Basil Alter’s first violin was made out of a tissue box and a stick used for stirring paint. His bow was a dowel.
That was his violin before he was 3 years old.
Alter, 23, now performs with a violin that belonged to his mother. “It was made around the 1820s in Italy by a man named Giuseppe Baldantoni, who also made weapons,” Alter says.
He doesn’t know what kind of weapons Baldantoni made, but Alter can knock people out of their seats with his violin while playing Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso Opus 28” or any Niccolò Paganini piece.
He’s performed around the country, including Carnegie Hall in New York.
Alter, who is about to move to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music, doesn’t limit himself to classical music. In addition to his longhair music, he also lets his hair down and plays jazz on occasion with Joyce Cobb. He played rock on two albums with Jesse Wilcox’s band, Daykisser. He also played on Ben Callicott’s new album, Late. And he played on “sweet state of mind” by Forty Thieves (Ali Abu-Khraybeh).
In late August, Alter will release his first EP, Mooncat, which he describes as “sitting somewhere between the classical idiom and the jazz idiom. The official label on the genre is ‘new age.’”
Born in South Carolina, Alter initially learned the Suzuki method of violin playing from his mom, but he got more interested in percussion and timpani in grade school and middle school. The school’s string program “wasn’t as exciting as band.”
He began to take violin seriously when he was 12 and realized that was the instrument he “most enjoyed.”
When he was 19, Alter moved to New York to study at the Manhattan School of Music. He moved back to Memphis in August 2022. “I just wanted a break from school. And [to] hang out until I tried to figure out what my next move was.”
He’s kept busy in Memphis. “I started a chamber music series at a church [All Saints’ Episcopal] in East Memphis, which was fun. I did a few recitals. I played with the Germantown Symphony [Orchestra].”
Alter also worked with local artists on their projects. “I think the good thing about not being in school is you get the opportunity to try a bunch of different things and see what you like and what you don’t like.”
In 2020, Alter recorded his first single, “Billings,” which was inspired by the music of William Billings, an American composer in the 18th century.
The new age classical piece was, like all his original work, “music I wanted to listen to that didn’t exist already.”
His Mooncat EP, which he began working on two years ago, just features himself on violin and Michael Manring of Windham Hill on bass. Alter met Manring through finger-style guitarist Jake Allen, who is mixing and mastering Mooncat. Calvin Lauber is the engineer.
The first track, “Two Children’s Songs for Violin,” is a two-movement work “inspired by Chick Corea’s children’s songs.”
“Mooncat,” the second track, is “more of a jazz tune.”
Alter plays solo violin on the third track, “Laika,” which he describes as having more of a “cinematic and movie” style. The title came from the dog, Laika. “The Soviets put this street dog into space.” Naming the song after the dog fit in “with the cosmic theme of the album.”
Alter was accepted to the Royal Academy of Music after his audition there last March. “One of the best auditions of my life.”
He plans to move to London in about two weeks.
But getting back to his violin. “My mother was a freelancer in New York and ended up playing a lot of odd jobs with this violin, including the theme song for Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and the Obsession cologne ad that won a lot of awards. Seems like when I bring it up, everyone who was alive then knows about it.”