Talk:List of jazz violinists

possible merge
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fiddlers#Jazz rootsmusic (talk) 04:44, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

missing
Anderson, Laurie (voc, vi, electronics), * 1947jun05 in Chicago, Illinois, --Aanonen (talk) 22:43, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

possible removal
I was surprised to Yahdi Menuin's name on this list. I doubt very seriously that Menuin himself would want his name on this list. He did not improvise, but played by memory. Here he says as much in his own words: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0IcFyXUWs

One would have to be a classical violinist to appreciate how great the difference between Classical Music and Jazz really is. In the last hundred years or so improvisational performance has not been a part of classic violin playing. Classical musicians mostly started with the printed page and then go on to perform the piece by memory where no note is changed from the sheet music. Transitioning to true improvisation means changing one's whole way of thinking. I don't know how far Menuin went along this path when considering his performance with Ravi Shankar. Their wonderful performance in the UN concert was second to none. Whereas the Indian music they played is by nature pure improvisational style, I don't know that Menuin playing was improvisational.

To give you a bit better sense, I am able to play every piece on Menuin/Grappelli's discography in a sweet and satisfying manner, just by seeing the sheet music for the first time, but I can tell you first hand that doing so has absolutely nothing to do with the ability to play Jazz. In fact, having classical training often means the facility to read music well, and it makes it all the harder to learn to play Jazz. The main reason is that for almost all Classical Musician who don't play Jazz, it is so much easier to read the sheet music that fine players can cover ten or even a hundred times as much music by just sequentially reading the music carefully the first time, but without extensive Jazz experience the same Classical player may have to take a great deal of effort just to figure out one piece. On the other hand, a fine Jazz musician that I know can hear a song, and immediately tell you the chords of the song in any of the 12 keys as well immediately make up any number of riffs and substitutions on the spot. Now that is a real Jazz musician, and I am sure that Menuin could not do that. 99.191.73.127 (talk) 09:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)