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Sound Check: Violinist Regina Carter comes home for rare performance delight
By Gary Graff, The Oakland Press
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Regina Carter doesn’t often get to perform with Kenny Barron,
the pianist she calls her “mentor” as well as a close friend with
whom she recorded an album, “Freefall,” in 2001.
So when the two come together to play a pair of shows this
weekend — including one on Friday, Nov. 20, at Detroit’s
Orchestra Hall — it will truly be special, according to Carter.
“With some people, you’re just on another level. You’re just in
sync with one another for whatever reason, and it’s not
something you can plan or work on,” the Detroit-born jazz
violinist, an Oakland University graduate, says by phone from
New Jersey, where she now lives with husband and drummer
Alvester Garnett. She first met Barron during the ’90s at the
Telluride Jazz Festival and he subsequently hired her to play some shows with his band. But it took
them years for their schedules to finally sync to make the “Freefall” album.
“Y’know, there’s some people who you can play with over a period of time and it can develop, but
with Kenny and I, right off the bat, it felt like we could almost finish each other’s musical sentences.
We don’t get to perform together that much, but whenever we do it feels like we did it just yesterday.”
Yesterday, or at least yesteryear, is certainly apprpros to Carter these days. This year marks the 20th
anniversary of her debut album, which came shortly after her departure from the pioneering all-female
Detroit jazz group Straight Ahead. Since then, she’s also worked with the likes of Aretha Franklin,
Billy Joel, Mary J. Blige, Dolly Parton, Lauryn Hill, Max Roach and Oliver Lake, and Carter has
recorded with Joe Jackson on each of his last two albums and toured with him as well.
“On one hand, it doesn’t feel that long,” says Carter, 49, who will begin working on an album of Ella
Fitzgerald songs next year as the follow-up to 2014’s critically lauded “Southern Comfort.” “But we
played a club in Minneapolis the other day, and in the hallway they had pictures of the artists who
have played there, including one of myself from probably 20 years ago.
“I was kinda shocked because I looked at it and said, ‘That was me.’ You still feel the same and I
don’t feel like time has moved on, but then you see a photograph and yeah, it has. It’s pretty amazing.
That time has just flown by.”
But it’s left her in a good place, Carter adds.
“I think 20 years ago I was ready to take the world by storm,” she recalls with a laugh. “Now I’m
more experienced. I’ve lived a little. When I step on stage now it’s with a very different purpose. I
think I have a deeper understanding of the power of music and what I want to do with it. There’s more
maturity to everything — why I’m on stage, my approach to the music.
“That’s an OK place to be in, I think.”
URL: http://www.theoaklandpress.com/arts-and-entertainment/20151118/sound-check-violinist-regina-carter-comes-home-for-rare-performance-delight
© 2015 The Oakland Press (http://www.theoaklandpress.com)