Mads Tolling is one of the top violinists in jazz. He's the 2016 winner of DownBeat Critics Poll Rising Star Award for the violin. He played with both the Turtle Island String Quartet and bassist Stanley Clarke's band before forming his own groups. His latest band, Mads Tolling and the Mads Men, has just released the album Playing the 60s. It's a collection of jazz arrangements of American popular music from the 1960s, including theme songs from television shows like Hawaii 5-0 and The Flintstones.
Tolling was born in Denmark in 1980 and moved to the U.S. at the age of 20 to study jazz at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. Even though he grew up in Copenhagen in the 80s and 90s, he was familiar with American pop music from the earlier decade.
Mads Tolling and the Mads Men are performing in Sioux Falls Thursday evening at the Washington Pavilion at 7. The concert features music from Playing the 60s. In an interview recorded for SDPB's Jazz Nightly, Tolling discusses the making of the album.
