The Delete BinRegina Carter Plays “Pavane”
Listen to this track by classically-trained violinist and musical boundary crosser Regina Carter. It’s “Pavane”, a beloved and deeply melancholic piece by French composer Gabriel Urbain Fauré. Carter’s rendition appears on her 2003 record, Paganini: After a Dream on the legendary jazz label Verve. Trading as it does on improvisation within the confines of a timeless melody, the jazz label certainly applies. But this piece is one that finds her embracing her roots in the world of European classical music as well.
Fauré composed the piece in 1887, written originally for piano but then rearranged and popularized for full orchestra and chorus. The piece is named after a tradition associated with a processional dance that originated from 16th Century Spain, inspiring a listener’s imagination to entertain romantic images of another age. Updated here in a jazz format and with subtle bossa nova flourishes, Regina Carter’s version is appropriately evocative in a similar way even as her arrangement proves the melody’s sturdiness for a jazz ensemble and strings. Carter’s career seemed to be fully engaged in an exchange between present and the distant past, invited into classical traditions in a way that most American jazz musicians, and musicians in general, are not.
At the end of 2001 and post 9/11, Carter played a concert in Genoa. On that occasion, the appearance was notable not only for her virtuoso skills as a violinist. It was the specific instrument she was playing that helped to make the appearance all the more special. The violin in question was Il Cannone Guarnerius, made in 1743 by Italian luthier Giuseppe Bartolomeo Guarneri. Violin virtuoso and famous one-time Genoa resident Niccolò Paganini who came to own the instrument called it “my cannon violin” due to the power and resonance it provided.
Receiving it as a gift from a generous benefactor, Paganini would play it for the rest of his life. In 1840, the year of his death, the instrument was bequeathed to the city of Genoa where Regina Carter would appear on stage with it 161 years later.
Regina Carter in 2006 in performance with her quintet at the North Sea Jazz Festival.image: Bob Travis.
When a violin has its own name, you know that you’ve achieved a rarified level of honour in being invited to play it. Regina Carter was the first jazz musician and African-American to do so. To her, it really must have felt like a dream. To get to record an album while playing that same instrument must have felt like a career milestone as well, although there were restrictions placed upon what kind of music she could play while using the famous instrument.
“I was told that the music had to match the violin, and my roots are in classical European music,” Carter says. “The compositions were set up so that the main melodies segue into solo sections where I could improvise and then return to the familiar melodies.”
~ “Paganini’s Violin Inspires Regina Carter’s ‘Dream’”, Billboard Magazine, April 2003 (read the whole article)
With those rules in place, Carter and her ensemble set up the dynamics that bring out the strengths of the traditions they combine so seamlessly here. They preserve familiar classical melody and place it in the context of new chord structures that affect its temperature and mood. In doing so, the band inject a bit of lightness into the proceedings to enhance that melody that borders on the sombre, but without taking away from the understated reverence that Fauré put into it over a century before.
This arrangement also underscores how accessible “Pavane” is and has been since Fauré wrote it. It’s almost a pop song in how singable it is, being a compact and self-contained melody that is also fluid and inviting. But like many of the tunes Carter chose for the record, “Pavane” also serves as a welcoming platform for improvisation. She injects lilting turns of musical phrase with a just a hint of the blues which might have been unforeseen by Paganini, but sure to have intrigued him.
Carter frames the whole piece in a kind of cinematic sheen, with many of her phrases effective enough just to set the mood as if as a part of a soundtrack to an unfolding drama. As far as her use of The Cannon goes, she manages to coax a lightness of tone out of the instrument. Her lines are marked not so much by power, but by the control of it in her sense of restraint.
The dynamics between Carter’s violin and pianist Werner “Vana” Gierig, who also conducts the 18-piece orchestra on this track, sound symbiotically bonded. Both these musicians, along with the core jazz ensemble double bassist Chris Lightcap, drummer Alvester Garnett, and percussionist Mayra Casales, greatly benefit from the limitations that traditional classical intepretation places on their respective parts as jazz players.
In this way, the beauty of the melody is served in a modern context, with the solos and the backing rhythms being interesting enough to have a life of their own outside of the source material. This is the core reason this works so well as a seamless amalgam of classical structure as it’s met with jazz improvisation and instrumental dynamics.
Another takeaway here with its connection to musical traditions and celebrated figures of the past is that melodies and sounds project a sense of vital continuity between musical eras, paradigms, and cultural backgrounds. Sometimes, in playing and appreciate great music, musicians and listeners alike temporarily have the power to transcend the limitations of time itself. In playing the music, the lines between traditions seem immaterial. As an American jazz musician with a mastery in classical technique and sensibilities, Carter’s role in the music here proves that well.
Listening to this piece, a work that was written to evoke the past when Fauré first penned it, it feels like no time exists between eras and musicians at all.
Regina Carter is an active musician, bandleader, and composer today. In addition to working in the jazz field, she’s also worked with pop rock singer-songwriter Joe Jackson, salsa musician Eddie Palmieri, rap and R&B vocalist Lauryn Hill, country music maven Dolly Parton, and many more. Learn more about her at reginacarter.com.
Check out the story of Regina Carter and “The Cannon” by listening to this May 2003 interview with Regina Carter on NPR.
Enjoy!
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Laurent David
Guitar Bot