July 28, 2005 at 2:30 AM

Well, it has certainly been quite a while since I updated this thing, so here it goes. I have been having an interesting month. I seem to have many ups and downs in my violin playing. I can play the Mozart GM Concerto almost perfectly except for two places in the cadenza (the arpeggio 64th note thing and the double trills). My orchestral excerpts are going rather interestin as well. I can play most of them almost up to tempo, but then some parts are an absolute mess which I can't seem to play in tempo all the time. That's one of the biggest problems with my playing, a lack of consistancy. It only seems to happen in orchestral music not my solo stuff. I have yet to fiqure this out but it has improved from what it used to be so I guess it will just take more practice.

Last week my family and I went to Chicago for our family vacation. We saw the musical "The Lion King". All I can say is...astounding. The singers/actors did an amazing job. They were in tune with the pit orchestra and in perfect rythm. I haven't hear that much good intonation since I heard the Minnesota Orchestra (live anyway). The acting was incredibly solid and just flowed like a conversation throughout the entire musical.

Onto the pit orchestra. They were an amazing group of musicians. The strings were just a quartet miced. They played really well together and handled the more African type rythms with astoundingly good quality. The cellist at one point had a gorgeous solo that just stunned me because of its prefection. The violist was really quite solid and provided wonderful harmony to the melody. The second violin seemed to have an incredible control of his position and provided much to the performance as a whole. The first violinist had some wonderful melodies and handled them spectacularly.

While in Chicago and looking for the violin shop Bein and Fushi, we found an incredible sheet music store so I stocked up on some violin concertoes. I bought the Tchaikovsky Concerto, the R. Strauss Concerto, the International Music Orchestral Excerpts Book Vol. 3, the Elgar Conceto, and Veutemps No. 4.

Then we found Bein and Fushi. It really reminded me of Claire Givens Violins. I tried 3 violins and I was pleased to discover it will take about $12,000.00 to find a better violin then the one I have now. I completely fell in love with a violin. It was a Vanna So violin (one of Tetsuo Matsudas best apprentices). It was $13,500.00 and since I'm going to college that was out of the question. The violin had amazing power which was focused and full tone colors. It was also very visually pleasing. All I can say is that I really wanted that violin. The guy (Joseph Bein) who showed me the violins was very nice and he gave me all the time I needed. He also gave me a brief history of the violins and their makers. I wish we could have stayed longer but we had to be getting along to the aquarium.

From Eric Stanfield
Posted on July 28, 2005 at 8:52 PM

I'm in and out of the city routinely for work and hit BF once in a while. Where exactly was the sheet music shop you found? What was its name?

From Andrew Paa
Posted on July 29, 2005 at 3:08 AM

TBH, I don't remember, it was near the Art Building on S Michigan Ave. It wasn't in the building but really close to it. You can see the rail/subway tracks from the store, it's fairly close to what used to be the Chicago Music Mart.

From Eric Stanfield
Posted on August 1, 2005 at 8:13 PM

Went to BF only to find they are closed on Monday's! Oh well. I did find the sheetmusic store. Music Matters if I'm reading the name correctly off this faded reciept. Nice place.

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July 28, 2005 at 2:30 AM

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