Last night was a surprise 40th birthday dinner party for a friend – we went to an upscale Korean place.  Korean is one of Michael’s favorite types of cuisine, but for my part I’ve always been slightly less than enthusiastic – kimchi, a staple of Korean meals, is something I cannot stomach – its olfactory […]

Chicago is a great place to be an amateur musician.  Many community choirs enrich the concert scene – they are generally organized around shared interests and/or a desire to sing while doing a little something for a good cause.  The ones I’ve attended have been benefit concerts – I think I’ve had three friends involved […]

The driver said, “Sir?” and then, more loudly, “Sir??”  I looked up and noticed only two other people on the bus – the driver and his son, about age 11, standing near his dad. The driver, looking at me in his rearview mirror, asked, “Is that an instrument?” “Yes, a violin, I’ve just had it […]

The day after Whitney Houston died I was transferring trains downtown and came across a licensed street performer belting out Whitney tunes accompanied by an old battery powered boom box.  I confess to feeling the loss of Whitney about as deeply as I can feel the loss of someone I don’t know personally, and the […]

Life in a high rise is great – we feel very secure, the view is extraordinary, and the rest of Chicago is 17 stories down, which makes it a quiet escape.  But it has some downsides, sometimes including the necessary courtesy we extend our neighbors.  Along those lines, I’ve decided I cannot practice before 9:00 […]

In my lesson yesterday, I realized I was relaxing and becoming more comfortable playing in front of my teacher.  It might seem strange, but I did not consider the performance aspect of taking up the violin before I did so.  But now, every week I stand in front of a great violin player and play […]