FEATURE: DAMIEN ESCOBAR INTERVIEW

String Theory

“I want to make that thing sing,” says Damien Escobar

Like many folks, Damien Escobar had plans heading into 2020.

“I thought that was going to be my best year yet,” says the genre-scrambling violin virtuoso. “I had just rebuilt my team. I had all these tour dates coming up. I was moving into acting, auditioning for some prominent roles.”

Yet Escobar wasn’t entirely surprised when the pandemic essentially shut down the concert industry in March of that year.

“When I was in Europe in January (2020), I told my band, ‘Look, you guys, we really have to wear masks on the plane because of COVID,’” he says. “Everyone thought I was crazy.”

After a scheduled jazz cruise was canceled, Escobar realized business would not proceed as usual. An early adopter of livestreaming in lieu of touring, he organized a benefit concert in April 2020 that raised over $50,000 to buy protective gear for hospital staffers in his hometown of New York City.

More importantly, after a couple decades of a performing career that began in childhood, he found himself at home, with a big dent in his cash flow but plenty of time to reconsider his priorities. Those priorities include four children, currently ranging from 8 weeks to 14 years old. The break from touring became “one of the greatest years of my life personally, so there was a gift in it.”

“You realize the things you can live without, the things that are not important, and then you start focusing on things that are important, and for me it was family,” he says.

Escobar himself was the youngest of three siblings, growing up in Queens with a single mom. Their public elementary school in the ’90s actually required music instruction starting in the third grade. When he was just 6,

his older brother brought home a violin. Damien wasn’t allowed to touch the instrument, and it captured his imagination.

“You tell a 6-year-old he can’t do something, and he just has to sit there and wait for two years, that was it. So when it was my turn to take (violin) in third grade, I just kind of took it and ran with it,” he recalls. “I knew at that moment, I want to do this forever. … I was just lucky enough to grow up in an era when I was able to take advantage of those arts programs.”

Additional music education came at home, where sounds of classic soul, pop and R&B filled the air. Escobar was particularly intrigued by singers, from Chaka Khan to Whitney Houston. “I was like, ‘I can’t sing, but the violin sounds close to the voice, and I want to make that thing sing,’” he says. “And you can hear it in my music today, just me making the instrument really sing.”

From those early inspirations, what followed for Damien and his brother

Tourie was something of a fairy tale – and it couldn’t last.

While still in grade school, the violinwielding siblings began charming crowds as buskers in the New York City subways. They studied at Juilliard and the Bloomingdale School of Music. As teens in the 2000s, they began mixing their classical, jazz, pop, soul and hip-hop influences into an act called Nuttin’ But Stringz, which won an Apollo Theater talent show, released an album, took third place on America’s Got Talent,

“You realize the things you can live without, the things that are not important, and then you start focusing on things that are important, and for me it was family.”

and appeared on Ellen, the Today show and The Tonight Show, among other places. They played for President George W. Bush at the White House in 2007 and at the first inauguration of President Barack Obama in 2009.

By 2012, however, the two brothers had parted ways professionally. The break was tough for Damien Escobar, who gave up violin for a while, teetered on homelessness and even tried his hand selling real estate before regaining his sense of purpose. He began building his solo career – a bit more intentionally and deliberately this time – with the 2013 album Sensual Melodies and followed up in 2017 with a collection of original music titled Boundless.

Escobar played the Palladium to a packed house that year and returned in late 2019, just before the shutdown. Since then, he has released a sixsong holiday EP, 25 Days of Christmas, which will provide the theme of his December performance. Fans can expect a mix of seasonal songs and other selections from the band, which includes bass, drums and keyboards.

The Palladium is “one of my favorite rooms to play,” Escobar says.

“People in Indiana, you guys really love music,” he says, “and when an artist gets on the stage and shows their heart, you guys really give it back.”