From ferocious to folk with a violin prodigy all grown up

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 27/02/2025 (196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Virtually every classical soloist is a “virtuoso” these days. A “trailblazer,” “visionary” or “prodigy.”

But in Rachel Barton Pine’s case, these buzzwords don’t echo as just marketing hype.

The American violinist, who is in town for two concerts this week, debuted with the Chicago Symphony in 1984 when she was only 10.

In 2006, when Pine was still in her early 30s, the Washington Post placed her in “the top echelon” and she released her 11th album.

Today, she has more than 40 albums under her belt and pops up in places such as NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, The Today Show and CBS Sunday Morning.

Tucked somewhere in the middle of her bio, between paragraphs mentioning collaborations with the Barenboims and Chicago Symphony Orchestra, is a wee reference to heavy metal.

Turns out she’s a big fan of bands such as Slayer, Anthrax, Pantera and Metallica. Look further, and you’ll find that she and her jagged electric six-string violin used to play in the thrash/doom metal band Earthen Grave, which has shared the stage with such genre titans as Pentagram and Mayhem.

Serendipitous, then, that Winnipeg should boast one of Canada’s leading artists in blending classical and metal in Harry Stafylakis, the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra’s composer-in-residence.

And, of course, this crossover has a venerable tradition: from the “neoclassical metal” of 1980s shredder Yngwie Malmsteen to the headier prog-metal experiments of Dream Theatre.

Search “Rite of Spring Metal Arrangement” and it quickly becomes clear Igor Stravinsky could be pegged as progenitor to prog metal with his syncopated, stabbing chords.

Tonight, Pine will play the world première of Stafylakis’s Violin Concerto, which we suspect will have something of the “doomsday chords and jackhammer rhythms” (The New Yorker) for which the Juno nominee is noted.

Stafylakis’s concerto is bookended by Hanna Havrylets’ Chorale for strings, which opens the program, and Antonin Dvorak’s Symphonic Variations.

Dvorak’s 1877 piece is a romantic masterwork, blending folk melodies from the composer’s Czech background with high classical forms. Havrylets, who died shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, reflects on her Ukrainian heritage in a work rich with a sense of longing.

On Friday, Pine will perform a solo program celebrating the American folk roots of the violin. The show, co-presented by Virtuosi Concerts and the WSO at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, traces fiddle music’s evolution from its European roots to a unique style, owing to African-American influence. It features performances of works by Bach, Belgian composer Henri Vieuxtemps, contemporary fiddler Mark O’Connor, and jazz- and hip-hop-influenced pieces by Noel da Costa, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, and Daniel Bernard Roumain.

conrad.sweatman@freepress.mb.ca