Black Violin w/ Braxton Cook

About

Black Violin is the hip-hop duo of violinist Kevin Sylvester (Kev Marcus) and Wilner Baptiste (Will B.). They fuse their classically-trained foundations with boom-bap rhythms and lush string orchestration. Saxophonist Braxton Cook seemed to be following the recognizable trajectory of a young D.C. jazz musician — then he moved to New York, and the path took a detour. The Julliard-graduate, who toured for years with Christian Scott (now Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah), credits the chief’s genre-blurring approach to music as an inspiration for his new sound, rooted in Grover Washington Jr.’s accessible jazz-pop of the 1980s, the haunting-yet-captivating R&B of Frank Ocean, Kenny Garrett’s virtuoso riffing, and Scott’s trap-jazz beats.