Jazz violin

Jazz violin is the use of the violin or electric violin to improvise solo lines. The earliest references to jazz performance using the violin as a solo instrument was during the first decades of the 20th century. Early jazz violinists included Eddie South, who played violin with Jimmy Wade's Dixielanders in Chicago; Stuff Smith; Claude "Fiddler" Williams, who played with Andy Kirk and his Twelve Clouds of Joy. Joe Venuti was best known for his work with guitarist Eddie Lang during the 1920s. Georgie Stoll was a jazz violinist who became an orchestra leader and film music director.

Since that time there have been many superb improvising violinists including Noel Pointer, Stéphane Grappelli and Jean-Luc Ponty. While not primarily jazz violinists, Darol Anger and Mark O'Connor have spent significant parts of their careers playing jazz, while emerging artists like Sara Caswell, Scott Tixier and Jeremy Kittel are equally fluent in both progressive and older styles of jazz. Violins also appear in string ensembles or big bands supplying orchestral backgrounds to many jazz recordings. Recent fast progress in the modern jazz violin expression has resulted in extensive pedagogical research and publishing. Among the best-known and worldwidely acknowledged contributions in advanced instrumental technique is Stringprovisation by Ari Poutiainen.

The violin is a bowed string instrument with four strings usually tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest and highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which also includes the viola, cello, and double bass. A violinist produces sound by either drawing a bow (normally held in the right hand) across one or more strings (which may be stopped by the fingers of the other hand to produce a full range of pitches), plucking the strings (with either hand), or a variety of other techniques. In jazz-rock fusion styles, jazz violinists may use an electric violin plugged into an instrument amplifier along with effects such as a wah pedal or a distortion fuzzbox.

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