“Fain has the honeyed tone, spectacular technique and engrossing musicality of an old-school virtuoso tied to a contemporary sensibility.” – TIMES

With his adventuresome spirit and vast musical gifts, violinist has emerged as a mesmerizing presence on the music scene. The “charismatic violinist with a matinee idol profile, strong musical instincts, and first rate chops” (Boston Globe), was seen on screen and heard on the Grammy nominated soundtrack to the film Black Swan, can be heard on the soundtrack to Moonlight and gave “voice” to the violin of the lead actor in the hit film 12 Years a Slave, as he did with ’s violin in the film Bee Season. Fain captured the Avery Fisher Career Grant and launched his career with Young Concert Artists.

He electrified audiences in performances with the Pittsburgh, Chautauqua, and Cabrillo and Baltimore (both with ) Symphonies, at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, and most recently with the American Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Fain has also appeared with the Mexico City, Tucson, Oxford (UK), and Cincinnati Chamber Symphonies, Brooklyn, Buffalo and Hague Philharmonics, National Orchestra of Spain (with conductor Dennis Russell Davies), and the Curtis Symphony Orchestra in a special performance at ’s Kimmel Center. In addition, he was the featured soloist with the Ensemble at Carnegie Hall in a concert version of and continues to tour the US and Europe in a duo-recital program with Philip Glass.

Fain has been heard in recital at the Ravinia Festival, Amsterdam’s venerable Concertgebouw, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the Kennedy Center, Mexico’s Festival de Musica de Camara in San Miguel de Allende, Carnegie’s Weill Hall, ’s Carmel Mozart Society, Boston’s Ives Festival, The Broad Stage, Ringling International Festival in Sarasota, the San Diego Art Institute, the University of California at Davis, Alice Tully Hall, the 92nd St Y, the Canberra Festival (Australia), in solo appearances for the Dalai Lama and at the Vatican, and elsewhere across the globe. A sought-after chamber , he recently performed at the Filharmonia Szczecin's MDF Festival (Poland), the Scotia Festival in Halifax (Canada), and has performed at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York’s Bargemusic, Chamber Music Northwest, and at the Spoleto (Italy), Bridgehampton, Santa Fe, Caramoor, Bard, Lucerne (Switzerland), “Bravo” Vail Valley, Moab, and Martha’s Vineyard Festivals, and has toured nationally with from Marlboro.

His multi-media evening Portals premiered to sold-out audiences in New York, Los Angeles and at its Midwestern premiere at Omaha’s KANEKO, and has been seen at Australia’s Melbourne Festival, Le Lieu Unique in France and continues to travel world-wide. The centerpiece of the evening is Partita for Solo Violin, a new work written especially for him by Philip Glass, and also features collaborations with , , film maker Kate Hackett, and with radio personality Fred Child and pianist and appearing on screen. It also includes music of Pulitzer Prize winners Kernis, Bolcom, and Puts along with works of Muhly, and Zhurbin. A second iteration of Portals in collaboration with pianist is currently underway featuring a newly commissioned work by .

A dynamic and compelling performer in traditional works, he is also a fervent champion of 20th and 21st century composers, with a repertoire ranging widely from Beethoven and Tchaikovsky to and John Corigliano; as the Los Angeles Times recently noted, his career “is based, in part, on new music and new ways of thinking about classical music.” Fain’s discography features River of Light (Naxos), which showcases modern virtuosic short works for violin and piano by living American composers; Arches, which reflects Fain’s inquisitive passion and intellect and combining old and new solo works; and The Project IV with the Hague Philharmonic featuring Philip Glass’s Double Concerto for violin and cellist Wendy Sutter, and most recently Tim Fain Plays Philip Glass (both on Orange Mountain Music), and First Loves, with repertoire he fell in love with as a child from Sarasate to Wieniawski.

Fain has collaborated with an eclectic array of artists from and , to Jean- Yves Thibaudet to Mitsuko Uchida, the Mark Morris Dance Group, Seán Curran Company, and Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, and appeared onstage with the Ballet, performing alongside the dancers in the acclaimed premiere of Benjamin Millepied’s “Double Aria.” He has also worked with pianists Billy Childs and Ethan Iverson (The Bad Plus), Joanna Newsom, Bryce Dessner (The National), guitarist Rich Robinson (Black Crowes), appeared at Jazz at Lincoln Center with singer-songwriter Rob Thomas (Matchbox Twenty), and collaborated with James Blake, and rappers Das Racist and Rahzel.

Always at the forefront of technology, Fain has worked on a number of boundary-pushing projects including a musical score for a new Virtual Reality TV series through Samsung and a collaboration with Google on a VR music video for his composition, Resonance, which introduced its 360 stereoscopic VR capability for YouTube to the world, subsequently shown at The Sundance Film Festival. He also composed music for a virtual experience, Flock, which premiered at The Future of Storytelling in NYC; collaborated with new media artist Alexander Green on an LED light installation project which was the subject of a documentary featured on BBC and PBS; and performed with Shimon, an improvising, marimba-playing AI robot.

A native of Santa Monica, California, Tim Fain is a graduate of The Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied with Victor Danchenko, and The , where he worked with . He performs on a violin made by Francesco Gobetti, Venice 1717, the “Moller,” on extended loan from Clement and Karen Arrison through the generous efforts of the Stradivari Society of Chicago.

Photo: Briana Blasko PRESS

NEW YORK TIMES “Mr. Fain brought technical finesse, lyrical ardor and cagey control to his alluring performance [Prokofiev’s No. 1]. …the brilliant young American violinist gave a rippling, zestful account of the scherzo and dispatched the streams of intricate scales and ornate passagework of the final Moderato with ease. A hit with the audience, this boyish virtuoso offered a sizable solo encore, “Arches.” It is a 10-minute, volatile and technically arduous work by the American composer Kevin Puts, and he played it scintillatingly.”

VANITY FAIR “Violinist Tim Fain plays like a virtuoso and thinks like a cinematographer. The show, Portals, is a smart mix of sound and vision for the Facebook age who love Bjork and Beethoven with equal ardor.”

CHICAGO TRIBUNE “Playing from memory, Fain tore through the furious double stops, rhapsodic melodic flights and other flourishes like a possessed dervish. If you didn't know all the music was written down, you'd have thought the fiddle virtuoso was improvising the entire piece. You had to hear it to believe it. Fain was astonishing.”

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD (Australia) “He throws off Glass' trademark cascading arpeggios with jaw-dropping ease, yet the effect is anything but mechanical. On the contrary, the violinist allows the music to breathe organically, shaping each movement with expressive lyricism and exquisite beauty... with his virtuosity, his warmth and above all his humanity.”

NEW YORK TIMES “Fain’s tone is dark yet athletic; he plays a mean violin…he played distinctively; establishing versatility, lyricism, virtuosity. The dynamic, technically nimble American violinist Timothy Fain….a performer with a burgeoning career”

FANFARE Magazine “…a by-god spellbinder...those who think the violin has become as irrelevant…those who ardently pray for a reawakening of interest in it among composers, and those who enjoy exploring little-known literature - these will find an additional award in Fain’s playing of Bach should find the recital irresistible.”

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER “Timothy Fain delivered one of the best performances of the Beethoven Violin Concerto I’ve ever heard. It was strong, beautifully shaded, and intensely emotional.”

WASHINGTON POST “Tim Fain has everything he needs for a spectacular career. What brought the audience to its feet demanding three encores was his sheer youthful exuberance and dazzling technical skill.”

THE STRAD “Tim Fain’s performance [Bartók Violin Concerto No. 2] was expressive, brilliant and elegant.”

BOSTON GLOBE “A charismatic young prize-winning violinist, Tim Fain…with a matinee idol profile, strong musical instincts, and first rate chops.”

VARIETY “Simply put, Fain's playing was transcendent; the sheer difficulty of the piece, combined with his flawless execution left the most indelible impression from the entire evening.”

Erica Jeal Thursday 4 May 2017 13.15 EDT

A very enjoyable disc … the violinist Tim Fain.

Lou Harrison had a pioneer’s imagination, not least regarding what might be walloped in the name of music – his Violin Concerto calls for flowerpots, plumber’s pipes and clock coils in the percussion. What’s more striking in this performance by Tim Fain, the PostClassical Ensemble and conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez is the brilliance of his writing for violin, a collision between itchy dance rhythms and soaring lyricism. Dating mostly from 1940 but completed in 1959, this piece could have been written yesterday. The half-hour Grand Duo, for which Fain is teamed with pianist Michael Boriskin, is also inspired, although Harrison’s trademark application of the eastern scales used in gamelan to a western form works better in some of its five movements than others: where the first sounds ruminative, even mesmerising, the second seems stuck, whirling around frantically on itself. Double Music, the percussion mash-up Harrison wrote together with , finishes off a very enjoyable disc.

COVER OF THE STRAD – NOVEMBER 2016

SOUNDS OF AMERICA

Glass

Partita. Einstein on the Beach – Knee 2.

Book of Longing – solo violin music.

Violin Concerto No 2 – Interludes

Tim Fain vn

Orange Mountain Music OMM0050 (46’  DDD)

Tim Fain's combination of Power, precision and deeply expressive playing has made his recordings almost as ubiquitous as Philip Glass's music. Chances are that you have already heard his distinctive violin on soundtracks to Black Swan or Twelve Years a Slave, but there are far more strings to this violinist's bow than film music.

Fain's debut recording, 'Arches' (Image Recordings, 2008), featured new works for solo violin by Kevin Puts and Daniel Ott alongside an impressively controlled performance of Bach's Solo Partita No 2 in D minor, and was soon brought to Glass’s attention during recording sessions for the composer’s cycle of Leonard Cohen poems, The Book of Longing (2008). Fain’s cameo performance on the latter work is heard on ‘I Enjoyed the Laughter’, played again by him here in a version simply called Book of Longing. One can see why Glass was keen to collaborate further: his transparent and direct style demands crystal-clear articulation and razor-sharp accuracy, attributes that Fain’s playing possesses in abundance.

The Partita for solo violin, composed especially for Fain in 2011, comprises seven movements, which (with the exception of the ‘Opening’) are grouped neatly into alternating pairs of songs, dances and chaconnes. The near absence in some movements of Glass’s trademark triadic ostinatos and scale passages will come as a surprise to some, maybe a relief to others; however, a minor-key darkness and intensity typical of the composer is sustained throughout. The fiery 'Dance 2' probably comes closest to 'default' Glass, and, as if to make the point, Fain's brilliant, scintillating rendition of 'Knee 2' from Einstein on the Beach, previously heard on 'River of Light' (Naxos 8.559662), is also included.

The disc ends with a set of four Interludes for solo violin, which form part of Glass's Violin Concerto No 2. Again, Fain's incisive playing cuts through, and is altogether more direct and immediate than Robert McDuffie's live recording with Marin Alsop and the LPO (Orange Mountain, 12/l0).

Author: Pwyll ap Siôn

NATIONAL ACT CANBERRA LIFE 2018 Canberra International Music Festival, from Beowulf to Baroque to Bernstein By Ron Cerabona Updated April 19, 2018 — 12.53pm, first published at 12.00am

The 2018 Canberra International Music Festival. Various locations. April 25- May 2. More information and bookings: cimf.org.au.

Asked what is unique about his fourth Canberra International Music Festival, artistic director Roland Peelman initially resorts to something perilously close to cliche. "I'd like to argue every single festival is unique because it's a festival," he says. …..

American violinist Tim Fain is playing in the Canberra International Music Festival.

"This will be something extraordinary," Peelman says.

"It's the quintessential adventure story and very exciting." American violinist Tim Fain has never been to Canberra on his previous trips to Australia, but he's making up for that in a big way. His presence will be seen - and heard - throughout this year's Canberra International Music Festival.

On April 28 he will be the soloist in 's contemporary reimagining of one of the most popular pieces of classical music, 's The Four Seasons. "He's got a great take on Vivaldi's music," Fain says of Richter.

"I love how he's bringing these pretty familiar tunes into our times ... and setting them in ways that frame them and by framing them, turning them into something new."

Fain calls what Richter has done "an acoustic remix", done with string orchestra and played live, in which Vivaldi's original pieces are "sampled, if you will" and recontextualised, although much of the Baroque composer's work survives intact.

Although Fain is a devoted classical violinist in the standard repertoire - after Canberra, he will be returning to the US to play violin by Dvorak, Mozart and Mendelssohn - he's also keen to collaborate with contemporary composers and other artists. He's worked on such films as Black Swan and 12 Years a Slave as a performer and arranger and has had a long and fruitful working relationship with the American minimalist composer Philip Glass.

"I'll be playing one movement from his Partita (2010-11)." This will be in the opening Gala discussed above. (on April 27).

He will play the violin part in Igor Stravinsky's A Soldier's Tale in the concert A Soldier's Return on May 4 - for the centenary of the end of World War I - and in the Festival Finale on May 6, to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein, Fain will be the soloist in his Serenade after Plato's Symposium.

"It's an underrated piece of Bernstein," Fain says, adding that listeners will be able to detect echoes of moments from other Bernstein works such as the operetta Candide and the Symphonic Dances from West Side Story. "It's fun for people to hear that in the music."

…..

Read full article: https://www.canberratimes.com.au/national/act/2018-canberra-international-music-festival-from- beowulf-to-baroque-to-bernstein-20180417-h0yvtp.html

Listen: Violinist Tim Fain On Exploring The Sound World

By MICHAEL MARSOLEK • AUG 8, 2018

Tim Fain plays violin at Montana Public Radio, August 6, 2018. NICK MOTT / MONTANA PUBLIC RADIO

Tim Fain plays two pieces for solo violin and talks about his upcoming performances in Whitefish, Berlin and beyond.

When it comes to solo violin, Fain says, "There's something very satisfying ... being able to take the music wherever I go. That music could be easily performed whether it's down the Grand Canyon, or around a campfire up in the mountains, or anywhere, at a friend's house ... Some of these pieces really become a part of me in a way, and I'm grateful for that opportunity to really exlore that sound world."

And explore he does. Fain is featured at the Festival Amadeus in Whitefish this week, celebrating classical and classically-themed works. But he's also diving into more experimental fare like the People Festival in Berlin, which is all about, "New material, collaborations, unique and dissolving borders."

Listen in as Fain talks about musical exploration and plays two movements from "Ornament and Crime" by Bryce Dessner, a sneak preview of a work to be premiered in Berlin later this month. He also plays "Arches," "a piece that really opened my eyes to the possibilities of solo violin writing, now," Fain says.

You can see Fain this week at Festival Amadeus in Whitefish. Follow the link for schedule and ticket info. You can also see video of Fain performing "Arches" at Montana Public Radio. https://www.mtpr.org/post/listen-violinist-tim-fain-exploring-sound-world

Violinist Tim Fain Brings 300 Year Old Instrument Into 21st Century

By CAROLINE BALLARD • NOV 30, 2018

https://www.wyomingpublicmedia.org/post/violinist-tim-fain-brings-300-year-old-instrument-21st-century#stream/0

Tim Fain Fights Slavery Through Music By Nexus - November 28, 2016

By Melissa Jane Kronfeld & Megan Legband

A renowned violinist, composer and producer, Tim Fain combines exquisite talent with a cutting-edge mindset. Trained and educated at the Curtis Institute of Music and The Juilliard School, Tim now performs across the globe for hundreds of thousands of music fans, including, notably, the Dalai Lama. He also works closely with the world’s foremost living classical composer Philip Glass. A California native, Tim now divides his time between Montana and New York City.

In the fall of 2015, Tim collaborated with Google on a Virtual Reality music video for his song, Resonance which introduced 360 stereoscopic Virtual Reality (VR) capability for YouTube to the world and was recently shown at The Sundance Film Festival.

Featured in the Academy Award winning films Black Swan and 12 Years a Slave, Tim‘s innovative approach to the violin has been praised around the world for its incredible musicality, tone, and technique.

And it was through his work in film, and especially during his time working on 12 Years a Slave, that Tim discovered the existence of human trafficking, and became an advocate for abolition. Now, Tim focuses his acclaimed talent on the greater good, seeking to better the world by reminding us of the beauty that exists in it.

And in honor of #GivingTuesday, Tim has released a brand new, original track EXCLUSIVELY for our Profiles in Abolition series RIGHT HERE on Millennial Magazine! Proceeds from the sale of the track will support the anti-trafficking work being done by one of our favorite organization’s Made In A Free World, founded by our friend, rockstar-turned-abolitionist Justin Dillon!

Philip Glass, Tim Fain, Pittsburgh Written by Elizabeth Bloom on Tuesday, 12 January 2016 1:39 pm.

In case you missed it: Philip Glass has written a couple of things since he was the composer-in-residence for the Pittsburgh Public Schools in the early 1960s.

OK, so maybe he's done more than a few. And whattya know: For the first time on its main subscription series, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra will perform a piece by Mr. Glass, the composer of "Einstein on the Beach" and one of the elder statesmen of American classical music.

Philip Glass (left) and violinist Tim Fain. (Photo credit: Brian Hall)

On Sunday, I heard from a couple of people whose story was woven in with his.

First was the story of Louise Gray, the prudential schoolteacher I mentioned in the article, who rescued a Philip Glass manuscript from the trash. She wrote me this email:

"In October 2013, as I was reading Pittsburgh magazine, I came across an article by Rick Sebak about Philip Glass and his Pittsburgh connection. I taught music in the Pittsburgh Public Schools from 1979-2007. In the late 1980's, I was involved with the National Arts Education Research Center and was completing a project on contemporary music with my students. I was well aware of Mr. Glass and his work in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Public Schools offered a free Saturday program for students which provided at no cost private music lessons, theory classes, choral experiences, theatre, etc. This program was called the Centers for Musically Talented and was located at the old Peabody High School. I performed various tasks there but one of my very first jobs was to organize and maintain the music library. This was a room which housed all of the music and scores which the teachers would check out for use of their students.

"Since "the Centers" was at the mercy of Peabody as far as room assignments and storage, the music library was subject to frequent re- location. When I first entered the new music library room, it looked as if there had been a hurricane with papers, boxes, and music stands strewn everywhere. As I began to restore order to the room, I noticed a large round metal garbage container filled to capacity with yellowed sheet music, tattered scores, and rumpled manuscript papers. Something else caught my eye. It was a hand-written score for woodwind instruments by Philip Glass. I could not believe what I was seeing and quickly removed it from the trash. I was going to think on this one. I put the precious music in a Volkwein's folder, took it home, and then quickly forgot about it. Fast forward to Rick Sebak's article. After reading it, I recalled the retrieval of the Glass score but panic set in. We had purchased a fixer-upper home in Shadyside in 1988 and it was still in the process of getting 'fixed up.'

"Where did we put that we asked ourselves and fortunately it was quickly located. I shared my story with Pittsburgh Magazine and they printed a little blurb about it in a later issue. By that time, I made up mind to donate the music score, but I was undecided about where it should go. The University of Pittsburgh has a Center for American Music and probably would have welcomed the addition to their collection. The Carnegie Library has one of the largest music collections in the country and the score would add to it. After much thought, I donated it to the Carnegie Library since it has been such a great source of pleasure and education for me throughout my entire life. I also thought that if the score were placed at the library, a greater number of people would have access to it. So I am glad that I was able to preserve a piece of Pittsburgh music history and that the Glass score now has a respectful home. So now you know the whole story of the score that almost wasn't."

I love that story! Thank you very much to Ms. Gray for sending it along.

Owen Cantor, a French horn player turned dentist who lives in East Liberty, messaged me about what it was like to work with Mr. Glass as a student in the city schools:

"I was one of the young public school kids who worked with Phil when he lived in Pittsburgh. Both years! Looking back, how lucky I feel. I played horn in his Woodwind Quintet and also his Brass Sextet. We worked directly with Philip, often at his East Liberty loft [on Baum Boulevard, after he moved out of Shadyside], which he sublet from Robert Qualters, a legendary Pittsburgh painter. He also wrote orchestral and band music, and as a French horn player, I was always principal horn. He let me save my horn parts. I could probably find them somewhere in my house."

He continued: "It was amazing to have Beethoven and Philip Glass equal partners in my earliest musical life. Maybe that's why I never had bias against 'new music'(?). When I was forming my life in music every period was equal.

"Also, Phil had the first electric eraser I ever laid eyes on. He'd compose, have us play, then take the parts back and erase what he didn't like."

As Mr. Cantor pointed out, Carnegie Mellon University's School of Music will produce the music/theater piece "Hydrogen Jukebox," with music by Mr. Glass and a libretto by the poet Allen Ginsberg, Jan. 21-24.

Another couple of things worth noting:

• Mr. Glass last year published a memoir, titled "Words Without Music." • As I briefly mentioned in the article, one of Mr. Glass' many collaborators was David Bowie, who died on Sunday and whose music informed his Symphonies No. 1 ("Low") and No. 4 ("Heroes"). The artists discussed their influences on each other in this video:

In Sunday's article, I didn't get a chance to delve deeply into the work of Mr. Glass' talented collaborator, Tim Fain, who will perform the solo on Glass' Violin Concerto No. 2 this weekend and who has taken on some interesting musical endeavors. For example, he worked with Google on a virtual reality music project, called "Resonance," for which he composed the music. "I was learning how to write music before I was learning how to write words, or at least simultaneously," he said. Working with Mr. Glass has informed his composition efforts to some extent. "It's been incredible working with him and talking with him about the way he writes," Mr. Fain said.

Addendum (posted 1/22): I received one more story from Philip Glass' Pittsburgh days. This comes from David Singer, who was a student in the city schools at the time. (Thanks to Mike Staresinic, Mr. Singer's former music student during the 1980s, who passed along Mr. Singer's story.)

"In 1965, I played clarinet in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, All-City High School Orchestra, representing Peabody High School. Distinctly remember the day we were given penciled copies of an orchestral composition that was difficult to follow and difficult to listen to at best. After a brief rehearsal of the piece, we were introduced to the composer, Philip Glass. At the time, Glass was a Ford Foundation composer in residence with the Pittsburgh Public Schools. For many of us, that moment represented a paradigm shift in the way we thought about music composition."

Correction (1/22): Owen Cantor lives in East Liberty. A previous version of this post had an incorrect neighborhood. The post was also amended to clarify his title.

Monday, 02 January 2017 10:00 Sonic Pioneer: Violinist Tim Fain Brings Multi-Sensory Projects to West Michigan Written by Samara Napolitan

Tim Fain Photo: Michael Weintrob

Tim Fain’s violin is going to turn 300 next year, but he doesn’t let that hinder his innovative spirit.

Whether he’s collaborating with Google on a virtual reality music video or performing in Academy Award- winning films, Fain exhibits a trademark mix of talent, charisma and inventiveness.

A Juilliard- and Curtis-trained musician, Fain is a regular collaborator with American composer Philip Glass — protagonist of the minimalist movement — and is otherwise best known for his cameo/performance in Black Swan. The many dimensions of Fain’s artistry are on full display this month in Muskegon when he partners with the West Michigan Symphony (WMS) for two unique concerts: a new adaption of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and a multimedia experience at The Block.

Fain last visited Muskegon in 2012 when he performed Glass’ Violin Concerto with the WMS. That same year, he traveled to Kalamazoo to perform Portals, his multimedia solo concert about human connection in the digital age. His return to the Frauenthal Theater stage alongside the WMS will feature a familiar piece reimagined for contemporary audiences by British composer Max Richter.

“I’ve known (WMS Music Director) Scott Speck for a while now, and when he asked me if I’d like to do Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed (by Richter), I was very excited to work with him again and come back to West Michigan,” Fain said.

When Fain recently performed the piece with the National Orchestra of Spain, “Richter superfans” in the audience gave Fain the single longest standing ovation he’s ever received.

“Max really excels at short song form where the piece gets more and more intense until it just ends in a way that’s so effective,” said Fain. “Vivaldi provides a certain jumping off point for him to explore his own sound world.” Although Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed samples a portion of its source material, fragments of Richter’s own style are interwoven in a way that’s entirely original. Richter phases and loops his favorite parts of the original piece to create repeating motifs and circular effects.

“It has a very meditative quality,” Fain said of the piece’s postmodern style. “I know for me, I get a lot of enjoyment playing music by Philip Glass, Max Richter and Terry Riley. At its best, these works can bring about a hypnotic state of mind.”

The day after performing the Four Seasons adaptation, Fain will head to The Block to present “Beirut is a House of Many Rooms,” a multimedia work for solo violin created by Randall Woolf and filmmakers Mary Harron and John C. Walsh. The piece was commissioned by the West Michigan Symphony.

“When Tim Fain and Randall Woolf asked us to partner with them on a commission for The Block, we jumped at the chance,” said Carla Hill, president and CEO of West Michigan Symphony and The Block. “Our space is perfect for intimate performances and film — this commission includes both.”

“Beirut is a House of Many Rooms” follows Hadi Eldebek, a Beirut native and oud (an instrument similar to a lute) player in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble. The music and the visuals both explore the textures of everyday life in a city at the crossroads of various cultures and marked by civil war.

“The music captures the unique sound world of traditional Lebanese music,” Fain said. “Randy uses the violin in very different ways throughout the piece. It’s percussive at points. Then other times, it’s very lyrical over a texture that’s much more idiomatic of the Lebanese styles. Then there’s a thread of sampling and repetition from that world.”

Growing up in Los Angeles, Fain was surrounded by the film industry and music of all kinds — a huge influence on his genre jumping. Later this month, he will perform the score of Moonlight at a full screening of the acclaimed film in Los Angeles. More creative musical endeavors are sure to follow.

“There’s so much interest in bringing all senses into virtual or concert experiences,” he said.

Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Recomposed Tim Fain, Violin Frauenthal Theater The Block 425 W. Western Ave., Muskegon 360 W. Western Ave., Muskegon Jan. 13, 7:30 p.m., $20+ Jan. 14, 7:30 p.m., $25+ westmichigansymphony.org, (231) 726-3231 theblockwestmichigan.org, (231) 726-3231

THE BUFFALO NEWS A masterful playing on Friday with the BPO

By Garaud MacTaggart

Instruments should be played. That said, an expensive and historically important violin like the one played by Tim Fain would be silenced were it not for Buffalo based benefactors Clement and Karen Arrison. They own the 1717 Francesco Gobetti violin and loaned it to Fain, a young virtuoso whose skills showcase the creator’s art in ways that pay honor to Gobetti and the Arrisons.

Leonard Bernstein’s “Serenade, after Plato: Symposium” is a violin concerto in all but name and Fain’s performance of it Friday with JoAnn Falletta and the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra was masterful. The evocative opening strains of the solo violin bordered on elegiac, and the orchestra’s string players moved from a measured support into a boisterous companionship.

The result displayed Bernstein (and Fain) at their most beguiling as drama and release alternated over the course of the work’s five movements. It all ended with a big finish and a standing ovation for the musicians.

The second half of the concert was devoted to ’s first symphony, an anthology of themes knitted together and serving as an introduction to what would become one of the 20th century’s finest symphonic cycles.

Mahler meshed folk tunes, marches, and dance rhythms in ways that ran the gamut from dark to light and back again; lengthy passages were packed with emotional undercurrents vying for primacy as episodes paced between the quick and the deliberate, recycling thematic material by placing them in different instrumental groupings.

At one point (in the third movement) the French folk tune “Frere Jacques” appeared amongst the basses as the timpani pulsed in the background. Then the cellos, horns, and violas all had their shot at picking up the theme. Before the movement ended Mahler even dipped into the klezmer bag for some material.

Falletta’s control of the orchestra and mastery of the score was solid, as usual. Watching her movements on the podium as she led the musicians through the various sections revealed as much about her commitment to the music as it did about her abilities to communicate that commitment to the orchestra.

Bruno Walter, a former assistant to Mahler and a world class conductor in his own right once said of his mentor, “His was a turbulent world of music, impassioned humanism, poetic imagination, philosophic thought, and religious feeling.”

That about sums up the music and the BPO’s performance.

Author: Mike Dunham | Published January 22, 2017

Violinist Tim Fain (Beto Figueiroa/SantoLima)

Earlier this month, Tim Fain was playing fiddle in a bar. On Saturday, he'll play Brahms' Violin Concerto with the Anchorage Symphony in Atwood Hall.

You've already heard Fain's work if you watched "Black Swan" or "Twelve Years a Slave." The Santa Monica, California, native gets a lot of movie work, and not just limited to playing notes on a score. His projects range from performing live with independent and experimental films to composing music for a virtual reality YouTube creation ("Resonance," featured at the Sundance Film Festival) to "Portals," a multimedia evening that's been performed in New York, Australia and France.

In fact his performance at the aforementioned bar, the Block in Muskegon, Michigan, was part of a debut screening of a film, "Beirut is a House of Many Rooms." (The Block is really more of an art house with a cash bar provided purely for artistic purposes, to encourage patrons to talk about the art. Yeah.)

In a phone call prior to his arrival in Anchorage, Fain, who is a composer as well as a violinist, said he was now working on a big piece for violin and orchestra based on the first four notes of the "Resonance" piece, originally written for Google.

In the past few years his collaborators have included fellow violinist Pinchas Zukerman, jazz pianist Billy Childs, modern dancers, pop singers, rappers, the late Leonard Cohen and Shimon, a marimba-playing robot with enough artificial intelligence to successfully improvise and jam.

On the long list of artists associated with Fain we find Wendy Sutter, the cellist who will perform here in the upcoming Winter Classics chamber music series, Feb. 10-12. The two performed Philip Glass' Double Concerto in the Hague.

Fain plays in venues from Sid Grauman's enormous "Million Dollar Theatre" movie palace in Los Angeles to house parties. His concerts are sometimes linked to specific causes like homelessness or the modern slave trade.

Fain's concert resume includes the familiar big-name romantic violin works from the 19th century by Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak et al., the Brahms widely considered the acme of the genre. But he's also made waves with his performances of works by living composers, including Glass, Kevin Puts and . He does a lot of premieres.

The upcoming Brahms concerto may be one such premiere, of sorts. Surely the piece has been performed in Alaska before, though I'm not entirely certain that's the case. But it seems likely that it has never been done in Atwood Concert Hall.

The Brahms Concerto is a major example of collaboration between composer and performer, Fain noted. Violinist Joseph Joachim was closely associated with Brahms and in fact wrote the first movement cadenza that Fain will play "with a few modifications" when he performs the piece on Saturday. (Brahms' Violin Concerto is considered the last major repertoire piece for which the composer did notprovide his own cadenza but allowed the performer to improvise or create it.)

Fain also noted a second collaboration, that between a violinist and his instrument. He'll be playing a Francesco Gobetti made in 1717.

"It turns 300 years old this year," he said. "And I've been playing it for the last 10 years. When you find an instrument that allows you to be yourself, I feel like I'm communing with another being. There's something very magical about it."

Fain has visited Juneau before, but this will be his first trip to Anchorage and his first trip to Alaska in January. "I'm hoping I can get out in the country a little bit," he said.

Tim Fain’s Multimedia Concert ‘Portals’ Comes to Boston

The violinist from Black Swan explores longing for human connection in a digital world with an innovative concert at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.

By Ingrid Adamow | Arts & Entertainment

In our tech-obsessed day and age, interpersonal communication is all iPhone screen and clicking keyboard. When we want to find a life partner, we hit up Match.com; when we’re checking in on family, we shoot them a text, and when we dare simulate face-to-face interaction, we log onto Skype. All these interfaces are new portals through which we communicate.

“Portals” is also the namesake of a multimedia concert performance by Black Swan violinist Tim Fain. The show, which will make its Boston stop at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on October 17, has been touring since 2011. Portals is an artistic exploration of the longing for real and true human connection in the digital age.

The recital was produced in 2011 and includes dance, music, and film all on one stage, but you’ll see only a single live performer: Mr. Fain himself. Film of the dancers is projected onto a screen, and the pre-recorded music of pianist Nicholas Britell is piped in through theater speakers along with NPR’s Fred Child’s readings of Leonard Cohen poetry.

The interwoven videos of Fain performing everyday tasks like hailing a taxi may have been filmed a couple years ago, but this distance in time only feeds Portals’ theme of longing for emotional connection through digital media. “It’s about this idea of, how close can you get to not being there, and still feeling like you’re sort of there? It has this weird quality that’s inherent in, let’s say, Skyping with your loved one, on a tiny little screen, from 5,000 miles away,” Fain said.

Fain worked with friend and famed composer Philip Glass to generate the original music for the performance, while Black Swan choreographer Benjamin Millepied crafted the accompanying dances, and director Kate Hackett worked on the film components.

“Collaboration has always been, for me, something that makes what I do really special, really deeply fulfilling,” Fain said. “There’s a collaboration and back-and-forth experience between the performer and the crowd, and that becomes a collaboration, too.”

Working with so many talented minds at once wasn’t without its challenges, however. Shoot dates were moved, appointments were canceled, but Fain said it all became part of the creative process.

“I began to not only accept and incorporate these changes that were beyond my control, but [I was] also able to start to really embrace and actually use them in a way that was productive and even better than what I had before,” he said.

The Juilliard alum’s resume is star-studded, including ghost playing for Richard Gere’s Bee Season character, performing onscreen and on the soundtrack for Black Swan, and, most recently, ghost playing for ’s Steve McQueen flick 12 Years a Slave, set to be released mid-October.

With the success of Portals, Fain plans to create a sequel that will delve deeper into what he and his collaborators explored with Portals. And he hopes to include a solo violin orchestra, a children’s choir, and more people overall next time around.

To understand the sequel, though, everyone knows you have to see what came before. Those willing to pry their eyes off their iPhones and open their ears to the sound of Fain’s violin this fall will experience real communication in that universal language: music.

The Arts Perfect union of sight and sound by: Eamonn Kelly

Tim Fain in Portals. Elisabeth Murdoch Hall, Melbourne Recital Centre, October 26.

PENSIVE, poetic and mesmerizing, Portals is a classical music, contemporary dance, spoken word and video collaboration that fuses live and virtual concert experiences to create an immersive fantasy world of urbane beauty, yearning and tranquility.

The work pivots around New York-based violinist Tim Fain, performing a lyrical program of contemporary American compositions, including a 30-minute Philip Glass commission, Partita for solo violin, and short items featured on Fain's 2010 recording River of Light. With Fain appearing in person and alongside guest artists in prerecorded, large-screen video sequences, Portals might sound like yet another of the multimedia presentations now de rigueur on the classical music circuit, which almost invariably involve music becoming mere accompaniment to visual stimuli: a further assault on the audile imagination in an overwhelmingly visile world.

Portals, however, is an exception to the rule -- a superb demonstration of what is possible when sense and sentiment are the drivers of cross-art-form multimedia collaboration, rather than the novelty of new technology and the incessant quest for innovation.

In part, the work's success derives from the framing of the music and visuals as abstract responses to the intense, prehensile imagery of spoken word passages taken from Leonard Cohen's poetry, song lyrics, letters and interviews. Spliced together to evoke mood rather than narrative, Cohen's haunting meditations on life and love are delivered onscreen with compelling, idiosyncratic inflection by classical radio presenter Fred Child, while Kate Hackett's richly textured cinematography amplifies the sensory depth within the everyday physical world. Without the music, the visuals would seem piecemeal and disjunct. With the visuals, the music's contours and colours find amplification and counterpoint. Portals creates a seamless and perfect union.

Modest and personable, Fain possesses an effortless playing style, unforced technique and sweet, warm tone. Perfectly synchronised with the moving image, Fain combined the fluent spontaneity of a country fiddler with a profound musical intelligence and sensitivity, proving that nothing bridges the real and virtual worlds like talent and feeling.

With a winning smile and no visible effort, violinist heats Glass like a modern Paganini

Review: Composer-pianist Philip Glass and violinist Tim Fain at the Ravinia Festival. ****

By Lawrence B. Johnson

No doubt the large crowd gathered June 23 at the Ravinia Festival’s Martin Recital Hall was drawn mainly by the prospect of seeing 75-year-old composer-pianist Philip Glass perform a program of his own music. And no doubt they came away delighted by the 90-minute sampler of Glass through the decades and his affable flair for story-telling.

But the brightest light on this evening was cast by the youthful, California-born violinist Tim Fain, who played – among other things — one prodigious movement from an unaccompanied suite that Glass has written for him. Fain’s performance of Glass’ Chaconne, its ambitious and technique-defying sweep clearly modeled on Bach, instantly tagged this tall, slender musician with the beaming smile as one of the authentic virtuosos of his generation.

Fain, 35, who grew up in Santa Monica, Cal., and studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and the Juilliard School in New York, is a familiar face at Ravinia, where attended the Steans Music Institute in 1996 and ’97. He made his festival debut in 2007 playing Glass’ “Book of Longing,” and appeared on Ravinia’s Rising Stars series the next year.

There’s a boyish brio about Fain that belies his maturity — no, his absolute mastery – as a violinist and musician. And I do make a distinction between the facets of whiz kid and poet. While Fain tossed off the most formidable demands of Glass’ Chaconne with almost casual ease, what really made his performance so appealing was its fundamental musicality – his embrace of the inherent poetry that again links Glass’ splendorous music to Bach’s.

And yet I also confess that I sat gob-smacked by Fain’s sheer technical prowess, not only in the grandly arching Chaconne but also in Glass’ more Paganini-like “Knee Play No. 2” from this opera “Einstein on the Beach,” with its whirlwind spiccato sprints and sudden rhythmic shifts, all hurtling forward in unbounded perpetual motion. I suspect Paganini himself made just such an impression, one moment the demonic virtuoso capable of hellfire feats of prestidigitation and the next moment caressing his listeners with lyrical phrases of gossamer finesse.

In his stage persona, Fain also cuts a figure of radical opposites – all smiles and engagement when he strides in to view, then all concentration first note to last, then the bright-eyed kid again, delighting in the knowledge of what he has just accomplished and soaking up his listeners’ joy in turn.

The virtuoso put his songful foot forward to great advantage in three movements from Glass’ suite “The Screens,” with the composer at the piano. In episodes titled “The Orchard,” “France” and “The French Lieutenant,” Fain drew out long lines of tremulous romanticism, the stuff of calming encores after the heady blistering of the Chaconne and “Knee” music.

Glass, for his part, recalled his minimalist journey with the hypnotic harmonic stasis of two solo piano pieces: “Mad Rush” and “Metamorphosis.” Also from his classic roots, he offered “Wichita Vortex Sutra,” his keyboard interaction with the recorded voice of Allen Ginsberg reciting verses about Middle America and unfettered youth — and unilaterally declaring an end to the Vietnam War!

Virtuoso Violinist Tim Fain Redefines the Violin Recital

By Geoffrey Maingart

Santa Monica, CA(Hollywood Today)10/13/11/—The Broad Stage in Santa Monica presented on Sunday afternoon, October 9th the West Coast debut recital of the extraordinary violinist, Tim Fain, in the solo multi- media violin performance of original music by some of the greatest modern classical composers of our time. The title of the concert was “Portals” A Multi-Media Exploration of Longing and Connection in the Digital Age. The Broad Stage provided the perfect venue for the performance and the acoustics of the hall made it an intimate experience.

Backed only by a large video screen, Tim Fain commanded the stage alone for more than an hour accompanied by images of dance, the extraordinary spoken words of Leonard Cohen and Tim, himself, often in duo or unison with himself or with the pre-recorded accompaniment of the brilliant pianist Nicholas Briteli. The charismatic Fain, looking a bit like Richard Chamberlain flawlessly held the audience focused throughout while performing some of the finest virtuoso modern repertoire that this listener, also a concert violinist, has ever heard.

With the collaboration of such brilliant composers as Philip Glass (Partita for Solo Violin), Lev Zhurbin (Sicilienne), Nico Muhly (Honest Music), Aaron Jay Kermis (Air), (Graceful Ghost Rag) and Kevin Puts (Arches), the concert truly explored the technical possibilities of the solo violin reminding us where Bach, Ysaye and Paganini might have pointed us and now where the future of the art will be leading us. It is a daunting undertaking to command the attention of an audience with a violin alone. Adding film, dance, the spoken word, a visual slide show and brilliant composition made it possible to change the mood from heartfelt melody, to virtuoso techniques to light hearted comical interludes.

The compositions, often lyrical showed the full range of the instrument’s possibilities and Tim easily gave us a glimpse of the virtuoso of the future while redefining the idea of the violin recital. There were wonderful moments in the style of Scott Joplin. Fred Child, the actor was brilliant on film reading the words of Leonard Cohen. Tim and Glass have now added a wonderful new solo work to the repertoire of the violin. The coordination required by Tim to perform flawlessly and easily with the film background was brilliantly conceived. Sometimes on stage, sometimes center stage, sometimes watching the film with the audience, Tim, in this multi media setting guided us through a visual and musical journey. The last piece, Arches, was a virtuoso cadenza that left the audience breathless and on their feet. As the words of Leonard Cohen state; “Alive is in command and magic is alive.” http://thebroadstage.com/Portals

Violinist Tim Fain Talks Virtual Reality, ‘Moonlight’ And Collaborating With Philip Glass By CHARLIE SHELTON & FRANK STASIO • NOV 17, 2017

Tim Fain puts his own spin on classical violin. COURTESY OF TIM FAIN Violinist Tim Fain is a classically-trained musician, but his talents extend far beyond a classical repertoire.

Over the years, Fain has performed with jazz pianists, rock stars, rappers and many more. He also regularly incorporates multimedia and virtual reality in his work to create an immersive experience for the audience. He has also performed and recorded music for films like “Black Swan,” “12 Years A Slave,” and “Moonlight.”

Host Frank Stasio talks with Fain about his career as a violinist. Fain performs with the Chamber Orchestra of the Triangle on Sunday, Nov. 19 at 3 p.m. at the Carolina Theatre in Durham.

Interview Highlights:

Fain on his musical inspirations and how he began performing for films: I was always hearing music in everything. It wasn’t only films or music itself. It was the wheels on our car, a boat engine, or the birds singing in a forest up in Puget Sound. These were all very musical to me. But I was involved in the industry from a young age working on some film soundtracks as a kid singing in a choir. So that was kind of in my blood from the get-go.

On recording music for the Oscar-winning film “Moonlight”: Nicholas Britell and I wanted to create a sound world where the violin was almost as a character in a film. We mic'd the violin in a way which I’m pretty sure this violin has never been mic'd before … Just a couple inches away and making it almost into a loud whisper. A sound that almost feels as if it’s coming from inside your head – throwing a 30- second reverb onto it to give it an incredible amount of space to a very quiet sound.

On collaborating with composer Philip Glass and songwriter Leonard Cohen: Philip and I work together a whole lot. We’ve been collaborating on various projects for about 10 or 11 years now. We got started working together on a piece called “Book of Longing,” which was a song cycle Philip wrote based on Leonard Cohen’s poetry. Leonard would show up on tour. He would come out and take a bow afterwards. I got to know him a bit as well – a beautiful soul. His eyes just looked right through you and so generous. He would offer to carry my violin off the tour bus. Just a sweet, sweet man.

View Fain’s virtual reality project “Resonance” below:

Reviews of Musical Events on the Monterey Peninsula By Lyn Bronson

With a nice Irish name like Tim Fain, can’t you just imagine him down at the pub playing darts with the lads? Well, the truth of it is that anyone who has ever heard Mr. Fain put bow to fiddle, would know in ten seconds that he was born to play the violin. Since last night’s recital presented by the Carmel Music Society at Sunset Center represented Fain’s third appearance in Carmel, we knew what to expect, and we were not to be disappointed. Fain brought along with him on this occasion a pianist we had not heard before, Cory Smythe, also an extraordinarily gifted and accomplished musician, whose presence added substantially to the evening’s success.

The concert’s first offering was a work familiar to generations of accomplished amateur musicians, Dvořák’s Sonatina in G Major, Op. 100, a charming work that is distinctly user friendly. However, what we heard in the performance by Fain and Smythe last night was a far cry from what we might experience from amateurs in an evening devoted to Hausmusik. We heard playing last night that was polished and honed to perfection, and doubly charming because it still retained a high degree of spontaneity.

There were two other familiar works on the program: the Chaconne from Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D Minor and Ravel’s Tzigane. We heard Fain play the Chaconne in 2007 in the intimate acoustical environment of All Saints’ Church in Carmel, where it made perhaps a greater impact. However, it was astonishing how Fain’s subtle dynamics and shaping a phrases still came across very effectively in the larger space of Sunset Center. As on the previous occasion, one of the great magic moments in his performance was the dramatic pause just before the hushed pianissimo beginning of the D Major section, and in all the difficult passages, Fain’s virtuosity made what was difficult sound very easy.

In the Tzigane, we heard a bold and dramatic performance with extraordinary playing from Fain and Smythe (who was especially impressive in this work and gave us a hint of what else he is capable).

However, the big hit of the evening were three contemporary works. The first was “River of Light” by Richard Danielpour, which Fain described as a very dark piece suggesting preparation for the end of life and entry into our state of un-being, whatever it may turn out to be. This is a contemporary work that is surprisingly tonal and comfortable for a first time listener. Its hauntingly lyrical moments combined with dramatic flights into dissonance (however, comfortable dissonance, not ugly or shocking), always managed to retain a cohesive center that held our attention throughout.

Fain added one work not listed on the program. It was a section of a suite written for him by Philip Glass. Not being an avid fan of Mr. Glass and his sometimes irritating , I was amazed to hear in this fragment from Mr. Glass some of the loveliest sounds I have ever heard coming from a violin. Once again Fain exhibited an amazing range of dynamics, plus beautiful precision and intonation in double stops and harmonics. Another contemporary work that made a powerful effect was Sicilienne for Violin & Piano by Lev Zhurbin. Lovely sounds and lovely playing made an immediate impression on us and made us yearn to hear more from this gifted composer.

Tim Fain’s disc ‘River of Light’ (Naxos 8.559662) takes a whistle-stop tour through short works for violin and piano by US composers, all written in the last 60 years and sharing a similar lyrical aesthetic. Fain shows off his impeccable technique in the streams of impossibly fast spiccato arpeggios of Philip Glass’s Knee Play 2, but he is equally winning in more melodious territory. Aaron Jay Kernis’s Air somehow has the spirit of a much-loved Paul Simon song in the modal feel to its melody and its melancholy harmonies, as Fain relaxes into its gorgeous phrases. William Bolcom’s Graceful Ghost Rag is reflective and lovely, and Fain makes the complexity and intensity of Richard Danielpour’s River of Light really speak. The recorded sound throughout is bright and immediate. Particularly appealing, too, is Jennifer Higdon’s plaintive and chromatic Legacy, with its searching, brittle melodies, and Ruth Shaw Wylie’s wandering and enticing Wistful Piece.

-- Catherine Nelson

For more information:

timfain.com

Booking and media inquiries:

Dworkin & Company Elizabeth Dworkin, [email protected] Allison Weissman, [email protected] 914-244-3803 dworkincompany.com