Music of the day: more jazz violin

After the Regina Carter concert, I went to another jazz violin show: Mads Tolling Quartet at Yoshi's SF. I heard a tune from his latest album "The Playmaker" on the radio and was immediately impressed so I listened to his 2 albums on Rhapsody and went to his concert. It is not exactly the classic jazz violin sound that I enjoy so much (i.e., Stephane Grappelli) His sound is more fusion like, which I also found very interesting. For some reason I had a feeling he would end the concert with his Led Zeppelin cover, "Black Dog," and I was right!

I found it interesting that so many jazz violinist are from Europe, like Mads Tolling. Through the Jazz violin tag radio on Last.fm, I've also listened to other Europeans like Mateusz Smoczynski, Zbigniew Seifert, last but not least, the great Jean-Luc Ponty. I heard his live version of "Cantelope Island" on radio and it was fabulous.

I should also mention that Mads Tolling is a violinist of the most well-known jazz string quartet in the world: Turtle Island String Quartet. In fact, I have not heard of any other jazz string quartet until I heard Quartet San Francisco playing Dave Brubeck on the radio! If you like jazz string quartet, please also check out Basquiat Strings.

Book of the month: Stradivari's Genius

This book started with the history of violin making from the earliest days, with special focus on the greatest violin maker of all time: Antonio Stradivari. Then it traced the ownerships and famous players of six of Stradivari's masterpieces: 5 violins and 1 cello. One might think it must be boring to read such history but the opposite is true. This books read like a novel, with unexpected twist at the end! This is a must-read for all violin lovers.