Violinist Simone Porter Explores the Sacred on ‘ad tendo’

By Greg Cahill | From the May/June 2025 issue of Strings

“The title of the album, ad tendo (Bright Shiny Things), is derived from the Latin root of the word attention: ad plus tendere,” violinist Simone Porter explains when asked about her brilliant new solo-violin album. “At its root, attention means ‘to stretch towards.’ That attention could beckon an extension of self is terribly exciting to me, and I love the way that all these pieces are in search of that. If that’s conveyed in any way, whether someone is dipping in for 30 seconds or doing a thorough listen, I’d be beyond chuffed, but I’m also just stoked to share this repertoire, and I hope some people think the sounds are nifty.”

Actually, nifty is a gross understatement. There’s a soulful depth to the solo-violin tracks on ad tendo, which often sound like prayers, as Porter wends her way through yearning and often whisper-soft passages. That’s no coincidence: Porter’s thoughtfully wrought program is themed around a quote from philosopher Simone Weil: “Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.”

The tracks include Esa-Pekka Salonen’s solo-violin chaconne, Lachen verlernt (“Laughing Unlearnt”); the world premiere recording of Reena Esmail’s moving ten-part suite Drishti; Andrew Norman’s Sabina; Biber’s Passacaglia in G minor, one of the first major works for solo violin; and cellist Olivia Marckx’s improvisation on O Virtus Sapientiae, an ancient chant by 12th-century abbess Hildegard von Bingen.

Porter—who has appeared with the New York Philharmonic, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Seattle Symphony, and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, among others—performs on a 1740 Carlo Bergonzi violin on loan from The Master’s University in Santa Clarita, California. She strings it with Peter Infields, from Thomastik-Infeld, and uses a Nicolas Rémy Maire bow.

Strings asked the 29-year-old Porter about her career, her philosophy of life, and her striking new recording.

How did you first encounter the violin?

My introduction to classical music was opera. When I was around two or three, I developed an infatuation with a “best of” Puccini album that belonged to my parents. While not musicians themselves, my parents noted my interest in the CD and began to take me to various events, like young people’s concerts and instrument petting zoos. At some point, I saw a violin, begged for one, and received a minuscule—and, I assume, devastatingly squeaky—16th-size violin when I was three and a half.

What was your key training?

I first picked up a violin in Salt Lake City and studied Suzuki through Book 4 with Amy Evans Herrick. After a few years, my family moved to Seattle, and I began lessons with Margaret Pressley, under whose guidance violin transformed from a hobby into a passion and eventual vocation. When I was 11, Margaret introduced me to Robert Lipsett, whose pedagogy I benefitted from for the next decade-plus. I studied with Mr. Lipsett at the Colburn School in Los Angeles all through precollege, college, and grad school.  

The new album has a strong philosophical and spiritual foundation. I know you are an avid reader. How did that come about?

The seed of this program was a sort of eureka moment that I experienced in 2019 when I read Gravity and Grace by the philosopher Simone Weil. Weil lived in France in the first half of the 20th century and much of her work concerned a search for spiritual purity. She wrote that “attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer . . . . Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” I found this insight revelatory, because it spoke to a feeling that I cherished and constantly sought out, but had never been able to fully articulate, in which an experience of total absorption acts as a kind of deliverance. I realized that the quality my favorite activities and experiences held in common was the degree of attention that they commanded. I spent a lot of time thinking about what the focus of practice and performance could offer—something purifying, some kind of salvation.

How did you apply that to ad tendo?

Around the same time I first read Weil’s work, I also picked up How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, a book about resisting the modern-day attention economy. Weil’s insight began to seem even more apt in a time when human attention is treated like a scarce commodity to be harvested and manipulated. Odell notes, “If we think about what it means to ‘concentrate’ or ‘pay attention’ at an individual level, it implies alignment, different parts of the mind and even the body acting in concert and oriented toward the same thing.” I started thinking that if attention “implies alignment,” then maybe unmixed attention, attention as prayer, is the quest to align with something greater than oneself. I really wanted to immerse myself in that motion, the reach toward something greater than oneself, so I sought out music that I felt inhabited that stretch. This included pieces I already knew, some that I found, and one that was commissioned for this project, from Reena Esmail. The pieces span centuries and many sound worlds, but for all of them, attention is both the means and offering by which a person can extend beyond themselves. I love these works individually, and have found programming them together, listening to the way they call upon one another, so gratifying! 

You present Biber’s Passacaglia, one of the first major works for solo violin. Tell me about your approach to this piece. 

The Passacaglia is the finale of Biber’s “Rosary Sonatas” and is labeled “The Guardian Angel,” due to the drawing at the start of the piece, which depicts an angel leading a child by the hand. It’s essentially a set of variations over a four-note descending bass line that repeats ceaselessly throughout the whole work. To me, the bass line becomes mantric, a sort of portrait of spiritual guidance through focus. The early virtuosity contained in the piece is no joke—written in the 1670s, it feels like a precursor to Bach’s Chaconne. I adore period performance and primarily listened to recordings done in that style when I was learning this piece. I play on a fully modern instrument, but I wanted to adapt my approach and incorporate certain elements. For example, experimenting with using much less vibrato and holding my bow a little higher. I was searching for purity and delicacy, but not flimsiness, a goal that never failed to get my nerves going. Luckily, the piece is designed to support the engagement that its execution requires!

Another nod to the past, and to spirituality, is Marckx’s arrangement of the von Bingen chant. What drew you to that work?

Hildegard von Bingen, a 12th-century nun who gave us music, medicine, and treatises, is kind of the patron saint of medieval female mystics, a category that could also include Julian of Norwich and Marguerite Porete. To me, Simone Weil is their spiritual heir—she harbored the same yearning for a spirituality beyond the veil, accessed through thought, devotion, self-effacement. Bingen’s antiphon O Virtus Sapientiae is a prayer for divine wisdom. I find its extension toward irradiating enlightenment matches the reach of all the other repertoire. 

Conversely, you recorded a modern solo violin work by Salonen. What has drawn you to his music?

I moved to Los Angeles in 2011, where Salonen’s music is an integral part of the city’s soundscape. I lived across the street from Walt Disney Hall, and frequently heard the L.A. Phil perform his works. I adored their color palette, their angularity, their daring, and their heart. I knew the Salonen Violin Concerto, performed so spectacularly by Leila Josefowicz, and decided to look up his other violin compositions. I was immediately drawn to Lachen Verlernt—it has such spectacular verve, great pacing, and a stunning narrative trajectory. Lachen Verlernt means “laughing unlearnt”—it’s a line from a movement in Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in which the narrator entreats the sad clown Pierrot to help her reclaim her laughter, which she believes she has lost. I loved the idea that attention paid to Pierrot—to an artist, or art itself—could help one realign with aspects of oneself that were never lost, but stagnant or overlooked.