Coming Together at City Hall
Classical and hip-hop music would seem as far removed as you can get.
But don’t tell violinist “Kev Marcus” and violist “Wil-B” Kevin Marcus Sylvester and Wilner Baptiste, both 25 – also known as “Black Violin.”
The violin/viola duo official “Apollo legends” for having won the talent competition on “Showtime at the Apollo” at Harlem’s famed Apollo Theater four times will show Cincinnati how to get it together at 7 p.m. April 13 in council chambers at City Hall.
They will be joined by DJ, Dwayne Dayal, 26, (“DJ T.K.”) and cellist Joseph Valbrun, 23, (“Joe Cello”).
The event marks the revival of “The Mayor’s 801 Plum Concerts,” an eclectic, early evening chamber music series presented by Linton Chamber Music from 1995-2001 at City Hall.
Kev and Wil-B, 25, are doing what might seem impossible. Mix street jive and Bach? Remember “Switched on Bach” with the Moog synthesizer? Black Violin does Bach, too. Check it out at www.myspace.com/dknex.
What they are about is expanding the horizons on both sides of the musical street.
Tracy Wilson, director of community relations for Cincinnati Opera, “got it” immediately when she heard them perform on “Showtime at the Apollo” in 2005.
“I was up one night watching television. I saw two brothers on violin and viola. It caught my attention right away. They started with the classical piece and I thought they were going to get booed, but they fused into Usher’s “Yeah” and I was totally blown away. The crowd just went nuts.”
Fast forward a year and Wilson was approached by Jim Howland, vice president of Linton Music, to resurrect the “801 Plum” series (discontinued after the April, 2001 riots).
“Dick (Linton artistic director Dick Waller) gave me license to choose some artists,” said Wilson, whose many community activities include serving on the board of the Peaslee Neighborhood Center in OTR and the community advisory council of the Underground Railroad Freedom Center.
“I knew first off that’s who I wanted (Black Violin). I remember Dick kept saying, ‘we want to make sure we attract the 21 to 40-year-old crowd.’”
The duo was in town earlier this month to shoot a video at historic Memorial Hall in Over-the-Rhine. Creator of the video, which will begin airing on local TV in early April, is director Alfonso J. (Zo) Wesson. Winner of 15 regional Emmys and Showtime’s “Black Filmmaker’s Showcase” (2002), Wesson is executive director of the Arts Consortium of Cincinnati.
The second “801 Plum Concert” will be June 1, also in city council chambers. Participants will include members of the distinguished Morales-Matos musical family, including percussionist Rolando Morales-Matos, trombonist Jaime Morales-Matos and violist Denisse Rodriguez-Rivera, in a mix of classics and salsa.
Both evenings begin with happy hour at 5:30 p.m., followed by the concert at 7 p.m. Admission is $20.
Kev and Wil-B, friends since middle school at Dillard High School of the Performing Arts in Ft. Lauderdale, were encouraged to pursue classical music from the beginning.
“It’s funny, because we were young black kids in the inner city,” said Wil-B, violist of Black Violin. “The teacher we had (James Miles) always motivated us. It was like, you can do big things with this. This can pay for college. Not only did it pay for college, but it also made us a lot smarter. We didn’t have many problems as far as school is concerned because it gave us discipline.”
“We were in a once-in-a-lifetime place to get where we are,” said Kev, who started on violin at 9 and switched to viola. “I think about that all the time.”
“A lot of individuals come up to us, like, ‘you know, I used to play the violin in the fifth grade, but I stopped in the eighth grade,’” said Wil-B, who traded saxophone for viola at 13. “Only difference between those players and us is we just kept doing it.”
Hip hop just came naturally.
“We went to a very inner city school and the majority was black. We all listened to hip hop. That environment has always been like that. (It was) do classical, (take a) little break. Let’s do some hip hop, just mess around a little bit.”
Kev, national semi-finalist at 17 of the Sphinx Competition for young black and Latino string players, went to Florida International University in Miami. Wil-B began at Florida State University in Tallahassee and transferred to FIU. Both majored in viola and studied with members of the Miami String Quartet.
Kev remembers the first day he came into the studio to study with Miami Quartet violist Chauncey Patterson. “He gave me a CD by a guy named Stuff Smith. He was a bebop violinist from the 50s and 60s. As soon as I heard it, I was like, man this guy sounds like he has some soul. He didn’t sound like anything or any way that I interpreted the violin to sound. The CD was called ‘Black Violin,’ which is where we got the name.”
Kev met Sam Gbadebo at FIU. “I was already looking into trying to produce music. I used to go to this lab and I’d be making beats and Sam would come by. Sam is a drummer. He always beat on tables, so that’s how we first started. There was always a bunch of guys rapping around us in the dorm. Sam would start beating on the table and I’d pull out my viola and start playing. Then some of my friends start rapping. They’re just free styling. We’re sitting there just having a good time and 20, 30 minutes go by. The door was cracking a little to the whole idea of ‘Black Violin.’
“After college is when we got it together and Sam officially became the manager. He saw the crossover from the classical and how it could work and how people could rap over it.”
Reception from the classical side was very positive, said Kev. It was for hip hop, too, after a little exposure.
“Hip hop is in the same situation that classical is in, kind of stagnant. It’s plateaued and is kind of staying where it is,” he said.
As a culture, hip hop is “very welcoming,” added Wil-B. “It’s all about expressing yourself. It’s not everywhere you see two big black dudes playing the violin hip hop, but once you show them what we’re trying to do –you’ve kind of got to do it in a certain way – they see it instantly.”
They started out playing in clubs, said Gbadebo (“Sam G”). “At first, everybody just said, ‘oh, those violin guys.’ The promoter always took a risk. Then it branched off from just listening to looking at them as artists.”
They met “DJ T.K.” at FIU also. “We started getting very intricate with out shows.” Said Kev. “We had a studio at this point and T.K. used to come around and play video games. We had a show coming up in a couple of weeks and needed a killer set. He brought us two 10-minute sets that were just crazy. He would take popular beats, things you hear on any hip hop station, and mix them together. Ever since then, he has been on the road with us.”
“They’ve gone from 10-minute sets to up to 90-minute sets – with encores,” said T.K.
“Showtime at the Apollo” was “the arrival, not even for the world, but for us,” said Kev. “It was like, maybe we can do this, you know? It gave us the confidence to know we can do this and people will like it.”
“It’s kind of like discovering something in your pocket that you didn’t know was there,” said Wil-B.
“They literally fuse some of the great classical pieces with some of the hottest hip hop music out now,” said Wilson, who plays in her own steel drum band, Firelytes. “What’s a big part of their show is they forget who’s around them. This is what they love to do. They give it their all and the audience reads that.”
Linton Chamber Music presents “The Mayor’s 801 Plum Concerts” featuring “Black Violin” at 7 p.m. April 13 in council chambers at City Hall. Happy hour begins at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 at the Cincinnati Arts Association ticket office in the Aronoff Center, or call (513) 621-ARTS (2787). Community partner is the Arts Consortium of Cincinnati. Sponsors are the City of Cincinnati and arts patron Melody Sawyer Richardson.
(first published in The Cincinnati Post March 29, 2007)