Bio

Lauded by the BBC as “the greatest living exponent of the electric violin”, Tracy Silverman’s groundbreaking work with the 6-string electric violin has redefined string playing and influenced an entire generation of string players.

Shortly after graduating from the Juilliard School in 1980, Silverman built one of the first-ever 6-string violins and began a lifelong adventure as a musical pioneer, designing, building and performing on an instrument that did not previously exist. While developing this new instrument, Silverman discovered that he had also developed a new approach to string playing. “It’s been a work in progress for about 30 years now. New possibilities keep revealing themselves—the instrument teaches me how to play it. The additional 2 lower strings open up a door not just to an additional lower register but also to a completely new approach, treating the violin as a chordal instrument like the guitar, which actually taught me a more complete and integrated way of using the bow which I call ‘Strum Bowing’.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer John Adams’ electric violin concerto “The Dharma at Big Sur”, written expressly for and with Silverman, (“the closest thing to a genuine collaboration I’ve ever done with a performer”–John Adams,) single-handedly legitimized the electric violin in 2003. Recorded by Silverman on Nonesuch Records with the BBC Symphony with Adams conducting, he has performed it at New York’s Lincoln Center, for the gala opening of Los Angeles’ Walt Disney Concert Hall, Royal Albert Hall in London, Palais des Beaux Artes in Brussels, Adelaide Festival Theater and the Cabrillo Festival, among many others. In the liner notes, Adams writes, “Tracy has developed his own unique style of violin playing–a marvel of expressiveness.” At the premier, Mark Swed of the LA Times raved, “Inspiring. Silverman is in a class of his own.” The Chicago Tribune’s John von Rhein wrote of Silverman’s “blazing virtuosity. You will be astonished that anybody can play a fiddle like that.”

The Nashville Symphony has commissioned legendary composer Terry Riley, a longtime collaborator, to write a new electric violin concerto for Silverman, to premier in Nashville in May of 2010 and then be performed with the Nashville Symphony at the closing night of the Spring for Music Festival at Carnegie Hall on May 12, 2012.

“The journey of the 6-string came from the fact that I was interested in non-classical music—rock, jazz, music from India, Brazil—it was lucky that I couldn’t play guitar or saxophone and was limited to finding a way to get all those sounds out of a violin instead. I entered Juilliard wanting to be the next Jasha Heifetz but I left wanting to be the next Jimi Hendrix. The irony is not lost on me that my musical odyssey has brought me full circle—from classical to rock to jazz to world music and now back to the classical world as a soloist—made all the more sweet for the untraditional journey I took to get here.”

A missing link between the classical and vernacular worlds, Silverman is also an in-demand composer with commissions and performances with orchestras all over the world. Silverman’s “Electric Violin Concerto” has been described by the Wichita Eagle as “the ideal piece for today’s symphony”, and has been choreographed in it’s entirety by Henrique Rodovalho in a fully mounted production with the Bale Teatro Guaira in Brazil. Silverman’s 2nd electric violin concerto, “Between the Kiss and the Chaos”, premiered in 2010.

Silverman has recorded with a virtual who’s who of the new music, jazz and rock world. As first violinist with the innovative Turtle Island String Quartet, Silverman toured internationally and established a long-standing relationship with Windham Hill Records, where he appears on dozens of compilation CD’s. His 1999 self-produced Windham Hill release, “Trip to the Sun”, has become a cult favorite which Billboard Magazine heralded as “the most adventurous Windham Hill album ever.”

A true eclectic, Silverman has recorded and performed with artists as varied as composers John Adams and Terry Riley, Indian tabla master Zakir Hussein, violinists Rachel Barton Pine and Daniel Bernard Roumain, pop pianist Jim Brickman, singer-songwriter Beth Nielsen Chapman, the rock band Guster, alt-country band Big and Rich, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones percussionist Roy “Futureman” Wooten, Tuck and Patty, classical guitarist Eliot Fisk, jazz pianist Billy Taylor, Irish rock star Bob Geldof, and as a soloist with major orchestras, including the Detroit Symphony conducted by Neemi Jarvi, the LA Philharmonic under Esa-Pekka Salonen, with conductors Marin Alsop, Kent Negano and many others.

“I had an amazing teacher named Deborah Schwartz when I was in my teens and I learned almost everything I know about the violin from her. Then I studied with the legendary Ivan Galamian at Juilliard. I’ve been so lucky to work with so many great musicians of every kind.”

An international touring artist, Tracy has performed at major concert venues from Sao Paulo to Vienna, from Carnegie Hall to the Hollywood Bowl. In 1999 he was awarded Artist in Residence status by the city of Hamburg, Germany and is a frequent concert attraction in Brazil. The Rhein Zeitung wrote “technically brilliant to the fingertips, but overthrowing all the usual preconceived ideas”. The London Times raved, “His deep engagement with the music coursed through his strong, supple virtuosity.”

Silverman produced and performs on Jim Brickman’s hit CD’s “Simple Things”, “Lovesongs and Lullabies”, “Escape”, “Homecoming”, “Beautiful World” and on 5 of Jim’s popular TV Specials. His many appearances on national radio and television include NPR’s “Performance Today”, Minnesota Public Radio’s “St. Paul Sunday”, many appearances on “A Prairie Home Companion” and was featured as a violinist and record producer on “CBS News Sunday Morning with Charles Osgood”. He has taught at Macalester College in St. Paul, and at the MacPhail Center for the Arts in Minneapolis and regularly gives workshops all over the world, including the Stanford Jazz Workshop, Jazz in July at Amherst, Oberlin Conservatory and many others. Silverman has long been a favorite instructor at Mark O’Connor’s annual fiddle camp and he currently holds teaching positions in jazz violin and composition at Belmont University and Vanderbilt University’s Blair School of Music in his home of Nashville, TN.

Tracy is currently touring internationally as a soloist with orchestras, with his solo one-man concerts, with his rock ensemble, “Eclectica”, which features 5-time Grammy winner Roy “Futureman” Wooten, and with Three Part Invention with pianist Philip Aaberg and cellist Eugene Friesen. He lives with his wife and 4 children in Nashville, TN.