An American festival organizer and musician writes in a letter: "The
Polly Bradfield record changed my life...one of my favorite records of improvising ever...I will buy any and all extra copies you have. . . My plan is to give them out to the best and the brightest string improvisers." A British critic pleads "someone please reissue her solo album!", after pointing out that the
Bradfield recording is considered to have set some kind of standard for the most silence on an album of improvised music. The pressing plant was apparently confused at the time, ringing
Bradfield at her Lower East Side apartment and asking if something was missing. Boxes of the record were later rescued off the curb outside this very building, close to becoming victims of the artist's rushed departure from New York City back to her native California. It is a haunting image, and it seems like none more appropriate would ever come along to illustrate the lack of personal significance an artist involved in the avant-garde might wind up feeling, even after years on a so-called happening big city art scene. Yet there are those who feel the creations of such artists, unheralded and unfulfilled as they might have felt, represent important time capsules, just waiting to be discovered by whoever might be interested decades later. The inspirational result is much like what the French describe as "ca n'a pas pris une ride" -- or, there is not a visible wrinkle on the person's face. The Solo Violin Improvisations recording
Bradfield put out herself in the early '80s is regarded as a controlled masterwork of severely intense playing, the pinnacle of a musical mountain climbing expedition. And from the reaction of new listeners to the album, the view from up there is as stimulating as ever.
Bradfield began playing music at the age of eight, beginning with piano and then adding violin. She would not drop the keyboard from her performing arsenal until early in her New York residency, when the sheer individuality of her technique on violin seemed to require a singular focus.
Bradfield had started with classical music and indeed never became comfortable with jazz or pop.
Cecil Taylor was her first main influence from the avant-garde, directly affecting her piano technique. When she arrived in New York City she was part of an influx of musicians from Santa Cruz including the keyboardists
Wayne Horvitz and
Robin Holcomb, baritone saxophonist
David Sewelson, alto saxophonist Carolyn Romberg, and drummer
Mark E. Miller. While most of these players continued working together in a band named White Noise,
Bradfield went her own way. She met
John Zorn, and when this composer and multi-instrumentalist makes up the short list of people he was comfortable playing with in the early days of his career,
Bradfield is always on it. Her playing is an essential part of all the early
Zorn game piece recordings, all of which have been reissued on the heavyweight
Parachute Years box as well as individually. In the liner notes to his debut album
School,
Zorn wrote "About seven and a half minutes into the fourth take of "Lacrosse",
Polly Bradfield plucks the C natural. . .this note was one of the great musical experiences of my life...notes like this C natural. . .are what music is all about for me, but they are too rare." An ironic gush to be sure, since when it came to rare items, a recognizable pitch played by
Polly Bradfield would also be on the short list. She was known for playing entire solo sets without hitting a pitch -- or even better, for unveiling a single perfectly in-tune pitch in the entire set which would stand out like a bauble.
Bradfield's mastery of weird sound effects on the violin was awesome, bringing forth praise not only from avant-garde music nuts but from horror film directors such as
Wes Craven. Her last recorded appearance before she gave up her music career was on
Zorn's
The Big Gundown album.
–
Eugene Chadbourne, Rovi