Variety show

Published 7:00 pm Saturday, October 1, 2011

Electric violinist Tracy Silverman's work encompasses everything from classical to jam band from singer-sonwriter to avant-garde — Larry McCormack/The Tennessean

Silverman’s electric violin will offer plenty of styles

Tracy Silverman won’t have a band to back him at the Paramount Theatre Oct. 8, but the six strings on his electric violin will be plenty.

“People are justifiably skeptical when they hear that,” Silverman said of playing a solo show. “I think one of the reasons (people) leave the show pleasantly surprised is that there’s a lot of variety in what I do.”

Silverman, a classically trained violinist, said the variety comes in the music he plays and in his style.

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Silverman performs a variety of music, like rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, funk and contemporary classical.

The variety also comes in his style. Even though it’s a one-man show, Silverman is able to achieve a larger sound. He said he does a live recording, where he’ll layer multiple parts and loop them to create a symphonic sound with just his electric violin.

“Sometimes it sounds like a solo instrument, sometimes it sounds like a band and sometimes it sounds like an orchestra,” Silverman said.

“It’s just me on stage with an electric violin and a bunch of pedals,” he said.

Silverman first started trending toward the six-string electric violin shortly before he graduated from Julliard School of Music in 1980.

He was looking through music catalogs at Julliard, which he described as a very classical school, and noticed there were more than six pages of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Violin Concerto.”

“I thought to myself: Why would anybody buy a violin concerto that I had recorded when there were already dozens of recordings out there by the greatest violin players who ever lived,” he said. “And it made me realize maybe they didn’t really need me to do that.”

The experience led Silverman away from playing the classics and toward composing his own material, which he’d already begun doing at that time.

“I decided at that moment that what I needed to do was take a different path,” he said. “(It) was to use my skills as a classically trained violinist and as a composer, but to not just be an interpreter of dead people’s music.”

That direction was toward the six-string electric violin. While there are many electric violinists in bands, the six-string violin is its own animal.

Most violins have four strings. By adding two lower strings, Silverman can play chords and rhythms similar to an electric guitar, but with its own unique tone and style.

“It changes the way the instrument can function in a very fundamental way,” Silverman said. “It allows it to no longer be a primarily melodic instrument, but function fully as a rhythm instrument like a guitar.”

Not only did he have to add two strings, Silverman changed the way he used his bow. He developed a technique called “strum bowing” to play his violin.

“It demands a different approach to using the bow,” he said.

Though the style has opened many doors for Silverman, it’s also kept some closed. Though he admitted there aren’t many people who play the six-string electric violin, he noted there’s limited demand for such music. While many other electric violinists will also play with orchestras, Silverman said he is staying true to the instrument.

“By being an electric violinist and sticking to my guns, I really limit myself in terms of what kind of repertoire I’m going to play,” he said. “One of my missions is to increase the repertoire for the electric violin.”

Despite his classical training, Silverman enjoys contemporary rock and jazz. He cited the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix as influences along with many classical composers.

“I’ve always been a big fan of rock and jazz and contemporary music of all kinds,” Silverman said.

In fact, Silverman said there isn’t the rift between pop and classically trained musicians that there used to be.

“You just see more violinists exploring jazz and rock on the electric violin,” he said.

For example, Silverman said there used to be little mixing between classical and folk fiddlers, but now there’s more integration and mutual respect, though there’s still a divide.

Silverman, who now resides in Nashville, lived in Minneapolis in the 1990s, so he said it’s nice to come back to Minnesota. He said he’s looking forward to seeing family that still lives in the area.

“I’m looking forward to being in the area,” he said. “And I’m glad I’m coming in October and not December.”