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More About

• Niccolo Paganini
• Regina Carter
• Genoa

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Over the past several years, Regina Carter, who fronts a quintet that headlines the Boulder Theater on Thursday, March 25, has been closely linked to a dead man: nineteenth-century classical master Niccolò Paganini. A virtuoso so fiercely gifted that he was rumored to have sold his soul to Satan in exchange for his musical talent, Paganini is a hero in his native Genoa, Italy, and his favorite violin, nicknamed the Cannon for its booming tone, remains a national treasure. Since Paganini's death in 1840, fewer than a hundred musicians have been allowed to handle the Cannon, and all of them focused on classical music prior to Carter, who was invited to play it during a December 2001 concert in Genoa. Some Paganini purists initially saw this proposal as blasphemous, but the response to Carter's show was so positive that she was subsequently permitted to use the Cannon for her 2003 recording Paganini: After a Dream. The instrument itself won't accompany Carter to Boulder, and her material will be eclectic, drawing from jazz as well as classical sources. Nonetheless, Paganini's spirit of adventure is likely to inform her every note. Call it a collaboration from beyond the grave.