Balancing Act: Country Fiddler Andrea Zonn
Country fiddler Andrea Zonn blends a love for Bach and a knack for playing bluegrass
Fiddler Andrea Zonn has deep roots in the classical world, but she has found her calling not in the string section of an orchestra, but in the string-band scene around Nashville. These days, she plays fiddle on the road with pop-folk icon James Taylor and she has worked with country star Vince Gill and folk bluegrass jazz composer Alison Brown. Her session credits range from country crooners George Strait and George Jones to country-gospel superstar Amy Grant and C&W song wrangler Kenny Chesney.
But Zonn, 38, grew up in a household filled with classical music. Her father, the late Paul Martin Zonn, was an avant-garde composer and clarinetist, and her mother, Wilma Zonn, is the former principal oboist with the Oregon Symphony. Yet it was to neither of her parents' instruments that the young Andrea was drawn.
"I was mesmerized by the violin," she says. "I started asking for a violin when I was two. I had my first lesson [at age five] with the renowned violin pedagogue Paul Rolland. I was shocked that I couldn't already play the thing, and so I handed it back to my dad, saying, 'No thanks.' He laughed and said, 'Oh, no you don't.'
"I ended up continuing, and got the hang of it."
Still, after a few years, Zonn became frustrated when her ear far outran her then-developing technical skill. "I knew of the great violin literature by that time, but my technique confined me to the mediocre, cutesy student repertoire," she explains. "It was deeply uninspiring, and I couldn't take it."
So she started fiddling. Bluegrass improvisation set a new range of challenges, and Zonn was able to continue her classical studies while branching out into bluegrass, and competing with and becoming friends with another young fiddler from the Midwest, Alison Krauss. They met competing at a country fair; Krauss was eight and Zonn ten. Their paths crossed again in their teens when Krauss replaced Zonn as the fiddler in the band Union Station, which became Krauss' vehicle to stardom.
Zonn started college at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, but "at the end of my sophomore year my teacher really wanted me to choose between classical music and commercial music. I didn't want to," she says.
That prompted a move, at age 16, to Nashville. Since finishing her degree in violin performance at Vanderbilt University, Zonn has worked on the road, produced several projects, and released the 2003 solo album Love Goes On (Compass), featuring Zonn on fiddle and vocals. For her new, as yet unnamed, recording project, Zonn is "exploring some interesting new territory, delving deeper into my love of all things Motown and electric, funky and uplifting, and exploring tonality and groove, all the while maintaining the bones of good, contemporary, folky pop. Bring on the melting pot."
-
1
-
