Rock violinist Marnie Hall blazes a unique trail

Marnie Hall loves the violin. She loves violin so much that she looks for work with orchestras as well as writes and plays string parts for rock bands. She also teaches violin to school children. It is her work with rock bands, though, that Hall gets most excited about. You can hear the breathy excitement in her voice as she describes herself as a “rock violinist.” She answers every question about her work with an enthusiastic “Yah!”

“My favorite thing to do is write string parts for rock songs and hopefully get to play them,” Hall said. Hall grew up with parents who played in orchestra pits for musical theater before she majored in violin and then taught it to children before joining rock bands and working on rock projects. When she was learning violin growing up, she already had a fantasy of writing big band material with brass arrangements and string arrangements for big rock tunes.

Hall has always freelanced with orchestras while working with rock musicians. Her rock projects require her to improvise on her violin. “Somebody will play a tune for me that they want strings on,” she said. “It’s all intuitive for me. I play what I hear. I know a huge part of it comes from classical training. I try to infuse it into songs in a way that’s adaptive to rock. I think my technique is totally classical. I try to make it work. It seems to work well on most of the songs that I happen to write with people.”

Hall grew up with rock and roll even though she was learning classical violin. Her father, a jazz musician who once worked with Stevie Wonder, raised her on The Beatles, Chaka Khan, Tower Of Power, and Earth, Wind, and Fire.” I never really had a fantasy of being a violin soloist with an orchestra.,” she said. Hall likes to trace her evolution from classical musician to rocker.

“When I was about 18, I worked at this little Irish pub and coffee house in Stow, Mass,” she said. “It’s not there any more. They used to have live Irish sessions every Sunday. I got to see some really great Irish players there. From there, I had a friend who wanted to start a band.”

Starting a band, Hall realized she would have to play without reading music. She got used to making stuff up on the fly and going with it. Hall traveled to Ireland with her fiddle and backpacked cross country, hitting every session she could find.

“It was through Irish music that really helped me to improvise,” she said. “I got to play with a couple of bands casually with friends.”

It was her friend, Rick Berlin, a long time Boston rock scene Icon, who introduced Hall to the rock world when Hall was but 19. She met Berlin through a trumpet player in Jamaica Plain. Hall had an epiphany. Her future in music was clear. “

I just said maybe this could be my own thing,” she said. Berlin was Hall’s first mentor in rock music. She was invited to play a Monday night residency at Jacques with Berlin in the 1990s. Together, they started the Shelly Winters Project in 1998. But fate intervened when Hall got married, pregnant, and had to leave the band.

Hall’s most memorable moments came working with Berlin, with whom she formed the Shelly Winters Project.

“Out of anybody in the whole world Rick is my favorite artist. He’s a true artist, in the way he lives his life. He’s meditated every day for 40 years. He just has this clear way of saying something in the simplest but most artful, most beautiful way, and the most real way. He just cuts right to the core and he has this way of elevating it to the next level that is so rare. There is some kind of magic going on there.”

Hall’s MySpace account has several tasty nuggets from her days with the Shelley Winters Project. “Hate,” is a powerhouse rock and roller. In those days Hall played a five string Zeta electric violin that has a lower C-string like a viola would have. On “Hate” She put it through a distortion pedal effect.

“I would just crank it,” she said. “I was so happy to finally play an electric violin and be able to keep up with guitars. I put all that pent up energy into that stuff.”

The very first song she recorded and performed live in a rock club at 19 was called “Police Boy In Prague.” Hall’s violin creates a mood for the song. “I’m all about that,” Hall said.

These days, Hall plays in a band called Le Mistral as well as having joined Boston’s local institution Liz Borden Band and even doing some work with Robin Lane, a 1980s Boston to national to local Boston star again.

Hall has also worked in what is called “pick up orchestras” for national acts when they came through the Boston area. Joni Mitchell, Brian Wilson, The Moody Blues, Patti Labelle, and KD Lang, are among the many big acts she’s supported. “I really loved playing the orchestral arrangements for the rock stuff,” she said.

The memory that stands out the most was Joni Mitchell in 2000 for Mitchell when the pop-folk icon toured in support of her album Both Sides Now. “She’s my favorite artist of all time,” Hall said, “and all her arrangement on that tour were just amazing.”

The Moody Blues was another that stands out. She almost couldn’t make it because she was near the end of her pregnancy(her son was born a week later). “It’s like magical,” she said. “You hear these tunes your whole life that I love, and just to be a part of it is magical.”

Hall recently played a holiday gig with Robin Lane. Hall was playing with the Liz Borden Band that night and Robin Lane came up to sing some songs with the band. Lane and Hall had to confer in the ladies room for a half hour on a Lane song Hall had never played before.

“We went out there and playing with her was completely magical, and I’ll never forget it,” Hall said. “There’s a point in the song we smiled at each other, and it was like, ’Yup. Kindred spirit.’ She’s an amazing presence. I could go on and on. Her presence is so warm, such a bright shining star, such high energy, yet she bridges the gap of all kinds of music.”

Hall currently works with a Nashville solo artist named Jilly Martin who is looking to create a new Nashville sound. Hall never played with a country artist before, but Hall’s background playing in band formats fit the project. Hall, who also sings backing vocals, has been having a blast. “Our voices seem to really work together,” Hall said.

Hall currently uses her new electric violin, a Carlo Robelli. She said it has a large violin sound, not the tinny timbre of other electrics. “It has a really warm sound but I can crank it. It can rock. I play that for most of my rock gigs.”

She relies on her new axe for her current band, Le Mistral, a project she formed with engineer/producer/musician Dave Westner and mandolin player Jimmy Ryan. They just recorded their first CD, and it was recently mastered. Le Mistral is gypsy rock blended with late 1960s Moroccan flavorings. Ryan plays mandolin. Westner plays guitar and drums. Ed Riemer plays bass.

“Were kind of keeping it a little bit of a secret,” Hall said. “We’re trying to send out one song here and one song there, and we’ll have our album come out soon.” Le Mistral was created as a studio project dreamed up by Westner. Westner plays with Ryan a lot and Westner is also a producer at Wholly Mammoth studios in Boston. Westner produces in Canton, Massachusetts at a studio bass player Riemer owns behind his house.

With Le Mistral, Hall wrote and recorded an entire song called “Shine On Me” in one night. They also recorded the entire CD from April to September of last year before it was recently mastered. “Shine On Me” is difficult to pigeonhole. It can be labeled rock, alt-rock, country-rock, or alt-country rock. Hall herself paused when describing it, as she was unsure what to call it.

“On that we were kind of shooting for like for some good,” she said, pausing, “I don’t know. Folk-gypsy-rock. That’s what I always say. I’ve got that violin solo in there. It’s very kind of Led Zeppelins like Kashmir. We were kind of going for like an old world gypsy rock.” Hall played acoustic violin on it, but the producer put a wah-wah effect on it, making it sound electric.

Le Mistral will play at rock clubs, but music fans will likely be scratching their heads wondering what to call it.

Hall has also been a member of the Liz Borden Band since last spring for which Hall uses her rocking electric violin. Borden, a Boston rock legend, taught Hall to be more confident. “She taught me to have more of a ‘screw you’ attitude,” Hall said. “I mean that in the best way possible. It’s based on punk rock.”

Hall leans more toward playing freelance gigs because she gets to play with a variety of players in a variety of genres. She experiences the riches of music that way. It also fits into her mother duties. Her son, Baxter, is 11, and her daughter, Amanda, is six.

“I always like trying to balance being a mom and being a musician,” Hall said. Thinking artistically and being a mom has been my biggest challenge, but it’s influenced my music the most, finding my voice as an artist after becoming a mother.”

www.myspace.com/marniehall