In the worlds of jazz and rock, Jean-Luc Ponty is considered a master of violin and an innovator who has expanded the vocabulary of modern music.
The great American jazz violinist Stuff Smith, hearing Ponty in the 60’s said, “He is a killer… he plays on the violin like Coltrane does on sax.” (“Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties” by Leonard Feather).
And in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle in 1976, Stéphane Grappelli said, “No, he is not a student … he is a great musician and invented a new style on the violin.”
Ponty was born in a family of classical musicians in Avranches, France. His father taught violin, and his mother taught piano.
At the age of 16, he was admitted to the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, graduating two years later with the institution’s highest award, Premier Prix. In turn, he was immediately hired by one of the major symphony orchestras, Concerts Lamoureux, where he played for three years.
While still a member of the orchestra in Paris, Ponty picked up a side gig, playing clarinet, which his father had taught him, for a college jazz band that regularly performed at local parties. It proved a life-changing jumping-off point.
A growing interest in the jazz sounds of Miles Davis and John Coltrane compelled him to take up the tenor saxophone. Fueled by an all-encompassing creative passion, Ponty soon felt the need to express his jazz voice through his main instrument, the violin.
So Ponty found himself leading a dual musical life: rehearsing and performing with the orchestra, while also playing jazz until 3 a.m. at clubs throughout Paris. The demands of this doomed schedule eventually brought him to a crossroads.
“Naturally, I had to make a choice, so I took a chance with jazz,” says Ponty.
At first, the violin proved to be a handicap; few at the time viewed the instrument as having a legitimate place in the modern jazz vocabulary.
But with a powerful sound that eschewed vibrato, Ponty distinguished himself with be-bop era phrasings and a punchy style influenced more by horn players than by anything previously tried on the violin; nobody had heard anything quite like it before.
Ponty went on to play with some of the best European musicians, and at the age 21 he recorded his debut solo album, followed a live album called Violin Summit.
In 1967, John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet invited Ponty to perform at the Monterey Jazz Festival in California, Ponty’s first American appearance, which garnered thunderous applause and led to a U.S. recording contract with producer Richard Bock for his World Pacific label.
In 1969, Frank Zappa composed the music for Ponty’s solo album, King Kong. In 1972, Elton John invited Ponty to contribute to his Honky Chateau No. 1 hit album. In 1973, at the urging of Zappa who wanted him to join his band, the Mothers of Invention, Ponty migrated with his wife and two young daughters to America and made his home in Los Angeles.
Since then, Ponty has continued to work on a variety of projects, recording 12 consecutive albums as violinist, keyboardist, composer and producer, which all reached the top 5 on the Billboard jazz charts and sold millions of copies, and touring the world with his band.
One of his upcoming performances will be at The Space at Westbury on Sunday, Aug. 26 at 8 p.m.
The Space at Westbury is located at 250 Post Ave. in Westbury.
For tickets to the live concert, go to www.thespaceatwestbury.com.
For more information about the artist, visit www.ponty.com.
