Four Violins (1964) is a recording by Tony Conrad, taped on 19 December 1964, in which Conrad played amplified violin and layered it through overdubbing into four sustained, interlocking parts. It is his only solo tape of violin playing from the 1960s and the one time he stepped outside the collaboration he shared with La Monte Young, John Cale, Angus MacLise and Marian Zazeela between 1962 and 1965, the group sometimes known as the Dream Syndicate.
Like most of that group’s music, it went unheard for decades. Table of the Elements finally issued it as a vinyl LP in 1996 and in 1997 on the CD Early Minimalism Volume One, with additional engineering by Jim O’Rourke; the grinding, beating intervals of the four violins were hailed by The Wire’s David Keenan as a landmark. The Centre Pompidou acquired both editions for its collection in 2021, a sign of how firmly the recording now belongs to the history of minimalism.