"Whatever the reason, the violin’s isolation is undeserved. Here, without fanfare or special treatment, it fits right into a high-grade pianoless quartet-displacing easily as much weight as tenor saxophone, bass or drums, and proclaiming John Ettinger as a distinctive and top-drawer new voice in the music.An auspicious release from an emergent star, and a new benchmark for creative jazz violin."
– All About Jazz. See complete review on press page.

With two fine CDs to his credit thus far on Ettinger Music, the San Francisco Bay Area-based composer-bandleader John Ettinger has quickly made his mark as a jazz violinist who is a torchbearer for the instrument’s potential in improvised music. His first album, 2003’s August Rain, was lauded by All About Jazz as "brilliant," with the leader, on violin and effects, singled out as "the secret" to the album’s success: "[He] has a way of popping in and out at opportune times to build a melody out of a groove, establish a specific mood, or carry on a burst of lyricism." Likewise in a critique of his second CD, 2006’s Kissinger in Space, the same jazz pub heralded Ettinger as "a distinctive and top-drawer new voice in the music" and the album "a new benchmark for creative jazz violin."

Indeed, Ettinger promises to be a key player to further explore the violin’s sonic depth in jazz. While the instrument has enjoyed a resurgence of interest in recent years with the growing popularity of such artists as Regina Carter and Billy Bang, its potential in improvised music has yet to be fully fathomed.

A resident of the Bay Area since 1992, Ettinger has played an instrumental role in the fertile music environment there. He has performed and recorded with an array of noteworthy artists over the years, including two cuts as a "string section" with Honeycut (a new project on DJ Shadow’s Quannum Records); composer/clarinetist Beth Custer (on her CD Vinculum Symphony and DVD My Grandmother); vocalist Percy Howard (Incidental Seductions with Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, King Crimson’s Trey Gunn and This Heat’s Charles Hayward); the late alto saxophonist Calder Spanier (The Calder Project); Chicago-based saxophonist Scott Rosenberg (IE); singer Mark Growden (Inside Beneath Behind); and singer-songwriter Pete Forbes (The Gulf Between).

Ettinger served as a co-founding member of several bands, including eclectic improv groups Overdrive Cultists (with Grassy Knoll members Dave Revelli and Jonathan Byerly); LBJ (with Lukas Ligeti and Brian Kane); San Francisco Electric String Trio (with Doug Carroll and Jim Hearon). and electric jazz-jam band Hurlo Thrumbo. He played and recorded with psychedelic punk band Clockbrains, and has also performed in various settings with The Scott Amendola Band, Damon Smith, Matt Ingalls, Andrew Borger, and Naut Humon and the Iso-Orchestra with Arto Lindsay and Eyvind Kang. Prior to moving to the Bay Area, Ettinger lived in Arizona, where he collaborated with several musicians, including Trio Discussions (with Rob Kaplan, and J. B. Smith), an improv group with a recording produced by guitarist David Torn; vocalist Dennis Rowland, and tenor saxophonist Tony Malaby.

On Ettinger’s latest project, Kissinger in Space, he showcases his prowess as a composer and improviser whose music is a compelling blend of the lyrical and the free. The album displays his talent as a fine bandleader whose quartet comprises Malaby (signaling a creative reunion from their days at Arizona State University in the ’80s when they met in a 19th-century music theory class), bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Amendola. The CD is a fitting follow-up to August Rain, even though the loops inherent in the latter are scaled back. While Ettinger hastens to note that the violin loops do play a role in Kissinger in Space (prominently in the eerie, spacey title track), he says, "I’ve been doing that kind of improvising for years. I love doing it, that extra level of interaction (the loops are done real-time) but this album is probably the least amount I’ve done. I wanted to hear more violin on this CD."

Regarding Malaby’s inclusion on Kissinger in Space, Ettinger recalls their initial hookup in Arizona: "We became friends, had a few classes together, played on each other’s senior recitals and then went different ways and to different coasts." Despite the miles, the two kept in touch. In December 2005, when Malaby was in the Bay Area playing with bassist Charlie Haden, Ettinger enlisted the tenor saxist to guest on the current project that was originally conceived as a trio date. It soon became apparent with the chemistry so potent that, in Ettinger’s words, "the initial trio record happily turned into a quartet recording."

Holding the rhythm section down are two Bay Area regulars: Hoff (who plays in the Nels Cline Singers trio as well as fronts his own duo project Good for Cows with drummer Ches Smith) and Amendola (the Bay Area vet who in addition to fronting his own bands is also in Nels Cline Singers, currently tours with Madeleine Peyroux, has an impressive resume with Charlie Hunter and the T.J. Kirk project, and played drums on Ettinger’s first CD).