Home » Jazz Articles » Interview » Jean-Luc Ponty: Imaginary Voyages, Part 1
Jean-Luc Ponty: Imaginary Voyages, Part 1
At first I had no intention to play jazz on violin... But one day I didn't have my clarinet, no sax, I just had my violin, and I was coming out of a classical gig and I decided to jam anyway with it. And that's how I discovered I could play jazz on violin as well. And people liked it
—Jean-Luc Ponty
Jazz is an art form that has been a singular hothouse of musical talent over the decades. There are, and have been, lots of not just great but brilliant players. But perhaps not unsurprisingly, there have been far fewer jazz originals. I mean by that, musicians whose playing has not only outshone most of their contemporaries, but continues to impact generations of players. We might well argue about who has been left out of this list, but it likely begins with
Louis Armstrong
trumpet and vocals1901 - 1971
Duke Ellington
piano1899 - 1974
Django Reinhardt
guitar1910 - 1953
Charlie Christian
guitar, electric1916 - 1942
Lester Young
saxophone1909 - 1959
Thelonious Monk
piano1917 - 1982
Charlie Parker
saxophone, alto1920 - 1955
Clifford Brown
trumpetb.1930
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
Stan Getz
saxophone, tenor1927 - 1991
Wes Montgomery
guitar1923 - 1968
John Coltrane
saxophone1926 - 1967
Bill Evans
piano1929 - 1980
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
Wayne Shorter
saxophone1933 - 2023
Michael Brecker
saxophone, tenor1949 - 2007
Curiously, a name that should be in that list, but I deliberately left off to make a point, is jazz violinist
Jean-Luc Ponty
violinb.1942
M. Ponty turns 80 this year, and released a new album on the MPS label in February (2022). More on that in Part 2.
All About Jazz spoke to him recently, and yes, he is still playing, and still practicing. But we'll get to that in a minute. Like other musicians of his generation such as
Ron Carter
bassb.1937
Herbie Hancock
pianob.1940
George Coleman
saxophone, tenorb.1935
All About Jazz: Monsieur Ponty, thanks for talking with me. Is it OK to call you Jean-Luc?
Jean-Luc Ponty: Of course. That's my name. Go ahead.
AAJ: Thanks. The two names that most people immediately come up with when the conversation turns to jazz violin are
Stephane Grappelli
violin1908 - 1997
Frank Zappa
guitar, electric1940 - 1993
JLP: You know, it's funny because when I started playing in Paris at the very beginning, I remember some Afro-American musicians [I met]. I remember one was an organ player. I forget his name. Oh goodness. And the other was the son of—I'm bad with names nowadays, but his father wrote the "St. Louis Blues."
AAJ:
W.C. Handy
arranger1873 - 1958
JLP: Yeah. And both of them, you know, they were not together. It was at different times in different clubs, but they had the same reaction. They came to me asking, "Where did you learn to play like that?" I mean, the way I played the blues, it felt like I was a black guy from America. And they were looking at me, and I'm definitely very white, blue eyes. And I had no answer. What can I say? When I discovered that music I was, let's see, 16. Right. So I was 16 years old when I discovered what jazz was about, maybe in 1958, '59.
AAJ: A great year for some classic jazz records, of course.
JLP: Right. So the thing is, of course, the first thing I discovered was Stephane Grappelli and the Hot Club recordings. And it was fantastic, I thought, very original. I started to listen to Grappelli, but very quickly, within months, I discovered the music of that time, which was post-bop.
AAJ: Kind of Blue, came out in '59 if I remember rightly...
JLP: Yeah. Coltrane had maybe just started his own band. I saw him in Paris in concert. It was maybe his second concert with his band. He had just left
Miles Davis
trumpet1926 - 1991
Stuff Smith
violin1909 - 1967
AAJ: Yeah, he was more of a swing player, but he had a different feel, a Black, more bluesy feel I guess you'd say, than Grappelli did.
JLP: Exactly. So I felt a lot of affinity with his style. That was an encouragement for me to just adapt the violin to modern jazz, like getting rid of the vibrato, the passionate European style, the gypsy vibrato that you hear so much on string instruments, especially the violin. So, I knew I had to get rid of that then, and adapt the same type of vibrato as Miles was using on his trumpet. And in fact, at the time [in Paris] there were different groups of jazz musicians. You know, those who were still playing the old style, the swing style, and there were specific clubs where all they had was swing style groups. And then there were a couple of other clubs which were exclusively booking modern jazz.
AAJ: I remember there was a club back then called Le Chat Qui Pêche, which was a small club, as I recall.
JLP: Ah yes. In a cellar.
AAJ: That's right.
JLP: And I played there in the late sixties. But my point was to say that there was a circle of modern jazz musician who had a prejudice against the violin...
AAJ: I don't think it's changed radically, though it's getting better. It's one of the things I wanted to talk with you about, so it's interesting you bring it up now.
JLP: Yeah, especially in big bands, most of the time. I did a couple of masterclasses at the Berkeley school of music in Boston, you know, and the violinists told me that some of the young students who wanted to go to play with the big band, you know, heard one of the horn players say, "oh, shit, not, another fiddler again." [We laugh together at this.]
AAJ: Yeah. I mean, my son plays jazz violin, and he's pretty single minded, as only a stubborn 19 year-old can be, that being a jazz violinist is exactly what he wants to be known as; and it's much, much better, but still, even in 2022 that attitude is still there. Which leads to an interesting point I wanted to ask you, which is that in doing this piece that I did ( for a brief history of jazz violin), I ended up talking to Rob Thomas whom I'm friends with who you know well (who pretty much helps run the jazz violin course at Berkeley],
Regina Carter
violinb.1966
Sara Caswell
violinJLP: Adam Baldych.
AAJ: Yeah, who's a pretty well-known [European] jazz violin player although he himself says I'm really not a jazz violinist anymore, I just play with jazz musicians. But nearly everyone, Regina particularly, said, "I really, sometimes don't even think of myself or always call myself a jazz violinist. I think of myself as an improvising violinist who plays jazz." And I find that distinction to be very interesting. And to a degree, I think in some ways it kind of heralds where jazz in general may be headed, just because of the different musical styles and influences that are now being brought into the music in order to open it up and keep it moving forward. And in some ways you are a pioneer of that kind of thinking. Or am I being, I don't know, either wrong or too cruel? I'm not sure.
JLP: No, no, it's true. That, well, I mean, it might sound pretentious, but it's not at all the way I feel. But I felt it first during the period we're talking about, when I just discovered modern jazz. I was looking for modern jazz violinists and there were none. I wanted to find out if there was someone I could listen to and be inspired by. And I found out there was not a single one who really played bebop or modern jazz of the time. So, anyway, I started thinking maybe it's not a good idea, maybe that's the reason. I don't know. But I also felt I could do it. Because I had started playing jazz on clarinet, in fact, and listening to horn players. You know, my influences in jazz were horn players starting with
Clifford Brown
trumpetb.1930
AAJ: It would have been a kind of a novelty in a way, I guess. I mean, not to the same degree, but I remember the kind of surprise I got listening to a guy called
Rufus Harley
woodwinds1936 - 2006
Sonny Rollins
saxophoneb.1930
JLP: Well, that's it! So when I would go on stage in a club, sometimes I would hear comments. "What is this now? Is it going to be tango, or what?" And then after they heard me play, they were, "oh wow. He can play modern jazz." And so I was quickly admitted among the circle of modern jazz musicians as one of them. And even when I arrived in the States, same thing.
McCoy Tyner
piano1938 - 2020
AAJ: That's a really interesting comment, you know, because of the weird and assorted networks that we all have that, for instance, led me to do this interview. Anyway, my son's first long-term jazz violin teacher was a young man named
Benjamin Sutin
violinb.1992
John Blake
violin1947 - 2014
JLP: Yeah, it could be. It could be, because John is from Philadelphia. And so was McCoy.
AAJ: The story I was told was that McCoy was talking about bringing a violin player into the band, maybe hiring you, and McCoy's bassist was also from Philly. And he said, because you know these guys from Philly look after each other, "I know this guy who, you know, is this great violin player, and by the way, he comes from Philly," and McCoy said, "Oh, really? Bring him in." And the rest is history.
JLP: Yeah, I know. I'm close friends with
Stanley Clarke
bassb.1951
And as a composer, my influences were mostly classical composers, impressionists, you know, Debussy, Ravel, Messiaen, and Satie and so on, Stravinsky. And so I was missing that then. And I didn't know how to go about it until I arrived in California and got to meet Zappa and then later on
John McLaughlin
guitarb.1942
AAJ: I think there's an argument to be made that by the time you were maturing as a musician, you know, as a young man, the extremes of the classical world were really approaching the extremes of the jazz world—free music and avant-garde. Zappa's an interesting example, as not many people know he was also a composer basically of neo-classical music [outside of his rock material]. The gap had started to close. I don't know whether you were conscious of that at all.
JLP: Not until later, because, I had an experience of playing with a symphony orchestra, a rare occasion, but I did first with Mahavishnu [Orchestra] and John McLaughlin. The first album I did when I joined his band was Apocalypse, which were his compositions orchestrated for symphony by someone else. We recorded in London, AIR studio, and George Martin produced it. And we did a concert in America before, too, as a test, to practice the music. And then again in the eighties, I was invited to play with the Montreal Symphony. Because it was their 50th anniversary, I think. And it was the 10th anniversary of the jazz festival. And so they joined forces. A few jazz artists played with the orchestra, it was
Oscar Peterson
piano1925 - 2007
Continue to part 2...
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Interview
Peter Rubie
Louis Armstrong
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Django Reinhardt
Charlie Christian
Lester Young
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Clifford Brown
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Stan Getz
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John Coltrane
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Jean-Luc Ponty
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Frank Zappa
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W.C. Handy
Miles Davis
Rob Thomas
Regina Carter
Sarah Caswell
Adam Baldych
Rufus Harley
Ben Sutin
John Blake
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