Violinist Rachel Barton Pine Plays Blues-Infused Works by Black Composers on New Cedille Records Album

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine, Cedille Records’ best-selling artist and longtime advocate for music by Black composers, performs a program of blues-influenced classical works for solo violin and violin and piano by Black composers of the 20th and 21st centuries on Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers, her newest Cedille Records album.

Pianist Matthew Hagle, Pine’s longtime recital partner, joins her on their third album together on Cedille and Pine’s 21st for the Chicago-based label.

Blues Dialogues: Music by Black Composers, available October 19, 2018, features several world-premiere recordings: Noel Da Costa’s A Set of Dance Tunes for Solo Violin, Dolores White’s expanded, four-movement version of her Blues Dialogues for solo violin, and Billy Childs’s Incident on Larpenteur Avenue, a single-movement violin sonata exploring the events and impact of the 2016 killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer.

Other landmarks include the first recordings of Wendell Logan’s violin and piano arrangement of Duke Ellington’s In a Sentimental Mood; Daniel Bernard Roumain’s Filter for Unaccompanied Violin as updated in 2018 with an opening cadenza written specially for Pine, and the violin version of Charles S. Brown’s A Song Without Words.

The album also offers David N. Baker’s Blues (Deliver My Soul), Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Blue/s Forms and Louisiana Blues Strut (A Cakewalk) for solo violin, William Grant Still’s Suite for Violin and Piano, Clarence Cameron White’s Levee Dance, and Errollyn Wallen’s Woogie Boogie (Cedille Records CDR 90000 182).

Pine had the opportunity to work directly with several of the composers on their pieces, specifically Perkinson, Dolores White, Childs, and Roumain.

In addition to the 23 tracks on the physical CD, Louis Kaufman’s violin and piano arrangement of “Blues” from William Grant Still’s Lenox Avenue is included on all digital album downloads and is available for streaming and as a free-standing download purchase.

‘Expressive Power’    

Blues Dialogues “explores the expressive power of the blues,” writes Mark Clague in the album’s liner notes. Each track traces some lineage to the early acoustic blues giants, but “rather than rehearse the conventional 12-bar blues progression, the composers featured here find inspiration in the freedom of the blues.”

Listeners will hear quotes of American fiddle tunes, gospel hymns and spirituals, boogie-woogie dance tunes and, in the case of Roumain’s Filter for Unaccompanied Violin, “sonic references to the signal processing of electronic dance music.”

Pine’s Passions Converge

Pine’s passions for the blues, discovering interesting new repertoire, and championing the music of unjustly neglected Black composers converge on Blues Dialogues.

In her introductory essay in the album’s liner notes, the internationally renowned classical violin soloist calls the blues “my second-favorite genre of music.” The Chicago native cites, as early influences, her parents’ blues record collection, local radio, and hearing blues greats perform at the annual Chicago Blues Festival and at the Kingston Mines blues nightclub. As a teenager, leafing through scores at her favorite sheet music shop, she discovered Baker’s Deliver My Soul, the album’s opening track. “Here was a 12-bar blues made into a classical work for violin and piano! I had to learn it,” Pine writes.

She sought blues coaching from Chicago’s multi-genre violin guru Edgar Gabriel and later performed with electric blues guitarist and singer Son Seals and harmonica virtuoso Sugar Blue at an O’Hare International Airport event, which she calls “one of the musical highlights of my life.”

Album’s Forerunner

The forerunner of Blues Dialogues was Pine’s groundbreaking and widely applauded 1997 Cedille album, Violin Concertos by Black Composers of the 18th and 19th Centuries, with Daniel Hege conducting the Encore Chamber Orchestra (Cedille Records CDR 90000 035). The Chicago Tribune described it as “music of great charm and elegance, rendered with sensitivity and stylish bravura.” Gramophone proclaimed it “a fascinating issue,” while The New York Times said Pine “handles the concertos’ varied demands with unaffected aplomb, performing this music lovingly rather than dutifully.”

That recording led to invitations to appear on diversity panels and prompted questions from students, parents, teachers, and colleagues about where to find more works by Black composers. Subsequently, Pine’s RBP Foundation established its Music by Black Composers project, a multi-faceted educational initiative and music repository. Over the last 15 years, Pine and her RBP Foundation have collected over 900 works by more than 350 Black composers from the 18th–21st centuries, representing Africa, North and South America, Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, and Oceania. While reviewing repertoire for the project, Pine re-connected with her youthful embrace of the blues and conceived the Blues Dialogues program.

Pine is a member of the Chicago Music Association, originally founded as the first branch of the National Association of Negro Musicians, an organization that supports classically trained Black musicians. When Pine and Hagle performed a selection of these works at benefit concert for the association, a Chicago newspaper critic praised “her marvelous playing” and commended Hagle for his “firm and polished support.”

Recording Team

Blues Dialogues was produced by Grammy-nominated producer James Ginsburg and engineered by multiple-Grammy nominee Bill Maylone at the Music Institute of Chicago’s Nichols Hall in Evanston, Ill., December 18–22, 2017, and May 4, 2018.

Rachel Barton Pine

Violinist Rachel Barton Pine is “an exciting, boundary-defying performer” (Washington Post) known for her “bravura technique and soulful musicianship” (New York Times).

Pine has appeared as soloist with many of the world’s most prestigious ensembles, including the Chicago and Vienna Symphonies, Philadelphia Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic, and Camerata Salzburg.

She holds top prizes from the J.S. Bach, Queen Elisabeth, Paganini, Kreisler, Szigeti, and Montreal international competitions. For more information, visit rachelbartonpine.com.

Matthew Hagle

Pianist Matthew Hagle has been heard in prestigious concert venues throughout the United States. A resident of the Chicago area, he has performed at the Ravinia Festival, Symphony Center, and Chicago Cultural Center. His complete Beethoven piano sonatas cycle aired live from Chicago’s WFMT radio. He frequently performs as a chamber musician with members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. A faculty member at the Music Institute of Chicago, he also directs the organization’s Musicianship Program. His website is www.matthagle.com.

Cedille Records

Launched in November 1989, Grammy Award-winning Cedille Records (pronounced say-DEE) is dedicated to showcasing and promoting the most noteworthy classical artists in and from the Chicago area.

The audiophile-oriented label releases every new album in multiple formats: physical CD; 96 kHz, 24-bit, studio-quality FLAC download; and 320 Kbps MP3 download.

An independent nonprofit enterprise, Cedille Records is the label of Cedille Chicago, NFP. Sales of physical CDs and digital downloads and streams cover only a small percentage of the label’s costs. Tax-deductible donations from individual music-lovers and grants from charitable organizations account for most of its revenue.

Headquarters are at 1205 W. Balmoral Ave., Chicago, IL 60640; call (773) 989-2515; email: info@cedillerecords.org. Website: cedillerecords.org.

Cedille Records is distributed in the Western Hemisphere by Naxos of America and its distribution partners, by Select Music in the U.K., and by other independent distributors in the Naxos network in classical music markets around the world.