Voyaging Beyond the Classical

International Musician, Apr 2007

GREGORY T.S. WALKER'S ELECTRIFYING APPROACH TO CLASSICAL MUSIC HAS BEEN ACCLAIMED IN THE COURSE OF PERFORMANCES THROUGHOUT HIS HOME STATE OF COLORADO, THE US, AND ABROAD. BUT HIS INADVERTENT INSPIRATION CAME FROM A TRADITIONAL VIOLIN TEACHER AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY, ISRAELI-BORN VIRTUOSO YUVAL YARON.

''WHEN HE PLAYED, YOU COULD CLOSE YOUR EYES AND HEAR AN INTENSITY THAT COMES FROM A PLACE FAR BEYOND CLASSICAL MUSIC," WALKER REMINISCES.

NEW AUDIENCES

A member of Local 20-623 (Denver, CO), Walker has actually been featured as an electric guitarist in Guitar for the Practicing Musician magazine, but in the spring of 2006, Newport Classic released his groundbreaking electronic violin interpretation of Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the Boulder Philharmonic Orchestra.

Although it may seem a stretch for a musician with his academic background, Walker actually sees his experimentation as the sum of a number of past experiences. Now an associate professor in the Department of Music and Entertainment Industry Studies at the University of Colorado at Denver, Walker teaches a range of courses from Pop/Rock Ensemble to Performance Art.

"I received my doctorate in musical composition from the University of Colorado at Boulder, but I got it composing in a complex modern style that only about 1% of the world's population would not hate," Walker explains. "I knew a radical interpretation of a popular work like Vivaldi's Four Seasons could work. There are lots of cool avant-garde composers who write for a sophisticated audience, but here was a chance to do something for normal people, and get them to embrace music in a new way."

Much like his 1993 Colorado Symphony commission to write Dream N. the Hood, a work that has been described as "the first hip hop symphony," the Electric Vivaldi project got its start before Walker knew exactly what he was doing.

Walker had been engaged to perform at a Colorado Music Festival family concert, and chose to play a single movement from Four Seasons on an electric instrument to excite younger audience members. A year later, Walker unexpectedly received a state-of-the-art MIDI violin from the widow of a local player who had recently passed away.

"All of a sudden these additional possibilities became available to me." Within the year, Walker had conceived the electronic version of Vivaldi's masterpiece.

VIVALDI ROCKS

"There are a few rock guitar sounds in this piece," Walker explains. "I use a great sound in the last movement of 'Summer,' when Vivaldi's poem describes a storm that comes and flushes a shepherd boy off the map."

A columnist for Teen Strings magazine, Walker is comfortable explaining how a MIDI violin can expand the expressive range of the instrument. "Sometimes, I programmed notes that are higher or lower than what an acoustic violin is capable of, to bring out certain images."

Each of the movements in Walker's version begins with a poem read through an electronic talk box, much like the device made famous by British rock guitarist Peter Frampton of Local 257 (Nashville, TN).

"Vivaldi's poems describe the way the music should sound through the words of the text: the birds, the storms, the revelers," explains Walker. "But even if the audience is aware of the poem, there are only so many ways you can convey those images with acoustic instruments."

"With the knowledge of how to program a MIDI instrument, you can play the instrument so it evokes the written images," Walker continues. "In the second movement of 'Spring', there is a mosquito sound. I spent almost a week programming that ugly thing. And it fits-it's what Vivaldi described."

Even though Walker's recordings on the CRI, Leonarda, Orion, and Albany labels are widely distributed and his reputation was well established after he won the American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellowship in 2000, he wasn't sure his Boulder Philharmonic colleagues would go along with his reinterpretation of a classical music staple.

"But most of them were supportive, even when I told them they were supposed to get wild for the CD's music video," he says. "Our guest conductor, Eric Bertoluzzi of Local 20-623, has been a longtime champion of my work, and he knew what he was in for!"

"When we perform the arrangements live, I get to play the rock star," Walker admits. "My wife, Lori [also a member of Local 20-623], who actually did play in a couple Los Angeles metal bands, plays the synthesizer 'continuo.' I also like to have someone running the lights. So far, they've talked me out of fog machines!"

EXTENDED FAMILY

Walker remembers being an uninspired student after he began the violin at age seven. "I wasn't thrilled with those lessons," he remembers. So he cut a deal with his parents, one that foreshadowed his current experiments. "We agreed that, if I kept up the violin, I could take electric guitar too."

Walker admits that his parents were on the right track when they decided they wanted their son to have a classical background. His father, George Walker, attended the Curtis Institute as a pianist and was the first black composer to win a Pulitzer Prize in 1996. "I would've felt lost in his shadow had I played the piano," he muses, "but now he's finishing a new violin concerto for me, so it all worked out." Walker's mother, Helen Walker-Hill, is a widely-published authority on African-American women composers.