Going for Baroque with Emma Borders, on octave mandolin

The 15-year-old faith-based musician is dazzling all within earshot

In the summer of 2011, Chris Thile stood alone onstage at the legendary Grey Fox Bluegrass festival and assayed the “Gigue,” the sprightly dance sequence, of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Partita in Dm for Violin.”

It wasn’t exactly “Tennessee Blues,” but the crowd erupted in applause for the 300-year-old composition, just as it might have for a Scots-Irish fiddle tune of the same vintage.

Thile, perhaps like no other artist, has freed the mandolin from its well-placed and duly honored position as the voice of bluegrass.

Emma Borders, who points to Thile and similarly genre-bending Weber artist Sierra Hull as prime inspirations, recently played the “Gigue,” too, absolutely dazzling the online audience for David Benedict’s Mandolin Mondays with her precision, passion and pure tone.

What’s more, the 15-year-old phenom played the variations on octave mandolin, bringing a ringing depth to Bach’s looping, serpentine lines.

Borders, classically trained on violin, like her siblings in The Borders Band, first saw an octave, on video, in Hull’s hands—a custom distressed Weber Fern—and she was mesmerized by the throaty, full sound of the instrument.

“She opened my eyes to see how beautiful it was,” Borders says. “I love the way that she incorporates both the octave and the standard mandolin into her music.”

Borders, naturally, plays standard mandolin as well, along with violin, “a little bit of guitar” and “a few chords on the piano.”

Solo and with the family band, Borders is at the vanguard of a new wave of fearless young instrumentalists marrying conservatory chops with roots verve.

“I don't tend to play a lot of bluegrass,” she admits, “just because I feel like that's something a lot of other mandolin players already do so well. I try to do other styles, although I enjoy tackling “Jerusalem Ridge” once in a while. That one's a lot of fun to play.”

As if to make her point, Borders recently developed her own take on Avi Avital’s solo mandolin arrangement of Ernest Bloch’s “Nigun.”

“Arranging pieces for myself,” says Borders, who studied under Gretchen Wolaver at the Annie Moses Foundation, “I have to think in terms of accompaniment without a band. I do a lot of solo and solo mandolin with voice work, so when I take something we might do with the group, I have to adapt and maybe cut a few things; maybe take a riff that was played on the piano and transfer it over to the mandolin. I love doing that, it's great fun.”

“It’s also a challenge, but I like challenges. I'm very self-motivated as a musician so I enjoy finding hard things and trying to arrange them in a new way that nobody's heard before.”

Borders, whose octave is a 22-inch-scale A-style Weber Bridger she acquired about five years ago, considers music a mission.

“Our faith is a big part of what we do,” she says of her multi-instrumentalist siblings Davis, Daniel, Annsley and Eloise. The group’s name, she adds, is a nod to their grandparents’ long-lived Southern gospel combo, the Borders.

“I really love the tone of my Bridger,” Borders muses. “It has a very mellow sound and I love the sustain that it gives me when I play. As you saw, I really love exploring Bach's music with it, and minor melodies are really pretty on it, too.”

Given the scale length, she will occasionally create new fingering patterns for difficult passages.

“I can't play as fast on it, due to its size, but I love the sound of open voicings on it. Because it’s so big, I can't always do full chords like I would do on the mandolin, so I try to use more open strings. I also use a capo sometimes, if I want to play in different keys and make use of those open voicings.”

“Most anything I play on mandolin, though, I can also play on octave. I do have distinct songs I play on one or the other, but with a lot of what I write, I will take it to both and see which I like better.

“One of my goals, which I would hope to accomplish within the next two years, is to record an instrumental album of original songs composed for mandocello, octave mandolin and standard mandolin. My brother Davis plays a Weber Absaroka mandocello and I think those instruments, combined, make just a gorgeous trio sound. I've already written a few pieces for those three voices together.”