RenÉe Baker
As an improvisor, Renée Baker has performed and recorded with Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Strings, Karl E. H. Seigfried’s New Quartet and Galaxy String Quartet, the David Boykin Expanse, Orbert Davis, George Lewis, Mwata Bowden, the Great Black Music Ensemble, the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, and the Chicago Jazz Orchestra. She is a proud member of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians). In 2010, Renée will be premiering original compositions with the Chicago Sinfonietta, The Joffrey Ballet, and as part of the PianoForte Salon Series and the Umbria Jazz Festival.
Renée is Principal Violist of the internationally-renowned Chicago Sinfonietta; she has worked with the orchestra since its founding in 1987. She has been a participant in many international music festivals including Classical Music Festival (Eisenstadt, Austria), Aspen Music Festival, AIMS (Graz, Austria), and Philomusica di Chicago (Martigues, France). She has performed extensively throughout Africa, Asia, and Europe.
Her debut at the prestigious Ravinia Festival was as the viola soloist for “Don Quixote” (Strauss), in which she partnered with John Sharp, Principal Cellist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She has performed numerous solo recitals at venues such as the Chicago Cultural Center, and she has been a featured performer with many chamber music ensembles, including her own FAQtet - an ensemble that primarily performs classic repertoire by African-American composers.
Renée Baker's debut as a leader will appear on Imaginary Chicago Records in 2010.
"Baker offers enough triple-stopping and floating spiccato to suggest Billy Bang."
- Jazz Word Reviews
"Renée Baker offered soul drenched prayers on the violin and viola as she built upward with powerful verve."
- Hurd Audio
"Baker's violin work combines the fiercely accurate attack of the Western classical tradition with jazz-honed flexibility and quarter tonality."
- Jazz Times
"[Baker employs] a plethora of string technqiues, from ghostly glissandos and crystalline harmonics to sinewy double stops and pneumatic pizzicato."
- All About Jazz
"[Baker] punched out her lines, airing each melodic phrase out before determinedly unleashing another. In the intervals between phrases she seemed to be thinking, 'What’d ya think of that?!' Quite fine, I thought. Quite fine indeed."
- Jazz & Improvised Music Webzine
"An uncommonly versatile player who seems to thrive in unusual settings, violinist Renée Baker has made the Velvet Lounge her laboratory for delving into jazz-meets-classical ventures. The Mantra Blue Free Orchestra pushes further still, bringing together instrumentalists from the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and the Chicago Sinfonietta, as well as modern jazz and alternative rock idioms. With personnel such as flutist Nicole Mitchell, trombonist Steve Berry, saxophonist David Boykin and violinist James Sanders, it clearly has a great deal going for it."
- Chicago Tribune