By
Lisa Lucas
Arizona Daily Wildcat
Jazz violinist Regina Carter performs at Centennial tomorrow night
It often holds true that mothers do, indeed, know best.
This appears to be the case for musical success Regina Carter, a jazz violinist who will share her talent with Tucson tomorrow night at Centennial Hall.
Carter, who began taking formal music lessons at the age of 4, said her interest in the arts stemmed from her mother's influence.
She said her mother, now a retired kindergarten teacher, believed in giving her children a well-rounded education by means of introducing them to music. When her older brothers began taking lessons, Carter said she found she too wanted to express herself musically.
"(My) brothers were taking piano lessons and I walked up and started playing - I was 2 years old," Carter said.
Due to her young age, Carter said she waited until she was a "mature" 4 to begin taking formal music lessons.
Since then, Carter has pursued her interest further, eventually becoming "the premier jazz violinist of our time," according to a press release.
Despite her success, Carter said she still takes music lessons and listens to old recordings to calculate her growth as a performer.
"I think I've come into my own sound," she said. "There's certain little idiosyncrasies in my playing that I can even recognize."
Carter said her favorite aspect of jazz music, the one most fascinating to her, is the spontaneity and improvisation involved.
"The biggest part of jazz is to improvise," she said. "(Jazz is a) conversation with whatever is going on - whoever you're playing with at the moment."
While Carter said she has faced some hardships in her career being a woman in jazz, she added she finds herself more at a disadvantage because she plays the violin, an instrument not traditionally played by jazz musicians.
Hardships, however, do not discourage Carter. She said in order to turn the negative aspects of her career into positive factors, she puts her whole self into her art form.
"There is no such thing as an off day," she said. "(I have) no time for a social life."
While Carter said a difficult aspect of her career is that it is so "crazed," she said this craziness leads into what is most difficult for her - maintaining contact with friends and family. She said the only person she keeps in constant contact with is her mother.
"In the beginning, my mother was really afraid because she thought the life of a jazz musician had a lot of negative connotations," she said. "Now she's very comfortable with what I'm doing."
Carter said her performance will include a variety of sounds, creating an atmosphere even jazz laymen can appreciate.
"It (the music) is very attainable to anybody," she said, "even people that don't necessarily know anything (about) or don't like jazz."
"I've been finding that a lot of people don't necessarily understand what's going on on-stage," she added, "especially with the improvisation - so they tend to shy away from it."
In order to create a better understanding of jazz before Carter's performance, Alice Haddock, president-elect of the Tucson Jazz Society, will hold an informational lecture before the show.
Although Haddock said she is neither an expert on the jazz style of music nor a jazz musician, she said her knowledge of jazz stems from her love of the art. She added she has guest-lectured in jazz history courses with the UA School of Music.
"It's important to know that you can love jazz and be very knowledgeable about it without being a musician," she said.
She said her discussion will revolve around women in jazz and some of the difficulties they have faced in the male-dominated style of music.
"Women in jazz have not gotten a whole lot of play," she said. "Jazz has been a man's music in terms of people who make it until about the last 15 to 20 years."
The discussion starts at 7:15 p.m. in Room 102 of the Center for English as a Second Language (CESL). Haddock said she will discuss jazz issues for the first 20 minutes of her presentation and will allow the last 10 minutes for audience questions.
The Regina Carter Quintet will perform at 8 p.m. tomorrow at Centennial Hall. Tickets are $28, $22 and $16. Call the Centennial Hall box office at 621-3341 for more information.
