I met Garth Knox in 2011 at New England Conservatory where I was studying for my Bachelor. He was teaching the viola class for a guest semester, and I asked him for a lesson. We soon started talking about his Viola Spaces, a series of concert studies for viola that had been published in 2008 and were starting to gain a lot of traction in the viola world. The question was .. would they work for violin transposed up a fifth ? We both missed the ringing of many bass notes, and it seemed like there was a lot more possibility in the brilliance register of the violin that should be taken advantage of. So it was decided to make a whole new series for violin. We spent a lot of time exploring these techniques together, Garth writing drafts for me to give feedback on, editing, editing, and re-editing. It’s been a great learning curve for me. I’m proud of this project and so excited to share it with the world – in particular with young violinists who I hope will dig into the material with zeal, discovering new pathways in the relationship they have with their instrument.
The Violin Spaces were published by Schott in 2018.
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order the sheet music here
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order the CD here
tracks :
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- Skating
- Up Above Our Heads
- Microtonal Blues
- Ten Fingers
- No Pitch, No Problem
- Sliding
- The Raven
- Rick O’Shea
- bonus : nature / text SJ Fowler / violin&voice DLBD / bass John Eckhardt
Director Willem Wits / DOP Bobby Littlejohn / First AC Rikash Gobardhan / Floor Manager Iwen Legro / Hair and Makeup ietsmethaar (Lilian Prins) / Concept and Edit Willem Wits / Audio recording Jurriaan JJ Sielcken / Tonmeister Iwen Legro / Mix and master Jurriaan JJ Sielcken
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“Often in a humoristic manner and always with musical expression in focus, these eight pieces are perfect for every violinist to practice playing techniques and to enhance the enthusiasm to experiment and the joy of playing.” (Carolin Widmann)
‘We can all extend our techniques by opening up the space around them and taking them to their limits. The Violin Spaces are dedicated to Diamanda Dramm, whose talent, enthusiasm, suggestions and feedback were an enormous help to me in the construction of these “Spaces”.’ (Garth Knox)