THE PROG INTERVIEW
JEAN-LUC PONTY
Having performed since he was a small child, violinist Jean-Luc Ponty has enjoyed a remarkably diverse career. After winning the coveted first prize when he graduated from the internationally respected Paris Conservatory in 1960, it seemed he was destined for a life on the concert platform. However, the 18-year-old Ponty found himself following a different muse and by 1964 he’d released his debut album as a jazz violinist, his first step on a path that would see him wander far.
In the mid-60s he established an alliance with the German record label MPS. From there he found himself in North America in 1969 meeting Frank Zappa, performing a cameo appearance on Zappa’s Hot Rats and, in 1970, releasing the album, King Kong: Jean-Luc Ponty Plays The Music Of Frank Zappa.
Blessed with a highly developed sense of melodicism coupled with a fearsomely assertive technique, his forceful playing would later command the attention of John McLaughlin, who recruited the violinist into the second incarnation of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and with whom he toured and recorded 1974’s epic Apocalypse and Visions Of The Emerald Beyond in ’75.
With his violin fully amplified and utilising various new electronic effects, Ponty’s charismatic onstage presence and fiery playing rivalled that of McLaughlin. Not surprisingly, Atlantic Records were keen to sign this rising star of the incredibly popular of jazz-rock scene, releasing a run of 12 albums, including 1976’s Aurora, which also featured guitarist Daryl Stuermer. Combining accessible tunes with a twist of instrumental fusion, the violinist gained considerable airplay and garnered impressive album sales.
Ponty, who turns 80 this year and is still playing live, has renewed his association with the respected MPS, a company he was first signed to in the 1960s, and whose relaunch in 2022 spawned a huge, released in 1967, was in fact my choice to be reissued. The MPS director asked me to choose and for me, it was definitely one of my best solo albums in the more straightforward, post-bop jazz style, which I was playing at the time.”
