Rosin the Bow with Joe McHugh

This podcast continues my conversation with two remarkable and thoughtful musicians. It also explores how the principles of abstract geometry can inform both the composition and performance of violin music and how different cultures and musical traditions can enrich the experience of music and of life itself.

Purnaprajna Bangere is both a brilliant mathematician and a highly-respected violinist trained in the classical violin music of southern India. David Balakrishnan is a violinist, composer, and member of the Turtle Island String Quartet who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2017, David spent several months as an artist-in-residence working with Purna in Lawrence, Kansas, home of the University of Kansas. This interview explores their unique musical collaboration that weaves together the classical violin music traditions of southern India with that of Europe and the United States.   

Bashar Matti was born in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War and endured the troubled times of the Kuwait-Iraq War and subsequent United States invasion of his country. Through it all he clung to his love of the violin and music and was eventually able to come to the United States where he studied violin with Kathryn Lucktenberg at the University of Oregon. 

Amanda Forsyth is a cellist who was born in South Africa and grew up in Canada. Her father was a composer who inspired her to become a musician. She is married to the violinist Pinchas Zukerman and I interviewed her after a concert she performed with her husband and the Greensboro Symphony Orchestra.

Daniel Rouslin taught violin and music theater at Willamette University for many years. He was teaching there in 1988 when an early 18th century Italian violin was discovered hidden under the floor boards of Waller Hall, the oldest building on the campus of the oldest institution of higher learning west of the Mississippi River. How did violin get there? Who made the violin? What should the school do with such a unique and valuable violin?

Dan tells the story of the remarkable discovery and also shares his own story as a musician and music educator. 

Grammy and MacArthur award winner Rhiannon Giddens grew up in North Carolina near the city of Greensboro, which is where I interviewed her in 2015 while she was performing at the National Folk Festival. A founding member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops, she was trained as an opera singer before her passion for the banjo, fiddle, and folk songs took hold. She has done much to educate the public, as well as fellow musicians, about the contribution African-American musicians have made to the traditional folk music of United States. 

This is part two of my conversation with violinist John Sherba who is a member of the Kronos Quartet. In this podcast he talks about some of the quartet's innovative musical projects as well as talking about his own violins.

John Sherba is a violinist and member of the legendary Kronos Quartet. I interviewed John several months after the Covid 19 pandemic changed everyone's life. Here he talks about his family and his own musical journey.

Tony Ellis' first professional job as a musician was playing banjo for Bill Monroe, considered by many as the father of bluegrass music. Along with being a gifted banjo player and fiddler, Tony also composes some of the sweetest tunes this side of paradise. And if you need your fiddle adjusted or maybe you're in the market for a new instrument, stop by Tony's shop in Circleville, Ohio.

This interview was recorded in 2018 at the Fraley Family Music Festival that is held each year at Carter Caves State Park in the hill country of eastern Kentucky.

This is part two of my conversation with violin maker Marco Imer Piccinotti who lives in the town of San Polo d'Enza in Northern Italy.