My duets book came yesterday – it contains violin two parts for many of the Suzuki Book 1-3 songs.  I am pleased to see that in a few cases there are multiple parts – for one song in particular I could now lay down four tracks if I want to (with a little practice, of […]

Those who know violins know Cremona – a region in Italy famous for producing them.  The great golden age makers Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivari all lived their lives and had workshops in the area, and the area remains a center of production for stringed instruments.  Last night I was with a small group eating dinner […]

Last weekend’s chamber music festival has me thinking a lot about sight reading and playing with others.  I found a chamber music association online – it has over 5,000 members, and aims to help them find each other so they can get together and play music.  There’s a minimal membership fee, and in order to […]

While I do know these songs I’m scrambling to prepare for the Chamber Music Festival tomorrow, I am not playing the melody.  My part in Simple Gifts is not too bad at all – I can basically sight read it smoothly and without major problems. Amazing Grace, however, is quite a bit more complicated.  During […]

I received the music for the Chamber Music Festival last night, and I’m itching to practice.  Happily, they are tunes with which I’m quite familiar – Amazing Grace, for which I’ll be playing the violin 2 part, and Simple Gifts, for which I’ll play violin 1.  Neither of my parts is the top melody line […]

It’s rare to get away with stealing a Stradivarius, but that’s exactly what happened with Roman Totenberg’s 1734 Ames Stradivarius in 1980 – the thief, a currently unnamed and deceased man suspected by Totenberg all along until the musician’s death, left the instrument to a family member who had it appraised back in June only […]

My new minuet is quite challenging – as I’ve mentioned, it’s a variation on an “old” Bach minuet (in G major, that minuet is itself a part of this piece too), but the challenging part is the new one.  The new one modulates from G major – the third key Suzuki introduces, one with which […]

I wrote about that friendly little encounter I had with a random stranger in the elevator a few days ago, and I realized after I wrote that post that I had actually said “I play the violin” to someone – just like that, no hedging, just, “I play the violin.”  I think it was the […]