Blues, Jazz, Rock Violinists?

A little youtube searching should give you a crack at some of these:

Zbigniew Seifert (releases on Mood and MPS)
Dave Arbus (1st two East of Eden records)
Faith Fraioli (Flying Island)
Darryl Way (the 3 Wolf records are great)
Hollis Brown (Ozone Quartet)
Ric Sanders (Soft Machine , Second Vision)
Jeff Gauthier (has a lot on Cryptogramophone)
Didier Lockwood (Lockwood / Vander / Top is my favorite)
Godfrey Salmon / Raymond Vincent (Esperanto/Danse Macabre)
Jenny Scheinman (lots to pick from, the Tzadik stuff is good)

Some Ponty stuff did hit me as cheez whiz... haven't kept up with what he's doing. He's obviously a big talent and he's recorded things that can't rationally be described as pop or fusion. The MPS releases are generally pretty solid and his work on the 1970 World Pacific/Liberty release (King Kong) demonstrates what he can do w/ FZ material, (even Downbeat had sense enough to recognize that this stuff had compositional weight on par w/ Charles Mingus or Oliver Nelson).

And yes you should read recommendations to avoid hearing avant garde noise makers or that f word music, (whatever that is)... if you're not careful you might learn something ... be sure to keep those training wheels on!

Minor house cleaning detour:
Validity or cultural impact is not determined by what got printed in Downbeat. That said I was surprised to find that during the early and mid 70's the rag was regularly putting Zappa on a pedestal, (Bongo Fury was an exception)... turns out they were right about his stature as a composer and i was too dumb to know it.
Mingus Died in 79'... and a poorly informed highly opinionated A'goner trekkie loses a bet, whoo-hoo.
Words like Jazz, Free Jazz, Avant Garde and Fusion don't really have much descriptive value and often get used by the weak minded to reinforce preconceptions and prejudices. No way am i gonna' play, this is jazz... this isn't jazz, but it's obvious that some of us haven't really listened to Ponty's Sunday Walk (1967) or some of his other early releases.