Cornelius Dufallo’s new chamber partner is an Apple laptop.

On the evening that Steve Jobs died—October 5, 2011—violinist Cornelius Dufallo could be found playing chamber music in performance with his Apple laptop as a partner. He often glanced at it in the way one does any artistic collaborator, occasionally hitting a key or two during rests or open strings, and tapping a foot pedal that fed into the center-stage digital device.

The concert, titled Journaling III, took place at Bargemusic, the floating barge-turned-concert-hall docked beneath the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City’s East River. It was part travelogue—Dufallo sharing his journey through recently composed music for solo violin—and part advocacy. “I want to build a repertoire of music for violin and electronics,” Dufallo told a small, but mightily enthusiastic, audience of two dozen.

Dufallo, also a member of the amplified—and self-identified “postclassical”— string quartet Ethel, performed six solo violin works, all amplified and with various degrees of involvement from his laptop and pedal. Unsurprisingly for a solo violin recital, several of the composers cited Bach as an inspiration. The first work, Dissolve, O My Heart, by the inventive composer Missy Mazzoli, even began with the iconic D minor chord that opens the Bach Chaconne before spinning into more modern musical language.

Dufallo also played one of his own works, Violin Loops. Here, the audience experienced the compositional process, as Dufallo recorded each layer, and then, with a tap of his foot, combined the layers in a single textured work. The piece not only had layers of delicious, tonal harmonies, but made a case for the created-live concert experience with the aid of a computer or looper over the use of prerecorded sound.

Other composers on the program included John Luther Adams, Randall Woolf, Armando Bayolo, and John King. The Adams violin work, which used only harmonics and open strings, was an evocative and ethereal portrait of Adams’ home state, Alaska. Woolf’s piece included the recorded words of rapper Tongo Eisen-Martin. Dufallo spoke briefly before each piece, explaining something about the composer or what each piece meant to him.

Perhaps the most compelling thing about Dufallo isn’t his technique—which was indisputably impressive, clean, and polished—but his ability to communicate with an audience, curate a concert program that is challenging yet accessible, and be a spokesman for what he believes to be the future of his instrument.

When Jobs first envisioned the Apple laptop, he likely never imagined it as Dufallo’s partner in giving violin music a 21st-century makeover.