Musings on ballet, classical music, the violin, and life
I’m an adult beginning on the violin and it’s been a rollicking adventure, chronicled here.
The news is splashed all over the Internet this morning. Stolen 1696 Stradivarius worth $1.8 million, recovered by UK police in central England. The crime, three years earlier: Euston Station, London. Violinist Min-Jin Kym had stopped at a sandwich shop while inside the railway station. While in there, she was momentarily distracted by two teens. … Read more
I’m traveling this week, which makes for less blog time, so I thought I’d be lazy and deposit an old, favored blog in here that I wrote five-ish years ago. It’s about travel, so that counts, right? And it’s been a while since I’ve given my adult-beginners-on-the-violin readers a story, so here you go. I … Read more
Remember the movie Snakes on a Plane? Yeah, me neither. But let’s call this Strings on a Plane. It’s a warm afternoon in Beijing and a plane full of people are buckled in, awaiting departure that the crew can’t seem to get permission for. The plane has been grounded on the tarmac for not one, not two, … Read more
Call me sentimental, but when I hear a story about a talented performer in the arts world who suffers adversity and triumphs against tremendous odds, well, it steals my heart. It gets me rallying around that person. That I should be won over by the performer’s talent, musicality, peerless technique, before learning his backstory, well, … Read more
Over at Violinist.com, editor Laurie Niles has recently interviewed acclaimed violinist Elmar Oliveira who, in 1978, won the gold medal at the ultra-prestigious Tchaikovsky Competition. (Check out the interview here: http://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20134/14574/.) In the years since, Oliveira has continued to thrive, through performing, teaching and recording. His most recent project is a recording of Robert Schumann’s … Read more