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Mads Tolling

Two Time Grammy Award-Winning Danish Violinist

About Me

”There is a generation of young string players who have come up with equal regard for the Bach Cello Suites and Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced, for Beethoven’s String Quartets and the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Inner Mounting Flame. They dig Dvorak, Debussy and Ravel but also have committed to memory John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme and Led Zeppelin IV.

“Violinist-composer-arranger Mads Tolling is definitely in that number. As a longstanding member for the last six years of both the fearless, genre-hopping Turtle Island Quartet and also bassist extraordinaire Stanley Clarke’s band, he is quite accustomed to shattering boundaries and pushing the envelope while dealing in the longstanding tradition of musical cross-fertilization (aka ‘fusion’). 'Being in those groups has influenced me a lot,' says the Copenhagen native, a violin prodigy at age 10 who graduated Summa Cum Laude from the Berklee College of Music in 2003. 'I would not be able to make this album had it not been for the whole wealth of musical experiences that I’ve gone through in those bands.'”

~Excerpted liner notes by Bill Milkowski

The Playmaker (Street Date: October 20, 2009)

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