Jazz Great Regina Carter Serves Up Some Sweet Southern Comfort This Month at the Anderson Center

Most of the music performed in jazz violinist Regina Carter’s concert tour is from her 2014 album, Southern Comfort, and has a distinctly American-South sound for which “comfort” is neither an arbitrary nor a clichéd word. The listener can feel the tender, the rough, and the sometimes-bittersweet legacies behind the tunes, while being pulled into the uplift of modern reflections and contemporary rhythms.

But the concert is quite different from listening to something recorded. “You’re there,” says Regina, “and we’re sharing the experience.”

The Detroit native is known for her originality and is widely considered to be the foremost jazz violinist of her generation. She spent about 2 years digging into the musical culture behind her Southern roots, particularly as it relates to the life of her grandfather, a coal miner born in Georgia in 1893 who passed away before she was born. Sometimes alternating with research assistants, Carter made a number of trips to the Library of Congress and spent a lot of time there collecting material relating to the musical history of the South: the work songs, children’s songs, prison songs, the sounds of gospel, and so on. Searching through famed collections of folklorists such as John Works III and the Alabama Folklife Association, she listened to a lot of aged field recordings, read a lot of articles and books, and talked to a lot of people. Then came the time of, “trying to cut down the information I had and make a story which really centers around my grandfather.”

Early in her career, Ms. Carter accompanied such performers as Aretha Franklin, Mary J. Blige, and Billy Joel, releasing her first, eponymous, solo CD in 1995. She was classically trained in youth in the famous Suzuki Method in which, “You learn the exact same way you learn to speak when you’re growing up as a child,” by absorbing and reproducing the speech sounds you hear around you. She says it’s no different when learning music. “Music is a language,” and Suzuki is, “a folk-way of learning, if you will. It is organic.” Which may, in part, account for her spontaneity. Later studies took her to master classes under Itzhak Perlman and Yehudi Menuhin, and to institutions like the New England Conservatory of Music. She reports that she is the only one from her Suzuki class who has gone, “the jazz route.”

Carter’s classical training and virtuosity led to her being invited to perform on a very special instrument as a symbolic humanitarian gesture after the September 11th attacks: Il Cannone Guarnerius is the name given to a violin made in the mid-1700s that was owned- and apparently adored- by Niccolo Paganini. Outstanding violinists are ceremoniously granted the privilege of playing it. Carter was the first jazz musician given that honor, and she later played it again to record her album Paganini: After a Dream, featuring classical works. In 2006 she won the MacArthur Fellows award, known as “the genius grant.” That year was also graced with I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey, an album devoted to the musical loves of her mother, followed in 2010 by Reverse Thread, which explored and reinterpreted African sounds. The ongoing theme is heritage, legacy, and memory.

The Appalachians are filled with Scottish, African, Irish, and Native American descendants, and all those fragments of influence can be found in this concert. “When I was growing up in the early 6os, so many people- when they would move up north- would take these courses to try to get rid of that Southern accent. You didn’t want people to know you were from the South.” Currently a New Jersey resident, Carter says, “Now I’m very proud of my Southern roots and what all that had to offer. It was beautiful to be able to look back and embrace all of that.” Some of the music represents long ago summer visits to her grandmother’s house in Alabama, “to the home where my father and his siblings grew up. I play some of these field recordings during the concert; sometimes I’ll have people come up to me afterward and say things like, ‘Oh my gosh, when you talked about being bathed in a tin pail, all of a sudden I remembered…this happening…or that song you played.’ We see how much we have in common.”

“There’s a very special place I go to when I play, and when I’m sharing music with other people and with audiences. I feel like we meet each other on another plain,” she says, ever aware that talent is a conductive power. “Witnessing people that have such amazing gifts, and seeing them do things to themselves and losing that gift, is always a reminder to me that it’s not ours- and it can be taken.”

Regina Carter is the only woman performing on this tour. “Now how did this happen?” she laughs. Her husband and long-time work colleague, drummer Alvester Garnett, had to take off to work on the Broadway hit Shuffle Along and is replaced on drums by Satoshi Takeishi. Other musicians in the closely-knit ensemble are: Chris Lightcap on bass, Will Holshouser on accordion, and Marvin Sewell on guitar. The performances do include works other than Southern Comfort, and Carter’s programming can be as improvisational as her musical style.

“Sometimes I come up with a set list and we get on stage and depending on the vibe of the audience or how I’m feeling or- many factors- I’ll make a change right on the spot.”

To the Anderson Center audience, Regina says, “Come to have a live music experience. Be open to having a fun time because we’re going to be having fun onstage.”

Regina Carter performs at Binghamton University’s Osterhout Concert Theater, located within the Anderson Center, at 4pm on Sunday, April 17th. General public $30/ BU Faculty, Staff, Alumni, and Seniors, $25/ Students and Children, $15. For more information, contact the box office at 777-2787, or visit andersoncenter.showare.com.