Lara St. John: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

May 9, 2016 by TOM HUIZENGA • Violinist Lara St. John has attitude in spades. It’s in the sound of her playing and in the arc of her career. Her first album cover sparked controversy, prompting many classical-music observers to wonder about her motivations until they heard the passionate Bach performances that accompanied it. Willing to take risks, St. John was among the first to start her own record label in the 1990s. It’s allowed her to call the shots on her recorded repertoire, which has been satisfyingly broad, from Piazzolla to polkas to Mozart. St. John’s recent album Shiksa — recorded with pianist Matt Herskowitz, who joins her for this Tiny Desk concert — collects new arrangements of old tunes from Armenia, Romania and the Jewish diaspora. The two know how to start off a show. The incendiary “Czardashian Rhapsody“ mashes up two Hungarian tunes with some extra hot sauce. St. John’s fiddle is at turns coy and cocky, racy, raw and just plain outrageous. Herskowitz dispatches his considerably hefty ro