Regina Carter is an extraordinary violinist, a certified genius (she won a fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation in 2006), and a roots musician of unique breadth and depth. The Los Angeles Times calls her “a talented, charismatic player who is almost single-handedly reviving interest in the violin as a jazz instrument.” Time Magazine described her music as “wonderfully listenable, probingly intelligent, and, at times, breathtakingly daring.” Her latest album, Southern Comfort, continues an extended exploration of her musical roots, beautifully interpreting folk tunes from the world of her paternal grandfather, who worked as a coalminer in Alabama. To gather material for the record, Regina sought out distant relatives, dug through books about the era, and combed through the Library of Congress’s collection of field recordings. She came up with a bountiful mix of early gospel, work songs, and Cajun fiddle music. “In the Appalachians there were Scottish and Irish descendants, slaves and Native Americans,” she says. “It was a cultural hodgepodge and the music resulting from it is intoxicating. This disc was to pay homage to my family but it turned out to be so much more.”
 
Regina started playing piano by ear when she was two, moved on to violin, and by high school she was studying with Itzhak Perlman and the late Yehudi Menuhin and playing with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. At 16, after seeing Stéphane Grappelli, she turned to jazz. The quartet features Xavier Davis on piano, Jesse Murphy on bass, Alvester Garnett on drums, and Regina on violin. Their music, says St. Louis Magazine, “holds entire worlds inside it: Beale Street, Bourbon Street, Paris cafés, the loft jazz of Billy Bang and the archetypal voice of the griot.” Catch the Regina Carter Quartet for a glimpse of the future of jazz.

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