Mayor's Arts Awards: Quinton Morris

Since 2003, the Mayor's Arts Awards have celebrated the creative impact of artists and organizations in Seattle. This Thursday afternoon, the Mayor, the Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs and members of the arts community will gather at Seattle Center for a ceremony and celebration of this year's six winners: Donald Byrd of Spectrum Dance Theater, Tet in Seattle, Quinton Morris, Pratt Fine Arts Center, Jack Straw Productions and On the Boards. City Arts will profile each of the winners this week, beginning with the charming and disarming Quinton Morris, in an excerpt from our September fall arts guide:

Quinton Morris

The Northwest’s newest classical music star has arrived—globetrotting from one big gig to the next in New York, Paris, Chicago and Cape Town. He is Quinton Morris: violinist, professor, anomaly.

This fall, Morris is gearing up for the biggest performance of his life—a solo concert at Carnegie Hall next January—with a series of local performances that will offer a taste of what he has in store for New York.

Sitting inside Capitol Hill’s original Victrola Coffee in a T-shirt and jeans, Morris, 33, drinks tea and gushes about his love of hip-hop, jazz and basketball. His eyes are warm and bright, voice soft and kind, as he describes what it was like to sell out Carnegie Hall last winter (“amaaaaaazing”) in a performance with soprano Indra Thomas and pianist Maimy Fong.

"Sometimes I ask myself, if Beyoncé had to sing this piece, how would she do it?" Morris says. "And then I try to play it that way."

Which makes sense, Morris points out, given that the violin is the closest instrument to the soprano female voice. “Playing fast, witty pieces can be fun—but it’s really the slow, ballad-like pieces where you have to make the violin sing.”

Born in Illinois and raised in Renton, Morris picked up a violin for the first time at age 8 at the encouragement of a friend’s orchestra teacher. After high school, he headed to Xavier University in New Orleans, taking pre-law courses and studying violin on the side. After graduation, Morris took a few fated chances that led to a conservatory audition and a pedigree from North Carolina School of the Arts, Boston Conservatory and, finally, the University of Texas at Austin.

Morris, who won a 2011 Seattle Mayor’s Arts Award, returned to Seattle four years ago when Seattle University hired him to create a one-of-a-kind music program that caters specifically to strings, voice and piano performance majors. He juggles his university obligations alongside a rigorous international performance schedule and leadership of the Young Eight, an accomplished touring octet of black string players that Morris founded in 2002. Morris himself is one of very few young black concert violinists in the world.

“I think it makes people listen more to what I have to say,” he says. “It gives me a chance to change the way people think, to be an example of what’s possible.” LEAH BALTUS

UPCOMING SHOWS
Nov. 11 » Pacific Lutheran University
Nov. 18 » Haller Lake church
Dec. 1 » Pigott Auditorium at Seattle University