JANUARY 2009 ONLINE EDITORIALS

Kailin Yong - Bowing with the Flow

By Nathan Harper

When played well, the violin can find a home just about anywhere in the world where music is played. The sweet, sonorous sounds of its strings can fit nicely alongside ragas in Mumbai, bossa nova in Rio or the classical virtuosity of Vienna. Boulder Acoustic Society member world traveling musician Kailin Yong brings those styles and many more to the fore on his solo outing Bowing with the Flow. (That’s bowing as in playing a stringed instrument, not what one does when genuflecting at the foot of a golden calf.)

Doubtless, Yong does have the chops to bring a unique feeling and international flair to each track, his skills honed as much in the residencies of academia as they were on the streets of San Francisco. Also impressive is his restraint, as he knows when to let the other collaborators in each arrangement take the lead and when to chime in with his own unique voice. The violin is, of course, the focus of each track, but it is still integrated into each song with a tuneful ear for what fits rather than playing the role of the spotlight-starved diva.

When most performers attempt to integrate a plethora of styles into their sound, they often get in over their head, but Yong, who came to America by way of Austria and his native Singapore, has the artistic talent and musical breadth to not merely suggest ideas of worldliness, but to actually cull the voices of other nations from his strings.