Regina Carter

Regina Carter, a violinist of striking originality as a soloist, arrived in New York from her native Detroit and startled the jazz scene with her refined command and full, resonant tone. That distinctive voice also drew notice far beyond jazz circles, prompting artists including Faith Evans, Elliot Sharp, and Mary J. Blige to call on her for their sessions, while filmmaker Ken Burns featured her on the soundtrack for The Civil War. She has likewise appeared on recordings by jazz figures such as Tom Harrell, Wynton Marsalis, and Oliver Lake. Carter first took up the violin at age four and later attended Cass Technical High School in Detroit. After graduation she entered the New England Conservatory of Music, yet soon returned to Michigan to become a member of the all-female jazz quartet Straight Ahead. Following two albums for Atlantic she left the group in 1994 to launch a solo career, having already begun studio work in New York and intending to settle there. Those early years brought associations with Max Roach, the String Trio of New York, and the Uptown String Quartet, leading to her self-titled debut for Atlantic in 1995. The record’s blend of R&B, pop, and jazz puzzled jazz audiences while earning favor from pop reviewers, and its sales enabled her to record Something for Grace, a project that leaned toward jazz yet carried an R&B gloss in its production values. She departed Atlantic for Verve in 1998 and issued two further albums under her own name, the second of which, Motor City Moments, remains her strongest effort.

In 2001 she made a duet album with Kenny Barron that has been widely praised for its singing lyricism, broad dynamic range, and inventive harmonic detail. She next released the classically tinged Paganini: After a Dream in 2003 and, in 2006, the American-songbook collection I’ll Be Seeing You: A Sentimental Journey as a tribute to her late mother. That September she was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.

After extensive touring and a period living in Africa, she returned with Reverse Thread on the E1 label in 2010. The album centers on African folk melodies drawn from Mali, Uganda, Senegal, and neighboring countries, and it features accordionists Will Holshouser and Gary Versace, guitarist Adam Rogers, acoustic bassist Chris Lightcap, electric bassist Mamadou Ba, kora master Yocouba Sissoko, and drummer Alvester Garnett. Working with many of the same players, she continued her exploration of earlier musical traditions on Southern Comfort, which examined the roots of American music both conceptually and in practice; the album appeared in March 2014.

The following year she contributed to a stylistically diverse group of projects that included albums by Terri Lyne Carrington, Joe Jackson, and Will Downing. In 2017 she resumed her solo output with her second release for Okeh Records, the Ella Fitzgerald-inspired Ella: Accentuate the Positive. The recording featured Fitzgerald’s former pianist and musical director Mike Wofford along with guest appearances by bassist Ben Williams and vocalists Charenee Wade and Carla Cook.