The Landfill Chronicles—Jazz Violinist Regina Carter Continues Her Courtship with Paganini’s Cannon

By Dan Ouellette

Regina Carter’s Musical Romance With Virtuoso Paganini’s Violin

Chapter 8, Part 2

My relationship with Regina Carter began in her early days, writing a mini-feature in 1995 for Strings magazine on her self-titled first album for Atlantic Records that previewed her status as an important rising star. Around the same time, I pitched a full-blown feature to a magazine that I won’t mention, and the editor said that he didn’t think she was worthy.

Really? Look at her today: a winner of the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship Award in 2006, granted a 2018 Doris Duke Award and in 2023 honored as an NEA Jazz Master.

Over the course of Regina’s career, I’ve written several articles on her. But her story from 2002 seems to get lost in the shuffle. It resurfaces in this four-part LANDFILL chapter with two addendums.

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Excerpt from Chapter 8.1:

In December 2001, Regina was invited to headline a concert in Carlo Felice playing Paganini’s violin — the first time in history a nonclassical violinist and African American had been allowed such a privilege. She warmed up to the Cannon by thinking of her mother and her favorite hymn, “Amazing Grace.” She closed her eyes and bowed a soulful rendition.

Chapter 8.2

DOCUMENTATION OF HISTORY

Since Regina had been on her best behavior with the violin during their first convergence in 2001, she requested another meeting, this time to document her relationship with the Cannon.

“Right off, the people in charge of the violin wanted to know what we’d be recording,” Regina says, prior to her second Genoa trip, while relaxing in her small Central Park West apartment. “They said the music has to match the instrument. So, to me that said classical. I decided that since so many musicians were going back to their roots that I’d do the same. I started out as a classical player, so why not make an album of classical-oriented pieces.”

Regina’s request to continue her courtship with the ghost of Paganini was granted.

Two weeks before Genoa, Regina tracked nine numbers with her band at Right Track Studios in New York. The playlist for the sessions included four classical works (by Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and two by Gabriel Fauré), two pieces written for film (Luiz Bonfá’s “Black Orpheus” and Ennio Morricone’s “Cinema Paradiso”), the Astor Piazzolla composition “Oblivion,” a Vana original (“Healing in a Foreign Land”) and an excerpt from Regina’s four-movement work, “Alexandra,” commissioned by the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Regina’s genial touring band featured Vana, bassist Chris Lightcap, drummer Alvester Garnett and percussionist Mayra Casales. Cellist Borislav Strulev guests on two tracks (“Black Orpheus” and Fauré’s “Après un Rêve”), and a string orchestra conducted by Stratta and recorded after the trip to Genoa colors the pieces by Piazzolla, Morricone and Ravel (“Pavane Pour une Infante Défunte”)

With her support team, Regina flew to Genoa to overdub the violin parts in three days with the Cannon to create Paganini: After a Dream, her third Verve release and fifth as a leader.

As suggested by the title, the album captures a dreamscape, characterized by both melancholy and joy. The Ravel work is a somber ballad. “Black Orpheus” opens slow and blue before awakening into a Brazilian rhythmic flow. Likewise “Pavane” swings with an uptempo feel. And “Oblivion” lushly settles into a sober muse. Debussy’s “Reverie” is arranged for whimsy and even finds Regina getting a little sassy with the violin, while she and Vana dance through the jocund take on “Cinema Paradiso.”

The most compelling of the covers is Fauré’s “Après un Rêve,” where violin and cello converse then embrace. But the strongest numbers of the collection are the originals: Vana’s pensive, lyrical “Healing in a Foreign Land” and Regina’s poignant and sunny “Alexandra,” which features a cadenza of quiet ecstasy and a glide into bossa glee.

As for Regina’s violin contributions, you can hear the inspired passion in her virtuosity on the treasured instrument. The Cannon sound is full-bodied, solid, ruby in color, a soul mate of Strulev’s cello. There’s nothing brittle about it, especially its high notes which pierce. Regina carries the emotion of the recording with the instrument, offering whimpers, sighs and flutters on “Black Orpheus” and clarion soliloquies on “Alexandra.”

In New York while recording “Alexandra,” Regina played the wistful notated intro that has an edgy, dive-off-a-precipice feel. She said that it was the hardest piece of the pack to perform. She worried about hitting the high notes on the large-sized Cannon. “It’s like a viola, so I have to move my arm more. I’m hoping I’ll be able to hit the notes in Genoa. I don’t know. I’m not banking on it.”

Regina dubs the Paganini touch into “Alexandra” on the second day of recording in a small auditorium in the Genoa opera house. The day before she had been jetlagged but exhilarated. The takes were strong even though the guards nearby made her tense.

While a more congenial pair of security shows up on day two, a deeper sense of fatigue sets in and the morning session proves difficult. With earphones on, Regina listens to what had already been recorded and attempts to duplicate with the Cannon the same spirit and space of the original session.

PAGANINI THE IMPROVISER

Frustrated, she takes a break and talks about why she likes Paganini so much. “He was an improviser,” she says. “That gets lost in the mix when the small-minded people get so upset about a jazz musician playing the Cannon. Improvisation disappeared in classical music after the baroque period. If Paganini knew what I am doing with his instrument, he’d say, ‘It’s about time. Now I can sleep.’”

After lunch, Regina and company visit the second-term mayor Giuseppe Pericu at City Hall. Local reporters cover the event and quiz him about Regina’s return. He rehashes the original resistance to her visit, then jokes that the concert’s success actually helped him get re-elected. He also notes that he’s been a jazz fan for a long time.

Back at the studio auditorium, Regina again launches into “Alexandra,” nailing the cadenza’s high notes she feared she couldn’t and gently swinging into the bossa beat. She’s more relaxed and even adds an impromptu pizzicato part. She smiles, consults with everyone at the board and finally proclaims, “Alexandra’s dirty diaper has been changed.”

Regina laughs and talks about a dream she had the night before. “There was something funny about how the violin sounded, and I wondered if they had switched violins and not given me the real Cannon,” she says. She woke, studied photographs of the real McCoy and felt relieved.

She admits this was nothing compared to the nightmares she had before her performance the year before: “I was petrified,” she says. “In one dream I dropped the violin and then fell through the floor after it. Then I dreamed I played and people hated it and started booing. Audiences in Italy are honest. If they don’t like something, they’ll let you know. They’ll throw things at you. But then I thought, they won’t throw a thing at me because I have the violin for protection.”

END OF 8.2

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NEXT: Chapter 8.3: The story of how Regina was afforded the opportunity to meet the Cannon.