My romance with the violin began at the age of 13 when I was growing up as a young boy in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.
I started out with a bright orange student fiddle that looked and sounded like a 4/4 student viola. While I was trying to learn how to shift it flew out from under my chin across the room, hit the door and split its top. I had the top repaired, but a friend thought it was time for me to have a friendlier violin.
It was a diminutive sized french violin dark in color and sound which carried me through music lessons and orchestra until I was 19. I also used a borrowed school viola for Friday night quartet rehearsals at the Roosa School of Music at 145 Montague street, a dignified, old Brownstone in the Brooklyn Heights section of my beloved borough, just behind Boro Hall.
Later, a Hollywood film violinist sold me an Italian violin which I used early on in my Teaching Assistant days at the University of New Mexico. It became somewhat unglued after I spent a month in Acapulco, Mexico. When I visted a very large music store in Mexico City to get some "pesos" for my Lower East Side Italian violin, a Young, very handsome, well-dressed salesman from the store rushed over to me and said, "Here is some money for your violin, please do not sell it. You will regret it for the rest of your life."!
I explained to him that after my visit to Acapulco the humidity there had caused some structural problems with the gluing and that the cost of repairs could not be borne at the present and that I needed the money in order to get back to the United States and my job as a college English teacher.
He looked relieved when I told him that as soon as I got back to Albuquerque I would find another one.
We parted by blessing each other and to the day I die I will always remember the young music salesman from Mexico City as a beacon of hope radiating from the world in my Summer of 1959.
To be continued...
I started out with a bright orange student fiddle that looked and sounded like a 4/4 student viola. While I was trying to learn how to shift it flew out from under my chin across the room, hit the door and split its top. I had the top repaired, but a friend thought it was time for me to have a friendlier violin.
It was a diminutive sized french violin dark in color and sound which carried me through music lessons and orchestra until I was 19. I also used a borrowed school viola for Friday night quartet rehearsals at the Roosa School of Music at 145 Montague street, a dignified, old Brownstone in the Brooklyn Heights section of my beloved borough, just behind Boro Hall.
Later, a Hollywood film violinist sold me an Italian violin which I used early on in my Teaching Assistant days at the University of New Mexico. It became somewhat unglued after I spent a month in Acapulco, Mexico. When I visted a very large music store in Mexico City to get some "pesos" for my Lower East Side Italian violin, a Young, very handsome, well-dressed salesman from the store rushed over to me and said, "Here is some money for your violin, please do not sell it. You will regret it for the rest of your life."!
I explained to him that after my visit to Acapulco the humidity there had caused some structural problems with the gluing and that the cost of repairs could not be borne at the present and that I needed the money in order to get back to the United States and my job as a college English teacher.
He looked relieved when I told him that as soon as I got back to Albuquerque I would find another one.
We parted by blessing each other and to the day I die I will always remember the young music salesman from Mexico City as a beacon of hope radiating from the world in my Summer of 1959.
To be continued...
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