Polly Bradfield

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Polly Bradfield is a violinist from the New York City free improvisation scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Her closest musical associates were Eugene Chadbourne and John Zorn. She also played on records by William Parker and Frank Lowe. Her music career ended when she moved to California sometime in the 1980s. Her last appearance on record was on Zorn's The Big Gundown in 1986.

1 Solo music
2 Eugene Chadbourne on Polly Bradfield
3 Fred Frith on Polly Bradfield
4 Discography
5 External links

[edit] Solo music

In 1979 she released an LP on Chadbourne's Parachute label called Solo Violin Improvisations. The cover shows a photo of a young girl, presumably Bradfield as a child, sawing a branch off a tree, a pun on violin playing described as "sawing". The album contains more silence than sawing, though; her scrapes, scratches, plunks, and occasional notes on the violin are often separated by long stretches of it. Her radically still, non-discursive, Cageian style on this little known LP foreshadows later trends in free improvisation.

Eugene Chadbourne describes the album as "a controlled masterwork of severely intense playing" [1].

[edit] Eugene Chadbourne on Polly Bradfield

"...violinist Polly Bradfield... whatever happened to her? She's still playing. She had a lot of children and went out to California. She was never that driven to have a musical career. She was a really interesting musician though, I really liked her. Very extreme. I think her solo violin album is one of the best things I've ever heard. Do you know that? I have to send you a copy. I've got lots of copies, because when she left New York, in a big hurry, she piled her records out in the street, so I kept them; every now and then I meet somebody who wants one or who I think ought to have one. We did a couple of concerts together in England and Belgium that came out on a record, Torture Time--that was another nice album."

(from an interview by Dan Warburton [2])

[edit] Fred Frith on Polly Bradfield

"Polly Bradfield’s solo playing was quite different -- harder, less lyrical and treading a tightrope between controlled and contrived. I thought she had a lot of bottle actually, because she’s chosen a difficult path; her playing is austere and uncompromising, a little stiff; she takes chances; her use of silence is similar to John Zorn’s, though her humour’s dryer (it’s there though). After she’d played I felt mentally excited but earthbound." [3]