Violinist Tessa Lark refuses to stay in her musical lane
When Tessa Lark studied at the New England Conservatory, the violinist made friends at Berklee College of Music. Now a frequent guest with some of the country’s leading classical orchestras, Lark spent a good deal of time in Boston exploring improvised Americana music with pals one campus over.
“For a while, the music was a fun little party trick in a way,” she told the Herald with a laugh.
Lark would often end a classical program with a rootsy tune. She noticed the audiences loved it, but some considered it a novelty.
“But it’s not a party trick for me, it’s the way I live my life in music,” she said ahead of her sold-out appearance at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. “So for the past couple of years I have been trying to figure out a way for all types of music in my programming to carry the same level of importance, not only
to me but to the audience as well.”
“I want to continue to play my Beethoven concertos, my Tchaikovsky concertos, my Franck sonatas, but also explore American music and
its relevance to classical music today,” she added.
Lark is the rare musician who plays both “violin” and “fiddle” — sometimes switching between the two in the middle of a flourish of
notes on the concerto “Sky.” You can get a glimpse at her range just by looking at the Gardner program where Beethoven, Franck and Ravel mix with jazz standard “Django,” Michael Torke’s folk fiddle/classical violin hybrid “Spoon Bread and the Boston premiere of her own work “Jig and Pop.”
Lark lived in Boston for nearly a decade during her classical studies, but she grew up in rural Kentucky. Her father is a bluegrass banjo player — a pretty darn good one by Lark’s account — but her musical talent seemed to expand beyond folk at an astonishing pace: Around age 3 she had learned about 40 or 50 songs on piano.
“The sounds that were in my ear were all sorts of things and that’s thanks to both my mom and dad,” Lark said. “Lots of classical music, lots of bluegrass.”
“They both have great musical tastes, and I say great because it’s what I grew up with,” she added with a laugh.
Many musicians with Lark’s innate talent are pushed to focus on a codified career path. Teachers often tell students they need to pick a lane — classical, jazz, roots music, whatever — and stick in it. Like banjo master Bella Fleck and polymath Rhiannon Giddens, Lark hasn’t found much use in genre boundaries.
“There was a healthy skepticism about merging different worlds into the classical world,” she said. “Post-pandemic there has been a major shift in programming a lot of modern music. We are in an era that resembles what classical music once was, which is performing music that is contemporary. That by nature is going to include the sounds of our time. And that means folk music and bluegrass and jazz music.”
“Classical music is extremely sophisticated and folk music has a beautiful tradition of welcoming anybody at any level whether they are a player or songwriter,” she added. “There was this battle between so-called high and low art. There’s now a welcoming and celebrating of these two traditions.”