Stuff
Smith (Hezekiah Leroy Gordon Smith) was an American jazz violinist, singer, bandleader, and
composer born (in Portsmouth, Ohio) on August 14, 1909. Smith was the first jazz violinist to use an
amplified (electric) violin. However, as
were jazz violinists Eddie South and Johnny Frigo, he was somewhat overshadowed
by Joe Venuti and Stephane Grappelli. As
far as I know, he only studied violin with his father, beginning at age 6 or 7. Another interesting thing about Smith is that
he is buried in Denmark. He took part -
along with Duke Ellington and Count Basie - in the very first outdoor jazz
festival – that was in May, 1938, in New York.
The festival was a huge success even though it ran for less than six
hours. It has been said that his sound
was not smooth and pretty but his rhythmic drive, intensity, and inventiveness
more than made up for that. The same
thing was said of classical violinist Bronislaw Huberman. Smith began playing publicly with his family’s
band when he was 12 years old. He
attended Johnson Smith University in North Carolina but left at age 15 - he
played professionally from that age forward.
From 1926 to 1928 (one source says 1927 to 1930), Smith was a member of
Alphonse Trent’s group. Trent was a
well-known bandleader whose band played in the finest hotels in the Southern
U.S. Smith was 19 years old. Afterward, he free-lanced, touring with pianist
Jelly Roll Morton, as well as other jazz musicians. Although he did a lot of traveling, his home
bases were Buffalo, New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. He formed (with trumpet player Jonah Jones)
the Onyx Club Boys, a sextet (one source says it was a quintet) which played at
the Onyx Club, beginning in 1935, in New York City. Often, he would perform with a monkey on his
shoulder. It was a stuffed monkey, of
course. Smith knew Fritz Kreisler and it
has been said Kreisler admired his playing.
Smith recorded with a group called the Stuff Smith Trio, although the
other two members of the trio alternated, depending on the
instrumentation. One source states that
in 1943, he briefly took over Fats Waller’s band after Waller died. Smith played in a group with jazz pianist Billy
Taylor too. On June 9, 1945, he, Billy
Taylor, and Ted Sturgis (on bass) played a concert in New York’s famous Town
Hall - Benny Goodman had already played his historic jazz concert in Carnegie
Hall in 1938. In 1947, Smith joined Jazz
at the Philharmonic, a very large group of touring jazz musicians managed from
Los Angeles and put together by Norman Granz, a jazz impresario. It operated between 1944 and 1957. Smith’s playing has been described as
virtuosic, technically adventurous, and full of good humor. Joel Smirnoff (violinist with the Juilliard
String Quartet for many years) was quoted as saying that Stuff Smith’s point
“was not to be sophisticated, but to swing as hard as possible.” You can hear for yourself here. Smith recorded enough material (for the
Vocalion, Verve, Capitol, Decca, ASCH, and Varsity labels) to fill 6 or 7 of
today’s CDs. He recorded with Nat King
Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jean-Luc Ponty, and
Stephane Grappelli, among other artists.
He also played alongside many other jazz artists; Sun Ra and Charlie
Parker are among them. Here is a Smith
video on YouTube. His violin hold and
posture were similar to that of French concert violinist Jacques Thibaud. For reasons unknown (to me), between 1946 and
1955, Smith did very little commercial recording or none at all. In 1958, Art Kane (Arthur Kanofsky) took a
photo (for ESQUIRE Magazine) of 57 jazz musicians in front of an apartment
building in Harlem (New York) titled A Great Day in Harlem. Smith is the only jazz violinist in that
photo. Mary Lou Williams, Marian
McPartland, Count Basie, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, Bud Freeman, Gene
Krupa, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Mingus, and Sahib Shihab are among the jazz
greats in that iconic portrait. In 1965,
Smith went to live in Copenhagen, Denmark.
For the rest of his life, he worked in Europe, sharing the stage with many
European jazz players, some of whom had come from the U.S. Stuff Smith died on September 25, 1967 (in
Munich, Germany) at age 58. A book by
William F. Lee titled American Big Bands says Stuff Smith died (on the same
date given above) in Chicago. Even a
great jazz violinist cannot die in two different places at the same time so I’m
guessing, since Smith is buried in Denmark, that Munich is the far likelier
place of death.
Tai
Murray is an American violinist and teacher born (in Chicago) on May 22,
1982. She is known for having recently
recorded what is now considered the standard by which all other recordings of
the Ysaye solo violin sonatas will be judged - as a young student, she participated in masterclasses with a direct disciple of Ysaye: Josef Gingold. Murray is also known for having privately played a violin “in the nude” – an unvarnished violin, that is. That violin was created for her in 2007 by
Mario Miralles, one of the best violin makers in the world. It has been said he has a ten-year waiting
list. I do not know why Murray played it - not in a concert, of course - before it was finished - possibly because Miralles wanted to hear how it was coming along while still in the workshop. Luthiers find it easy to disassemble and re-assemble violins. Of course,
the violin is now fully varnished although Murray actually used her (circa) 1690 Giovanni
(aka Joannes or Johannes) Tononi violin to record the six Ysaye Sonatas. (Johannes Tononi was the father of the more
famous luthier, Carlo Tononi, one of whose violins Jascha Heifetz owned and
played - in fact, the Tononi violin was the instrument he played in his famous Carnegie Hall debut.) Murray began her violin studies
at age 5 with Brenda Wurman and shortly thereafter entered the Sherwood
Conservatory of Music (founded in 1895) in Chicago. Even though money was very scarce (a
financial condition which befell many nineteenth century child violinists and
their families, including the hyper-famous Bronislaw Huberman), by age 8, she
had transferred to the University of Indiana where she studied with Mimi Zweig,
Yuval Yaron, and Franco Gulli. At age 9,
she made her public debut, playing Mozart’s fourth concerto (in D) with the
Chicago Symphony. (Notorious Czech violinist Vasa Prihoda also made his public debut with this concerto.) She played Lalo’s
Symphonie Espagnol with the Utah Symphony (and Joseph Silverstein) at age
16. The reviews were very
favorable. Her intonation was said to be
“superhuman” and her bowing technique “magical.” The Strad has said that she displays
“sophisticated bowing and vibrato.” You
can observe (and enjoy) her superlative handling of the bow on several YouTube
videos. Another music critic described
her sound as being imbued with “steely sweetness.” It is truly almost impossible to describe
sound with words but I think that comes close.
You can hear for yourself here. Murray
received her Artist Diploma from Indiana University’s School of Music at 18 then
moved on to Juilliard in 2001. There, she
studied with Joel Smirnoff (former first and second violinist of the Juilliard
String Quartet and now President of the Cleveland Institute of Music.) She graduated from Juilliard in 2006 - some sources say 2004. Meanwhile, she had been
concertizing. On February 3, 2001, she
soloed with the San Antonio Symphony, playing the Glazunov concerto. Michael Morgan was on the podium. She was 18 years old. Since then, she has gone on to concertize as
a soloist with some of the world’s major orchestras, as a recitalist, and in
conjunction with several prestigious chamber music ensembles, including the
Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center.
In addition to the Tononi and Miralles violins, she has played a 1727
Guarnerius Del Gesu, on loan from the Juilliard violin collection. Murray is now based in Berlin, indulging in
her passion for languages – she has already immersed herself in French, Japanese,
and German. That, unbeknownst to the
general public, is not an unusual activity for violinists. That and chess. Murray has said that when not performing, she
practices into the wee hours of the morning.
She likes to be where people have a “sense of shared general curiosity,
a certain crackle-and-pop that drives things.” (I love that quote.) Aside from Maxim Vengerov, she is the only violinist I know who loves to
dance Tango, although she also dances swing and salsa, and loves ballet. (Murray’s portrait is courtesy of Marco Borggreve,
a European photographer who photographs the world of music.)
Augustin Hadelich is a German violinist born (in Cecina, Italy) on April
4, 1984. He is best known for a very
fast rise to stardom after winning the Indianapolis Violin Competition in
2006. It was virtually a clean sweep of
the competition since he also won special awards for the best performance in
the following categories: Romantic concerto, Classical concerto, Beethoven
sonata, Bach work, commissioned work, encore piece, Paganini caprice, and
sonata other than Beethoven. His reviews
have been full of superlatives since the beginning of his career and,
understandably, he has already appeared with most of the world’s top
orchestras. He soloed with the New York
Philharmonic at Avery Fisher Hall in New York on October 18, 2012, playing the
Symphonie Espagnol by Edouard Lalo. He
had three times previously played with this orchestra, though not in New
York. He is not yet 29 years old. Hadelich began his violin studies at age 5 with
his father, a farmer who is also a cellist.
At the time, the family was living in Riparbella, Italy (in Tuscany –
Riparbella is about 30 miles south of Florence.) From about age 7, he studied (sporadically)
with, among other teachers, Uto Ughi in Siena for a few years. He eventually ended up in the Istituto
Mascagni in Livorno (Italy) from which he graduated. He was playing recitals in Europe during
this time, too. Later on, in Berlin, he
studied at the Academy of Music. From
there he came to the U.S and enrolled at Juilliard, studying with Joel
Smirnoff. Hadelich graduated from
Juilliard in 2007, a year after he won the Indianapolis competition. His discography is small but, by all
accounts, brilliant. He has recorded all
of Haydn’s violin concertos and Telemann’s fantasias for violin - rarely-heard
works. He also sometimes writes his own
cadenzas, something that few contemporary violinists do. Hadelich currently plays the Kiesewetter
Stradivarius (1723) but previously played the 1683 Gingold Stradivarius. One of his many YouTube videos is here. And here is another – yes, he is that
good!
