Tracy Silverman

"Tracy has developed his own unique style of violin playing--a marvel of expressiveness, the product of his having digested everything from Stefan Grapelli to the Indian saranghi to bluegrass, Robert Johnson, and Terry Riley. Hearing Tracy Silverman play his six-string electric violin immediately reminded me not only of the great jazz and rock performers and Pakistani qawwalisingers like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (where the real music is in the slide between the notes), but it also made me think of the prose style of Jack Kerouac, so deeply influenced by his listening to the rhythms and melodic arcs of improvised jazz." --Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award winning composer John Adams Tracy Silverman is an American violinist, composer, and producer. Born in New York and raised in Beloit, Wisconsin, he attended Beloit Memorial High School, but left after 10th grade to enter the Chicago Musical College at the age of 16. He is on the string faculty of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee as of 2006. He studied classical music at the Juilliard School, but is best known today as a versatile performer in jazz, contemporary classical music, and rock styles on the electric violin, often performing on 6 string fretted and fretless instruments. He has recorded a solo album for Windham Hill Records and appears on many Windham Hill compilations. He was formerly a violinist with the Turtle Island String Quartet and has also performed with contemporary pianist Jim Brickman and with composer Terry Riley. Silverman is well known for his unique performance style; the BBC Radio has called him "The greatest living exponent of the electric violin". He has performed in many venues all over the world, including at the gala opening of Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles where he was the featured soloist in the premiere of John Adams' composition The Dharma at Big Sur. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.