Daniel Garlitsky

Daniel Garlitsky is a Russian violinist, composer, arranger, singer, and teacher born (in Moscow) on September 8, 1982.  In addition to being a classical violinist, he is well-known for playing jazz violin in various jazz combos.  He is frequently seen playing with Duved Dunayevsky, jazz guitarist based in Paris, France, who hearkens back to the days and style of Django Reinhardt.  Some have said that Garlitsky specializes in old style jazz, referencing the days of Eddie South, Stephane Grapelli, and Joe Venutti, though that is a much too narrow description of his artist profile.  He does, however, dress in the style of the times of the old jazz players when he performs jazz concerts, saying that modern suits make him look “like a security agent.”  He says the fashion helps project the charm of the old era of jazz so it’s like part of the show, providing a suitable backdrop for the music itself.  Garlitsky’s playing has been described as “exciting, elegant, subtle, and majestic, displaying incredible precision, character, and a pure sound."  Here is a video of a well-known jazz song – Minor Swing – featuring Garlitsky’s improvisational skills.  Violin players reading this will note that his bow hold and his bowing style is very similar to that of Heifetz.  Garlitsky began his violin studies at age 6 with his father (Boris Garlitsky, a respected violinist in Russia who served as concertmaster of the London Philharmonic for a time) using the violin method book written by his (Daniel’s) grandfather, Mikhail Garlitsky, a violin study method book widely used in Russia which is based on the study of scales and arpeggios, something that Heifetz and Paganini highly valued.  He was soon thereafter enrolled at the Gnessin school for gifted children in Moscow, where he also studied piano.  At age 9 (1991), he moved to France with his family, where he began studies at the Lyon Conservatory.  In 1999, he became a student at the National Conservatory for Music and Dance, graduating three years later.  He then immediately began concertizing around Europe and sat in as concertmaster with various orchestras as well.  Here is a video from early in his career when he served as leader of a famous European chamber ensemble.  Garlitsky was also seriously interested in harmonic theory and composition and, in addition, studied early music performance practices.  While doing all this, he encountered the field of jazz and swing music in Paris.  Later, he was invited to teach at the Paris Conservatory, but I don’t know whether he still teaches there.  One source says that his career actually took a 180 degree turn and so he now devotes almost all his time to jazz gigs, composing, and arranging. He is the composer of several movie soundtracks and has arranged songs for pop stars. His itinerary has taken him on tour to the U.S., Europe, and Asia.  He plays a modern violin made for him by Jacques Fustier in 2003 although he also plays a Joseph Guarnerius (son of Andrea Guarnerius and father of the famous “del Gesu” Joseph Guarnerius) from an unknown year of construction.  Among Garlitsky’s teachers are Igor Volochine, Rainer Kussmaul, Matis Vaitsner, Pierre Aimard, and Glenn Dicterow.  

John Blake

John Blake (John Edward Blake, Jr.) was an American jazz violinist, teacher, composer, arranger, writer, and band leader, born (in Philadelphia) on July 3, 1947.  Although thoroughly trained as a classical violinist, he gravitated toward jazz early on in his career.  He first came to the public’s attention in the mid-1970s as a member of ensembles headed by other jazz musicians, Archie Shepp and Grover Washington, with whom he recorded and toured extensively for several years.  Afterward, Blake performed with a wide variety of artists, including the Duke Ellington Orchestra, the Billy Taylor Trio, the Turtle Island String Quartet, Quartet Indigo, and Didier Lockwood.  He later released six CDs of his own, beginning in 1984.  He was 37 years old.  Blake began his violin studies in Philadelphia at age 9.  He much later studied at West Virginia University and in Switzerland at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Montreux.  Here is a YouTube video in which he appears with Billy Taylor, Chip Jackson, and Winard Harper.  In addition to being a guest lecturer on university campuses around the world, Blake taught at the Manhattan School of Music, the University of Arts in Philadelphia, and at East Tennessee State University.  He also co-wrote the best-known string jazz method book in use today.  His best-known pupil is probably jazz violinist Regina Carter.  In fact, he produced one of Carter’s CDs (Reverse Thread), prior to which she had been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant (2006.)  Blake died on August 15, 2014, at age 67.  

Noel Pointer

Noel Pointer was an American jazz violinist, composer, and record producer born on December 26, 1954.  Just as the lives of many musical luminaries were cut short – Wolfgang Mozart, Felix Mendelssohn, George Gershwin, Franz Schubert, Vasa Prihoda, Glenn Gould, Ginette Neveu, Josef Hassid, Arma Senkrah, Andrei Korsakov, and Michael Rabin come to mind – his life was also cut short at a very early age.  What he could have accomplished is anyone’s guess but he was well on his way to becoming a legend.  Early in his career he decided to take up jazz violin and went as far as producing albums.  Pointer also became involved in national social causes such as literacy and the arts, receiving special citations from the U.S. Congress.  In 1981, he was nominated for a Grammy.  He was 26 years old.  Pointer began his music studies at an early age but exactly what age I do not know.  He became interested in jazz while studying at New York’s High School for Music and Art.  He began playing for studio sessions while at the Manhattan School of Music.  His public debut took place at age 13 in New York, with the Symphony of the New World.  He went on to appear with the Chicago Chamber Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony as a classical violinist.  By age 19, Pointer was playing regularly with many theatre orchestras in New York City, including the Radio City Music Hall Symphony, the Dance Theatre of Harlem Orchestra, and the Apollo Theatre Orchestra.  Pointer enjoyed steady work as a club jazz violinist in New York as well.  He recorded for the Blue Note, United Artists, and Liberty record labels.  He also recorded with a variety of artists.  Of his seven solo albums, four reached Billboard’s top five jazz albums list.  As a composer, Pointer wrote music for several dance troupes in New York.  He died suddenly on December 9, 1994, at age 39.  

Stuff Smith

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.  

Joe Venuti

Joe Venuti (Giuseppe Venuti) was an American jazz violinist, band leader, teacher, and arranger born (in Philadelphia) on September 16, 1903.  Next to Stephane Grappelli, he is probably the world’s best known jazz violinist, though there have been many others.  Their recordings accorded each a worldwide audience, but Grappelli worked mostly in Europe as Venuti worked mostly in America.  He began his violin studies at age 4 and attended public schools in Philadelphia.  As far as anyone knows, although it is said he claimed to, he never attended a music conservatory.  He may also not have graduated from High School.  According to several sources, he did study the violin intensely as a boy and was a member of the James Campbell School Orchestra.  Venuti may have also received instruction at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, at which several members of the Philadelphia Orchestra taught.  In any case, Venuti achieved a magnificent technique.  He also learned to play guitar, mandolin, and piano.  His knowledge of classical music was expanded through attendance at concerts in Philadelphia and New York.  He began playing in public at age 15, in a trio.  At about this time, he formed a friendship with Eddie Lang (Salvatore Massaro), the famous jazz guitarist.  They had attended the same grammar school and played in the school orchestra together but had never become professional associates until their early teens.  Their recordings are now classics in the jazz world.  Venuti started his career in Detroit in March of 1924 with Jean Goldkette’s (Graystone Ballroom) band.  Venuti also did some of his earliest recording work with this band.  He was 21 years old.  He returned to Philadelphia in September of 1925 but soon thereafter moved to New York.  In 1927, he joined Jimmy Dorsey, Frank Signorelli, and Eddie Lang to form a band called the Blue Four in Atlantic City.  However, Venuti was practically always a freelance violinist, playing where it suited him.  One of the bands he also played with during this time was the Scranton Sirens.  He then joined Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra in 1929, playing in the 1930 film The King of Jazz.  For the next few years he did a lot of recording with various artists and bands.  In his career, he got to work with, among many others, Tommy Dorsey, Dave McKenna, Manny Klein, Benny Goodman, Barrett Deems, Bix Beiderbecke, Bucky Pizzarelli, Bud Freeman, Frank Signorelli, George Barnes, Glenn Miller, Harold Arlen, Jack Teagarden, Joe Haymes, Jimmy Dorsey, Johnny Prophet, Kay Starr, Earl Hines, Eddie Lang, Russ Morgan, Red Norvo, Ruth Robin, Louis Prima, Lennie Hayton, Marian McPartland, Zoot Sims, Smith Ballew, and Bing Crosby.  His main recording labels were Okeh, RCA Victor, Decca, and Bluebird.  In 1935, after returning from Europe, Venuti launched his own band and led a series of big and small bands after that.  After serving briefly during the war, he moved to California in 1945.  In 1952 and 1953, he played for the Kraft Music Hall on radio - Bing Crosby had served as announcer, master of ceremonies, or host on that show between January, 1936 and May, 1946.  In 1963, Venuti settled in Seattle, Washington, and continued working throughout the country, though more and more sporadically.  It has been said that Venuti drifted into obscurity between 1936 and 1966 but that may be an exaggeration.  In 1967, he had a big comeback with live shows and recordings, both here and in Europe.  A performance at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival played a big role in that comeback.  YouTube has many of his video and audio files.  Here is one and here is another.  In them, you will see that Venuti is playing what appears to be a cheap violin.  It appears that way because that’s what it is – he was known to play on very cheap instruments.  This YouTube audio file has Venuti and Grappelli playing a duo – it is very easy to tell them apart.  Venuti died (in Seattle) on August 14, 1978, at age 74.  

Johnny Frigo

Johnny Frigo (John Virgil Frigo) was an Italian jazz violinist, bass player, painter, and poet born (in Chicago, USA) on December 27, 1916.  He began his violin studies at age 7 and received only three years of formal instruction.  Out of necessity, he later learned to play bass - by 1942, he was playing bass and violin in Chico Marx’ orchestra.  He was 26 years old.  During the Second World War, he played in New York with Al Haig and Kai Winding.  He later went to Europe, too - it was part of his military service.  From 1945 until 1947, he toured with Jimmy Dorsey’s band.  Jimmy Dorsey was Tommy Dorsey’s brother.  Soon after, Frigo formed a trio which included Herb Ellis on guitar and Lou Carter on piano which performed and recorded in New York.  He later appeared in the film titled The Fabulous Dorseys.  In 1951, he worked as a studio musician and arranger in Chicago and led a band at a place called Mr. Kelly’s in Chicago’s Bohemia.  The trio (The Soft Winds Trio) broke up in 1952.  Between 1951 and 1974, he also played with The Sage Riders, a country band which broadcast nationwide from a radio station in Chicago – as did Arturo Toscanini’s NBC Symphony Orchestra in New York in the classical music realm.  The show – at various times - included the likes of Gene Autry, Rex Allen, Bill Haley, and Andy Williams.  Here’s one of their videos.  During his career, he played with Mel Torme, Barbra Streisand, Charlie Byrd, Frank Sinatra, and Mahalia Jackson, among other big-name artists.  As did Eddie South after he died, Frigo did not receive much recognition until later in his career, after focusing once again on the violin and its jazz potential.  Frigo’s recordings can still be found on the internet.  His violin sound has been compared to Stephane Grappelli’s.  Frigo died on July 4, 2007, at age 90.  

Eddie South

Eddie South (Edward Otha South) was an American jazz violinist and bandleader born (in Louisiana, Missouri) on November 27, 1904.  He is known for having achieved legendary status only after he died.  It has been said that had he not been black, he would have chosen a career in classical music.  He began his violin studies at a very early age and by age 10, was studying at the Chicago Music College, from which he graduated, possibly in the year 1921.  He entered the world of jazz in 1921, with assistance from Darnell Howard (a leading jazz violinist of that era), playing with Erskine Tate and Mae Brady.  In 1923, he was musical director of Jimmy Wade’s Syncopators in Chicago.  South's first recording came in that same year with Wade's Moulin Rouge Orchestra.  He formed his own band, the Alabamians, in 1927.  The group was named after the place they performed in, the Club Alabam, on the corner of Rush and Chicago Streets, a section of Chicago then known as Chicago's Bohemia.  Along the way, South also worked with bandleaders Charles Elgar, Henry Crowder, and Freddie Keppard, as well as bassist Milt Hinton, and pianist Billy Taylor.  He toured Europe with this band between 1928 and 1930.  Having arrived in Europe, he also studied at the Paris Conservatory.  While in Budapest, Hungary, in 1929, South took a liking to Gypsy (Roma) music and eventually made it a part of his improvisations.  It is well-known that during a tour of Europe in 1937, he performed and recorded with jazz legends Stephane Grappelli, Michel Warlop, and Django Reinhardt (who famously played with his two usable fingers only) in Paris.  Among the tunes recorded was Bach's concerto for two violins - in jazz style, of course.  Besides recording, he also played on radio and television.  From 1947 to 1949 he played in the big bands led by Earl Hines.  South also worked in New York and Los Angeles.  In 1948, Paul Nero wrote a hit song titled The Hot Canary and dedicated it to Eddie South. Nevertheless, despite the exposure he got from working with the biggest names in Jazz, as far as the public was concerned, he stayed unknown for the remainder of his life.  It has been said that his playing style suffered from the strictures imposed by his classical training – it didn’t swing sufficiently.  He recorded for the Chess and Mercury labels among others.  One of his last recordings was produced in 1951, though he last recorded in 1959.  YouTube has several audio files of his playing, one of which you can hear here.  That fascinating recording of the Bach Double concerto (for two violins) he did with Stephane Grappelli can be heard here. South died in Chicago on April 25, 1962, at age 57.  

Rudi Berger

Rudi Berger is an Austrian violinist, singer, pianist, guitarist, and composer born (in Vienna) on November 19, 1954.  Be that as it may, Rudi Berger has actually become the most-recorded jazz violinist of another country (Brazil) and may very well be the only Austrian jazz violinist in the world, though he has lived and worked outside of Austria for many years.  His classical training on violin and piano – begun when he was six - took place at the Vienna Conservatory where he studied with Guenther Schich and Karl Barilly, learning the works of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Paganini, Kreutzer, Rode, and all the rest.  As have other jazz artists, he began playing jazz as a very young student, having been drawn to it from age fourteen.  His grandfather (Rudolf Berger) and his uncle were strong influences in this regard.  By age fifteen, he had begun to teach himself to play electric guitar and had joined Viennese Blues legend Al Cook in performances and recordings.  Later on, he worked as a violinist, pianist, guitarist, and singer in a night club band and with a Viennese Waltz Orchestra.  (Jazz violinist Stephane Grappelli, although best known as a violinist, also played saxophone, piano, and accordion.)  In 1977, he became a soloist with the newly-formed Vienna Art Orchestra.  He was 22 years old.  He worked with this orchestra for three years while at the same time forming a Jazz Rock group called Good News in 1978.  In 1985 and ’86 he was voted Violinist of the Year by Jazz Live, a European jazz music magazine.  By then, Berger had formed the Rudi Berger Quartet, Rudi Berger Project, and Rudi Berger Group jazz ensembles.  Berger moved to New York in September of 1986, having already released his first album, First Step, in Europe.  In New York, Berger restarted his career by working as a street musician for about a year.  During that time, New York jazz radio station WKCR invited him and his New York Quartet to play a two-hour live Jazz Concert Special.  Among the jazz clubs he worked in were the Village Vanguard, the Bottom Line, the Village Gate, Indigo Blues, and the Knitting Factory.  His international reputation was established in 1988 at the American Music Theater Festival in collaboration with Astor Piazzola, well-known Argentine tango cross-over composer.  Since 1990, he has toured in Europe, Japan, the U.S., and South America.  Berger’s collaborators in film and Grammy-nominated studio recordings have included Tonhino Horta, Mauro Rodrigues, Yuri Popoff, Gerry Weil, Jay Anderson, Phil Bowler, Mike Clark, Ron McClure, Victor Bailey, Michael Gerber, Peter Madsen, Art Frank, Charles Fambrough, Joseph Bowie, and Nana Vasconcelos.  In 1993, Berger performed in Brazil for the first time.  Between 1998 and 2002, he traveled between Brazil, New York, and Vienna, moving among three cultures and working in essentially different jazz worlds.  He was guest instructor at the University of Minas Gerais in Brazil between 1998 and 2000.  In 2003, Berger moved to Brazil permanently, working regularly with some of Brazil’s top composers and musicians, including Toninho Horta, Selma Reis, and Nelson Ayres.  Here is one of his YouTube videos and here is one of his recent CDs – In Search of Harmony.  Rudi Berger plays a 1992 violin by American violin maker David Burgess. His bow of choice is by English bow maker Howard Green - "a really, really great bow," Mr Berger says.  

Regina Carter

Regina Carter is an American violinist, composer, and teacher born (in Detroit, Michigan - U.S.A.) on August 6, 1966 (Heifetz was 65 years old.)  (One source gives her year of birth as 1963.)  She is one of very few women jazz violinists in the world and is known for having received a MacArthur grant in September, 2006 – just as did Leila Josefowicz in 2008.  She is also just one of two jazz violinists on this blog – the other is Stephane Grappelli.  Carter began her violin studies at the age of four.  She attended Cass Technical High School until graduation, playing with the Detroit Civic Orchestra while studying there.  She then studied at the New England Conservatory (Boston) but ended up returning to Oakland University (Rochester, Michigan, on the northern outskirts of the city of Detroit), graduating from that school.  After graduation, she taught in the Detroit Public Schools for one year.  Carter then spent two years in Germany (1985-1987), immersing herself in the world of the jazz clubs there.  Although she had already been dabbling in jazz music performance, her serious entry into that sphere took place in 1987.  She played with the all-female jazz group Straight Ahead, with which she did some recording, until 1994.  In 2001, she played a concert in Genoa, Italy.  She performed that concert playing Paganini’s famous Cannone violin (Guarneri – 1743.)  Camillo Sivori (Paganini’s pupil), Bronislaw Huberman, Ruggiero Ricci, Leonid Kogan, Eugene Fodor, Dmitri Berlinsky, and Salvatore Accardo, have also been accorded that privilege.  As far as I know, she is the first jazz musician, the first female, and the first black violinist to do so.  She also later recorded a CD using this violin.  Coincidentally, until about 2002, the critics had largely ignored her career as a soloist and recording artist.  Carter has also performed with the String Trio of New York and the Black Rock Coalition.  She is the composer of How Ruth Felt, written for Ruth Felt, President of an arts organization (San Francisco Performances) in San Francisco (California, U.S.) for which Carter was Artist-in-Residence for some time.  There are several videos of her performances on YouTube (one of which you can listen to here) and many albums available on the internet through Verve Records. Her violin is a 1747 Storioni.

Stephane Grappelli

Stephane Grappelli was an Italian jazz violinist (some say French) born (in Paris) on January 26, 1908. Grappelli started his musical career playing the violin on the streets of Paris. He began playing violin at age 12 (1920), and attended the Paris Conservatory from 1924 to 1928. He continued to play on the side until he gained fame in Paris. He also worked as a pianist for silent films while at the conservatory and played the saxophone and accordion as well. His reputation as a jazz violinist was first established after he (and Django Reinhardt) formed the Hot Club Quintet of France in 1934. He is best remembered for hundreds of jazz recordings he made with dozens of famous musicians, playing both, violin and piano, though mostly violin. YouTube has videos of him.  Here is one he did with Eddie South.  It is the Bach Double concerto in jazz style. Grappelli died on December 1, 1997, at age 89.