Goldstein Paints Vibrant Mosaics

In the sound world of violinist Malcolm Goldstein, the usual rules don’t apply. In his first local appearance in a dozen years, Goldstein gave a calmly fascinating solo performance Tuesday at the 24th Street Theater as part of the venturesome Faultlines concert series.

The experimentalist has spent many years, on the East Coast and in Europe, demonstrating the expressive potential of his instrument outside the standard ideal of rich tone production. His sound palette, as heard on the aptly named closing improvisation “Soundings,” bristles with evocative whispers and renegade overtones, en route to personal musical poetry.

A strong influence is John Cage, whose “Eight Whiskus” opened the concert with haiku-like melodies--folk tunes from another planet. Goldstein’s own “gentle rain preceding mushrooms” memorializes Cage, with a bouncing bow generating a pulse based on the notes C-A-G-E, over which he vocalizes.

The vibrant, fragmented mosaic “it were another” references a Cage piece based on a Jasper Johns text. Another work grew out of a folk theme from Bosnia-Herzegovina, transcribed by Bartok, on which Goldstein produced a remarkable array of tones, evoking mourning and violence.

Before the performance, he pointed out a chirping sound outside”I’ll be accompanied by this wonderful cricket. He’s in the right key.” It was not quite a joke: Goldstein conveys a sense of raw naturalism beneath his maverick attitude. His craggy timbres evoke wind in trees, pebbles skipping on water, as much as they fit into a Eurocentric chamber music continuum.