Artist in Residence & Guest Artists
Violinist Regina Carter combines
dazzling technical proficiency and profound compositional and
improvisational gifts with a fresh, aggressive approach to her
instrument and a multicultural perspective, and she challenges our
preconceptions regarding the instrument. In Carter's hands, the violin
reveals both its melodic side and its potential for percussive
expression. Perhaps more significantly, Regina Carter demonstrates the
violinist's eagerness to explore musical combinations and contexts both
familiar and unexpected.
Carter, an OU alum, has been named artist-in-residence and will spend
two full weeks on campus during each academic year to teach master
classes and work with students, faculty and ensembles, individually and
in groups.
A Grammy nominee and a 2006 recipient of the John D. and Catherine T.
MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, Carter earned her bachelor’s degree in
music from OU in 1985. In 2001, she became the first jazz musician and
African- American to play “The Cannon,” a 250-year-old Guarneri violin
once owned by Niccolo Paganini, which is kept in Genoa, Italy, and only
played once a year by an individual deemed worthy.
Carter is well known as an innovative musician, a trait that led her to
Oakland University more than two decades ago. A native Detroiter,
Carter studied at the Center for Creative Studies and the New England
Conservatory of Music before transferring to Oakland because she wanted
to play jazz on the violin, traditionally a classical instrument.