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Fiddling With Effects: Electric Violinist Tracy Silverman

Violinist Tracy Silverman
Violinist Tracy Silverman

Lauded as “the greatest living exponent of the electric violin,” Tracy Silverman’s groundbreaking work with the 6-string electric violin defies musical boundaries. Silverman joins John Floridis in the Musicians' Spotlight this week.

”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 qawwali singers 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

(Broadcast: "Musicians' Spotlight,"  5/26/16. Listen weekly on on the radio Thursdays, 7:30 p.m., or via podcast.)

Copyright 2020 Montana Public Radio. To see more, visit Montana Public Radio.

John Floridis, the host and producer of Musician's Spotlight, has been with Montana Public Radio since 1997. He has interviewed over 200 musicians during that time from household names like B.B. King, Alison Krauss and Lyle Lovett, to Montana musicians such as Eden Atwood, Darko Butarac and Tom Catmull. He is also an independent recording and performing artist in his own right and a former registered music therapist.