John Holloway plays the Baroque violin with a sinewy sweetness, his lines as textured and alive as the bark of a tree or the hand of a nonagenarian. That his career started on the modern violin in a conventional orchestra—after conservatory, Holloway was briefly principal second in the Bournemouth Sinfonietta—now seems as improbable as late Heldentenor Stephen Gould working an office job.
In 1972, an encounter with the Baroque violinist Sigiswald Kuijken introduced Holloway to the burgeoning world of historical performance. Since then, he has performed with most of the founding fathers of that movement, and released a series of charismatic chamber and solo recordings. (Listen to his 2006 “Bach: The Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo” CD on ECM. I dare you to go back to the metal string version after.) Between 1999 and 2014, Holloway also taught (modern) violin at the University of Music in Dresden, Germany.
In 2016, Holloway took a radical step: He quit the violin completely. His intricate, introspective latest album, “Henry Purcell: Fantazias,” was recorded in 2015, though not released until this September. In the meantime, Holloway, now 75, no longer owns an instrument—a stark choice in a field that loves its living legends. He is now focusing on a self-funded website devoted to the Bach solo violin works called The Bach Project. Recently, we spoke on video chat about rising standards, passive students, and life after the violin.
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