, choreographers...everywhere — do also. Artificial intelligence not required. Real intelligence, yes.
Years ago in NYC I "rescued" unpaid royalties (performance & mechanical) for artists/composers including Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Mongo Santamaria, Jim Hall, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd (for his rights in Bob Marley compositions; Clement was Bob's first producer), Led Zeppelin, Ray Barretto, Philip Glass and many others. Aretha called me out of the blue vis-à-vis money owed by Atlantic Records. Allen Klein (managed The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles) called about money due the estate of Sam Cooke. Jerry Ragovoy (Time Is On My Side, Piece of My Heart) called just to see if he had any unpaid money floating around out there (the royalty world was a shark-filled jungle, to mangle metaphors, and I doubt it's changed).
But the pertinent client (and friend) in the present context is Earl "Speedo" Carroll, of The Cadillacs. Earl went from doo-wopping on Harlem streetcorners to chart-topping success to working as a custodian at PS 87 elementary school on the west side of Manhattan. Through all of this he never lost what made him great.
Greatness and fame are too often conflated. The former should be accessible independently of the latter.
Matrix founding creators are behind "one of 10 of the best (radios) around the world", per The Guardian.
Recent access to this matrix and Bahia are from these places (a single marker can denote multiple accesses).
Across the creative universe... For another list, reload page.
This list is random, and incomplete. Reload the page for another list.
For a complete list of everybody inside, tap TOTAL below:
TOTAL
Nduduzo Makhathini
Susan Rogers
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Kamasi Washington
Randy Brecker
Matt Garrison
RÁDIO MATRIX