It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences -Audre Lorde, Our Dead Behind Us: Poems Within the confines of the orchestra, the violin’s role as both a solo instrument and as a member of its family of stringed instruments has over centuries been clearly and rigidly defined; its modes of expression restrained by its context as a member of the orchestral ensemble or of Western “concert music” at large. Advancements within the playing of the instrument both within this setting and outside of it (such as usage in various folk and popular musics) have failed to rescue the violin from the trappings of this aesthetic apparatus, with the instrument’s trademark sound remaining consistent and its timbral abilities limited. Generations of composers, building only upon the shoulders of the titans …
