Sophie Solomon

- Poison Sweet Madeira –

Released 6th. March 2006

 

Sophie Solomon's voice is her violin. Whether she's performing with the LSO or playing with her own band, her music is a thrilling combination of technique and passion that refuses to be confined by the conventional parameters of the instrument.

"When I play, the violin is like an extension of my body," she says. "I'm not thinking about anything else. I don't completely understand what happens but it's definitely as if the spirit takes over."

Her unique musical vision reaches its full flowering on her self-composed Decca debut solo album 'Poison Sweet Madeira', an audacious mix of different styles and influences given purpose and unity by her extraordinary violin playing.

It's a record that defies categorisation as classical influences collide gloriously with world music flavours drawn from Russia, eastern Europe, north Africa, gypsy music, tango and klezmer to create a vibrant musical portrait of one of the most adventurous artists of our time.

Sophie Solomon began playing the violin at the age of two. At four she met Yehudi Menuhin and was taken to see the great cellist Rostropovich. For the first five years she played totally by ear, learning to read music at the age of seven. The violin was her life.

She often exasperated her teachers by her inability to sit still and her exuberant habit of jumping up from her seat when excited by the music she was playing, but was gifted enough to rise rapidly through the National Children's Orchestra and ProCorda to become one of the most promising violinists of her generation. Yet by the age of 16 she had come to realise that there was a wider world of music waiting to be discovered. "I'm very passionate about classical music, but I was never completely satisfied by the classical world alone," she says. "I felt constrained by the fact that the music was written down and the strict parameters of the repertoire. I felt I had to step outside of that and find my own voice."

While studying History and Russian at Oxford University, Sophie not only DJed drum'n'bass, but also developed a passion for other kinds of music such as Russian, klezmer, East European and gypsy styles. Three generations back her father's family had been Jewish immigrants from Poland and Lithuania, and a year spent living in Russia, was a life-changing experience. She also travelled widely in Poland and Eastern Europe, absorbing new sounds and influences along the way.

Sophie's experiences led in 1999 to her becoming a founder member of Oi Va Voi, "one of the most exciting bands in Britain today" (Daily Telegraph). "With Oi Va Voi I came back to the violin on my own terms," she says. "...It was liberating because I had the technique but felt I'd lost the constraints that classical training imposes."

Famed for their live appearances and Sophie's on-stage pyrotechnics (one critic dubbed her 'the Keith Richards of the violin'), the band's debut album 'Laughter Through Tears' received rave reviews, was voted in the top 10 albums of 2004 by the New York Times, and won them two nominations in BBC Radio 3's annual awards for world music.

Sophie became increasingly in-demand, lending her violin playing to the likes of Rufus Wainwright, Heather Nova and Theodor Bikel and collaborating with Canadian hip-hop producer Socalled on the album 'Solomon & Socalled's HipHopKhasene' (released on the German-based Piranha label) which won the German Record Critics' Award for Album of the Year 2004. She has also taught at London's School for Oriental and African Studies and is on the artistic advisory committee of the Genius of the Violin festival, the only such event in the world devoted entirely to the instrument.

A solo career which tied together her diverse musical interests was the next logical step. "I've always been fascinated and inspired by a rich tapestry of music and the solo record has given me the opportunity to explore this. There's a deep Russian influence, a North African vibe, a drunken underground Romanian late-night bar feel and a Tom Waits sleaze factor creeping in... I wanted an album that was diverse but had a cohesive voice, which is my violin."

Produced by Kevin Bacon and Jonathan Quarmby (Finley Quaye/Oi Va Voi/Ben Taylor) and Marius de Vries (Madonna/Bjork/David Gray and a host of films such as Moulin Rouge), three tracks have guest vocals. 'A Light That Never Dies' finds actor and fellow Russophile Ralph Fiennes lending his voice to words based on a poem by Russian Symbolist Alexander Blok. 'Burnt By The Sun', sung by Richard Hawley, ex Pulp and Longpigs guitarist and now one of the most talked about artists of 2005, is "based on Stalin's favourite tango and is the first thing I learned to play on the accordion," Sophie says. 'Lazarus', which features the voice of KT Tunstall, has a dark ambiguous lyric about "a knock-on the door in the middle of the night."

The remaining tracks are not so much instrumentals as "songs without words". 'Pin Pricks and Gravy Stains', the sole klezmer-based tune on the record, references a line from Tom Waits's 'The Black Rider'. 'Slavonic Fantasy' was inspired by Dvorak but takes an entirely different rhythmic approach to the original and features the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.

'Poison Sweet Madeira' and 'Holy Devil', which mixes North African and Jewish elements, are both references to Rasputin, reflecting the album's strong Russian influence. "I've been obsessed with Russia since I was about nine - It's a country where life is lived in full colour with extreme polarities of experience - from pain and suffering to the heights of exuberant passion and wildness. Musically I hope there's something of those extremes on the record."

 

Tracklist:

 

1. Holy Devil
2. Burnt By The Sun
3. Poison Sweet Madeira
4. Lazarus
5. Light That Never Dies
6. Hazy
7. I Can Only Ask Why
8. Meditation On Dvorak's Slavonic Fantasy
9. Pin Pricks And Gravy Stains

 

 

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