We lived in the guest house of a large property in Van Nuys, and commuted to Valencia. The main house was owned by Mrs. Pagel, an elderly woman and her ancient father. One night Mrs. Pagel asked me to look in on her father while she was out. My children think I am exaggerating but I really am 5’1” on a good day. The man was easily six feet. My boyfriend was out that evening, so I went over by myself and found the father on the living room floor. Conscious. I told him I was going to put him back on the couch and he shook his head. But I couldn’t leave him on the floor – so I’m not sure how, but I managed to lift him and get him back on the couch, wedged in deeply enough that he couldn’t fall off again.

The next morning Mrs. Pagel stopped me as I was walking past the main house.

“My father told me the craziest thing – that you picked him off the floor and put him back on the couch. You didn’t actually do that, did you?!”

“Actually, I did.”

My violin teacher at CalArts was not a great fit, but she was my only option. Violists and violinists often use something called a shoulder rest – a small contraption that fits on the back of the instrument and fills the gap between the player’s shoulder and chin/jaw. Without one, you either hold the violin up with the left arm, raise your shoulder, or both, which ties up the very hand you need for shifting up and down the fingerboard. Some men get away with a sponge tucked under their jacket. Women generally use a shoulder rest. I had used one my whole life. I’m not tall, but there’s a lot of space between my shoulder and neck, so it was - and still is - essential.

My teacher had a different physique and didn’t use a shoulder rest, and decided I didn’t need one either. She casually tossed mine in the bin. A few weeks later I told her my left wrist was in terrible pain. She was unfazed by this. Then one day at my lesson I was playing the Debussy violin sonata – which goes way up the instrument - a lump popped out of my wrist. Not out of it exactly, but under the skin. A little like the scene in Alien where the creature emerges from someone’s stomach. Impossible to ignore, and obviously a direct result of playing without a shoulder rest. It was too painful to play so I was forced to stop playing for several months.

I finished out the school year, finding enormous pleasure in a year-long Shakespeare class taught by Ruby Cohn in which we read all thirty -seven plays.

My father said: “if you’re not in school you need a job”.

So, I set about getting work. I’ve written elsewhere about two from that period – cleaning a house in the Palisades and working as a cashier at Vogue Records in Westwood. But there were two others. By day, I walked around Century City wearing a sandwich board advertising a photo enlargement shop. By night, I worked in a small Westwood office with a group of young women, calling strangers to offer them free tickets to Las Vegas.

“Free” is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

The pitch went something like this:

“Hello, my name is…” I always used a pseudonym since I genuinely could not bear to hear:

Thank you, Constance, I’m not interested. My most successful alias was Elizabeth. Go figure.

“We are giving away free tickets to Las Vegas if you answer the following question correctly.” The question was roughly the equivalent of asking the color of George Washington’s white horse. Getting it wrong would require either very bad luck or a well-timed sneeze.

Before I started, I asked the boss whether I’d be saying anything untrue, because I wasn’t willing to do it, if that were the case. He told me the only catch was that transportation was implied, but not included - it was just a two-night hotel stay. I could live with that. When people asked about transportation, I could answer honestly.

My father wasn’t thrilled with my collection of jobs. Maybe I could have tried harder to get meaningful work. But I was nineteen, and all I could do was play the violin – and thanks to the ganglion cyst now living in my wrist, I couldn’t even do that.

The boss was a large, intimidating man. He would pin a five-or -ten-dollar bill to the bulletin board and announce that whoever made a certain number of sales in the next X amount of minutes, would win it. He also kept a gun visibly tucked into his waistband, which terrified me. I had never seen a gun in person before and was very relieved not to be alone with him.

I was there for a few weeks when the attrition began. Girls were let go one by one until I was the last one standing. My boss informed me I was his “best girl.” Not a distinction I was pleased to have earned.

Being alone in the room with him scared me, and he showed no sign of hiring anyone new. As much as I needed the money, I quit.

It didn’t surprise me that I was good at this ridiculous job. When I was around four, my mother put a sign on me that read Please do not feed - I apparently wandered the beach accepting snacks from neighbors and came home with no appetite for dinner.

I’ve always liked talking to people, particularly strangers. As a young child, this was considered a family problem. Holding a parent’s hand at a street corner, I would turn to whoever was standing next to us and, in the time it took for the light to change, give them my name, my address, my father’s profession. No sense of danger whatsoever.

One day when I was around five, my parents, my brother and I were in a taxi. I was seated up front next to the driver. We got into a very friendly conversation. At a certain point he asked me my name.

I glanced back at my family. The conversation in the back seat had stopped entirely. Everyone leaned forward. I looked at the driver, and said quite matter of factly:
“George Bernard Shaw.”

I don’t remember if my parents were relieved or more alarmed. What I do remember is that the driver went quiet, and that was the end of our conversation.

But back to the dodgy job. I quit, but the boss refused to pay me for my final week. I was too frightened to go back to his office. A friend suggested I go to Small Claims Court, so I typed up a letter threatening exactly that.

A check arrived in the mail a few days later.

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Bassoonists often joke that introducing themselves as “musicians” saves time—few listeners grasp the double-reed design, the eight-foot folded tube, or the angled keywork that accommodates finger stretch. As John Steinmetz reminded me, its medieval-sounding tone is the harmonic glue anchoring woodwind color. Yet public ignorance only heightens the bassoon’s underdog appeal. The instrument’s unwieldy weight and complex keywork challenge newcomers and professionals alike. In Symphonie fantastique or The Rite of Spring, mastering iconic solos demands precise breath and finger coordination. I’ve observed players rehearsing Stravinsky’s eerie opening over and over, perfecting the haunted voice that launches the score. During Peter and the Wolf recordings, colleagues recount how principal bassoonists embody Prokofiev’s “Grandfather” character, coaxing warmth and wit from that winding tube. Dynamic limitations—its narrow range from pianissimo whispers to mezzo-forte declarations—mean bassoonists learn to blend rather than dominate. They prize moments when their comedic agility cuts through an orchestral texture, yet their true triumph lies in supporting harmony. Commissions for new concertos hint at a growing drive to expand a sparse solo repertoire. Offstage, bassoonists laugh about backstage logistics: awkward bulk transported through narrow corridors, airline restrictions demanding elaborate packing, and half-fare train rides with precious instruments balanced upright. Despite stereotypes, principal players embrace their crucial role. They celebrate camaraderie—borrowing swabs or cork grease in tense moments—and share reverence for pioneers like Vaughan Williams soloists, who proved that this so-called “underdog” holds the spine of every symphony. In each low trill or aching solo line, the bassoon asserts that its modest appearance belies indispensable mastery.

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“Were you counting, or just hoping for the best?” I ask an eight-year-old.

“Hoping for the best,” she confesses.

“I appreciate your honesty,” I say reaching for my metronome.

“Do you have any other shoes?” asks a five-year-old.

“I have several pairs of the same ones. They’re very comfortable for standing all day. You know, I’m okay with your asking me that, but some people might be upset.”

“What did you think of that F#?” I demand of an Italian doctor getting back into playing after years away.

“Sadly, I thought it was okay.” It wasn’t.

“Constance, I don’t think we told you,” a seven-year-old boy tells me. “I have sixteen bruises.”

One day the younger brother of my student, a boy around six, asks:
“Constance, do you have a boss?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Well, who’s that man who walks in here sometimes?”
“That’s my husband.”

A student struggling with a melodic scale, the scale that goes up differently from the way it comes down - asks:

“Why does it have to change?!”

I tell a five-year-old little boy when I put pennies on his fingers, setting up a good left hand position, that he’s taking all my money. One day when he’s pocketing the pennies he earned he tells me:

“You’re going to be SO poor that you’re going to have to get a job”.

He looks thoroughly baffled when I tell him: “this IS my job.”

The younger sister of a student of mine was very unhappy that her older sister had all the luck, the experiences, the new clothes.

“I haven’t even had a nosebleed yet.”

A four-year-old runs in:

“Constance, I almost found a four-leaf clover!”

I used to give every student a pocket-size U.S. Constitution.

“What is this thing?” an eight-year-old boy asks me, as he flips through it.

“Those are the rules of how our country functions. It states the responsibilities of the government and of its citizens. It was written over two hundred years ago. And if YOU read it, you will have read something Donald Trump probably never has”.

“Shouldn’t all presidents read that thing?” he asks me.

“You have a very interesting house,” a student tells me.

“Why do you say that?”

“It’s my experience every Monday.”

I tell an eight-year-old student that a potential new student will be coming in to observe her lesson.

“What gender is this person?”

A teenager complains about all the shifting in his piece.

“You did a lot of shifting when you played Singin’ in the Rain in the school musical.”

“Yes, but after we shifted, we stayed there for a while.”

A six-year-old is astounded when I tell him that my violin is three hundred years old.

“Have you had it the whole time?”

“I want to go to pieces,” says a nine-year-old who wants to skip warm up scales and her etude.

“Was Bach the deaf or the blind one?” asks an eight-year-old.

“Can I tell you something thrilling?” asks a seven-year-old.
“I’d love to hear something thrilling!”

“Well, I just want to be sure I’m using the word thrilling correctly.”

“There’s an extra note. I don’t know where it’s coming from,” a ten-year-old tells me.

“This is the best day! Playing Bach in the morning and having sushi for lunch.”

“Do you know what a cadence is?” I ask a twelve-year-old.

“No, but I know what decadence is.” We look it up. Different root.

I ask a student how her pregnant aunt is doing.

“How do YOU think she’s doing, being pregnant for eighteen months!” She looks at me quizzically.

“Is that possible?”

“Not unless she’s an elephant.”

A teenager I’d taught for many years, who comes from an hour away every Sunday morning, tells me:

“I had a dream my dad said you hated me and I was banned from coming to this area.”

“Oh dear. Why do you think you had that?” She shakes her head.

“All my dad talks about is violin. If I said ‘Dad, I got shot today’ he’d ask “When are you going to practice?”

A ten-year-old boy stops in the middle of his piece to inform me:

“Did you know that a Spitting Cobra can spit venom up to one hundred feet?” I was not aware of this. After his lesson I look it up and discover he was off by a factor of ten.

“Why do you live in a condo?” (We live in an apartment.)
“Because it’s a beautiful place.”
“But it’s so small.”

“That measure sounds like a ghost drifting…” a student tells me.

“My thumb is having an aneurism,” says another.

“Constance, Sabrina’s in love with me!” shouts a little boy sitting on the couch next to Sabrina, our dog, during his sister’s lesson.
“She wants to marry me. She kissed me on the lips.”

One day I had a black and blue on my leg.

“Don’t ever pick a scab on your knee because it will just come back.”

“When she was three she got discovered by her grandma,” a student tells me.
“Her grandma didn’t know she existed?”

“Do you want to hear my urpoloiges?” (Arpeggios.)
“Your what?”

“Your tooth looks very loose.”

“I was wiggling it a lot in front of the mirror. There was a lot of blood. I lost that tooth in Seattle. This tooth might fall out right here.”

“My brother plays the piano. He doesn’t like it. Too many keys.”

“Constance, can I tell you something?” The five-year-old holds a tiny key in her palm. “This key goes to a special place. I’m not kidding you. I have a peacock box. Shall I tell you what’s inside the box? A treasure.”

A student is struggling to play an etude in the key of C minor. Hoping to inspire her, I tell her:

“You know C minor was one of Mozart’s favorite keys.”
“Well, that’s the difference between us.”

A student appears distracted, watching the leaves on the tree outside my window blowing wildly.

“Can you please come back to reality?” I implore.

“THAT is reality,” she tells me, setting me straight.

“Let me see a perfect bow hold,” I request.

The four-year-old’s reply:
“It doesn’t have to be perfect.”
“You’re absolutely right. May I please see a good bow hold.”

A student who began studying the violin as a teenager loves the violin despite the fact that it does not come easily to her:
“When I practice violin, time doesn’t exist.”

A fourteen-year-old student walks in, tears streaming down her face.

“What’s happened?”

“I’m not allowed to see my best friend anymore. Her psychiatrist says I’m bipolar.”

“Has he ever met you?”
“No.”

“Then he has no business diagnosing you. Forget it.”

I ask a student to play the two measures that are giving her trouble. They’re on the second page.
“I’m going to begin here,” she says pointing to the first measure on the first page.

“It’s not necessary - the beginning is fine. I just want you to fix this one place,” I say pointing to the offending two bars.

“I need to start at the beginning to get a little momentum,” she explains.

A student plays a piece in minor key a little too jauntily.

“It doesn’t feel sad enough to me. Can you think of something sad that puts you in the mood?”
The ten-year-old bursts into torrential tears, hands me her violin and manages to say:

“When my dog died.” She is so bereft, her father hastily packs up her violin and bow and they leave.

A fifteen-year-old asked me:
“Constance, can I ask a non-violin question?”

“Sure.”

“You know who Whitney Houston is?”

“Yes. And she died last night from an overdose.”

“Right. Why is it when you have a drug problem and you’re poor, you go to jail, but if you’re famous, or rich, nothing much happens?”

“That’s the American justice system in a nutshell.”

A four-year -old tells me:

“I know how to draw a happy face because I know how to draw you.”

I tell a fifteen-year-old that I once had a job walking around with a sandwich board advertising a photography place.
“YOU were one of those people?!”

I tell a nine-year-old that it’s pronounced ‘wreeth.’

“For my whole life, until today, I’ve said wreth.”

“Constance, I need to talk to you about something very important.” I thought he was going to quit.

“I can’t play with a metronome at all.”

“Luna is asleep” a five-year-old observes of my dog on the couch.

“I see that. And she’s not supposed to be sleeping when I’m teaching. She’s my assistant.”

Just then Luna starts to wave her paws.

“She’s dreaming…” my student whispers.

“What do you think she’s dreaming about?”

“She’s dreaming she’s playing the violin.”

“You know, if she COULD play, she’d be SO good. She sits through every lesson.”

My student looks me in the eye: “She’s a dog.”

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When Adolphe Sax unveiled his invention in the 1840s, few could predict its future. I find it fascinating that Baroque and Romantic composers largely ignored the saxophone, yet by Ravel’s Bolero, Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, and Puccini’s Turandot, its distinct timbre became indispensable. Even so, no major symphony employs a full-time saxophonist, forcing classical players to straddle orchestral gigs and jazz engagements. I’ve spoken with Douglas Masek and Jim Rotter, who described the thrill of discovering twentieth-century virtuosi Sigurd Rascher and Marcel Mule. Their recordings became blueprints for classical saxophone technique. Gary Foster shared stories of doubling on clarinet, flute, and sax for everyone from Sinatra sessions to challenging contemporary scores by John Adams. Such versatility has become a necessity: beyond Bolero and Rhapsody in Blue, repertoire is sparse—Bizet’s L’Arlesienne suites or Kodály’s Hary Janos suite offer occasional orchestral calls, and concertante works by Ibert or Glazunov shine briefly before the desk returns to silence. The scarcity of standard gigs breeds ingenuity. Classical saxophonists book chamber concerts, commission new works, or partner with wind ensembles. Their practice rooms brim with mouthpieces, ligatures, and reeds, each combination nuanced for specific tonal blends. I’ve watched them bend over a pile of charts, toggling between lead jazz parts and orchestral excerpts. Their existence is an exercise in adaptability—proof that passion for a niche instrument demands entrepreneurial spirit as well as artistry.

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In 1980 I moved to an apartment. It was the first time I had lived alone after a long marriage. I told Mrs. Waller, my landlady, who lived next door, (Big Mistake) that I practiced the violin at least four hours a day.

On Day One I was practicing when the phone rang:
“How long are you going to do that?!” She demanded.

“I practice several hours every day, if I’m not working. I told you this before I moved in.” Grumble, grumble.

My lease said “Constance Meyer—Person and Stanley—Cat.” Stanley was truly on the lease. He had been an outdoor cat, but I was afraid of catnapping—not that my ex-husband would ever have done that—but just to be safe Stanley became an indoor cat. A few months later I was given a kitten to keep Stanley company, since he seemed lonely. The two of them frequently sat in the window watching the street. No sooner had Alyosha, said kitten, moved in than Mrs. Waller came over to ask about the “extra” cat.

“That’s Alyosha.”

“He’s got to go.”

“He’s not going anywhere.”

“Your lease says one cat.”

“What harm is one more cat going to do to you? “

“I said one cat! I’m going to call my lawyer.”

“Fine.”

Somehow Alyosha got to stay. I don’t remember exactly how, but threatening to call the lawyer turned out to be Mrs. Waller’s favorite winter sport. In all seasons.

One afternoon I heard a lot of yelling, and saw police chase a black man around to the back of my building.

I pushed the second-story window screen open to see where the shouting was coming from. Pre-cell-phone days, so I couldn’t record anything, but I will never forget what I saw. In the narrow alley between my building and the one next to it, a black man lay face down on the pavement, hands cuffed behind his back, sweating profusely. Six white officers had somehow arranged themselves around him in that tiny space. Then one of them pulled his foot back as if he was about to kick a field goal. And then—wham—he kicked the man in the head.

I let out an involuntary scream. The officer looked up and yelled, “Get back in your house—this is none of your business!” I was so stunned I couldn’t move. He yelled at me again. I still didn’t move.

“I can’t stand to see someone kicked in the head”.

“Get back in your house—this is none of your business,” he bellowed a third time. I yanked the screen shut and ran next door to Mrs. Waller’s. Foolishly, I told her what had happened.

“Well, these black men have no business being in this neighborhood,” was her response.

I had to do something, but obviously I couldn’t call the police. I called my divorce attorney, who said it was essential to report what I’d seen. She came with me to the Public Defender’s office and then to the police unit that handles internal complaints. The Public Defender was genuinely grateful I’d come forward.

The meeting with the officer in charge of investigating his own men was a different experience entirely.

“Do you sleep well at night?” he asked me.

“Are you asking me whether I have trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality?” I asked incredulously.

“Well, not exactly. It’s just sometimes we think we’ve seen something when in fact that thing didn’t really happen at all.”

I told him plainly that if asked to view a lineup, I was certain I could pick out the officer who kicked the man. He had very dark hair and striking blue eyes. A face I will never forget.

A few weeks later I received a letter on official Beverly Hills Police Department stationery, thanking me for coming forward and informing me that the officer had been “suitably reprimanded.” I took that to mean he was told to check for witnesses before kicking the next black man in the head.

My paternal grandparents founded a branch of the Urban League more than seventy years ago. I can’t begin to imagine what they would make of things today. Racism isn’t a surprise to me, but it still turns my stomach— forty-five years after my own experience, and nothing has changed. If anything, with ICE operating when will it be safe to be a person of color in America?

One night I was about to leave the apartment to play a concert. My mother had just called me to tell me that my father’s brain tumor, which had been operated on nearly a year before, was back. I had been weeping the entire time I was dressing in concert black. The doorbell rang.

It was Mrs. Waller.

“What is it?” I asked, barely containing my tears.

“You didn’t park very well in the garage.”

“I’m sorry. I am leaving now and will be more careful when I get back.”

“You aren’t the best at parking…” she began again.

“I can’t deal with this now. I have to get to a concert and I just heard my father’s brain tumor is back and he is going to die.”

“I don’t know about that, but you could improve your parking.”

I somehow left. I was stunned by how much I hated her.

A year or so later I remarried, and our first baby girl was born a year later. Mrs. Waller came over one day to demand an explanation for why she never heard our baby cry.

“What can I tell you? She’s a happy baby.”

You’re probably wondering. No, she didn’t try to evict us over this.

One day outside our apartment I bumped into Christy, Mrs. Waller’s daughter.

“I’d love to see the baby!” she said sweetly.

“Sure, come in.”

She admired the baby.

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do when she outgrows the kitchen sink.” (Author’s note: This is a generic baby in a generic sink.)

“You’re bathing her in the sink?”

“The bathtub is non-operational.”

“What?! I’ll talk to my mother, and she’ll fix it.”

“Please don’t. She’ll serve us with eviction papers if you do that.”

She laughed. “She wouldn’t do that.”

So, she mentioned it to Mrs. Waller and the next thing we knew we were served with eviction papers.

But the coup de grace came when our baby started crawling. The toilet frequently got stopped up and overflowed. I called Mrs. Waller and told her this was an emergency and asked her to please send a plumber over ASAP. She said her son, Ron, would call the plumber. I called Ron myself and was told he had just left for Hawaii. So we called a plumber. Two weeks later when Ron returned from his vacation he went ballistic that we had taken matters into our own hands and we were served with eviction papers again.

I don’t know what took us so long, but we finally moved out. The weekend before we left, Christy invited us to a party at her house. We didn’t know anyone there, so we kept introducing ourselves as tenants from her mother’s building.

“You’re not the ones with the baby and the plumbing situation?”

“Yes, we were the ones with the baby and the plumbing situation.”

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The English Horn: Plaintive Power Beneath the Surface

Few instruments evoke longing as immediately as the English horn, that curious double-reed contralto voice neither English nor a horn. I recall my first encounter with its curved bocal and bulbous bell—an otherworldly shape promising deeper, mournful color than the oboe. Players like Carolyn Hove and Kim Gilad have shared with me the physical stamina required to sustain long, high-pressure phrases. In marathon opera runs or film scoring sessions, an English-horn specialist must maintain unwavering breath control. Beyond endurance lies the obsession with crafting and moistening fragile double reeds. I’ve seen professionals arrive armed with thermoses of warm water, swabs to clear moisture, scarves to regulate temperature and ward off rot in the wooden body. Reeds shatter unexpectedly—or swell so unpredictably that an entire session can hinge on the perfect scrape. Instruments cost up to $10,000 and demand replacement sooner than you’d expect. Specialists choose between Paris- or New York–based makers, then juggle oboe doubling in orchestras that often lack dedicated English-horn chairs. Repertoire challenges only heighten the instrument’s unique status. Though Berlioz, Debussy, Ravel, and Wagner expanded its palette, solo concerti remain rare. Often, the English horn’s role veers between a single, plaintive “Ahhh” moment and inner voices woven alongside violas or French horns. Whether I’m writing about Ravel’s orchestral color or a film-score recording, I’m struck by how seamlessly these players infuse mystery and pathos into every measure—quiet dedication sustaining the music’s emotional core.

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While I’d played the violin for decades I knew nothing about how to judge the quality of a violin. I knew nothing about the violin “business”. As clean cut looking as the violin sections in a symphony orchestra look, the business part of it is not so pristine. I remember hearing about a guy who would come to town from Las Vegas every so often with a bow collection. He sounded like Sportin’ Life – the slick drug dealer who leads Bess astray in Porgy and Bess. People in the market for a bow would get a call late at night that the peddler was in town and meet him to see his display. Probably not in a dark alley… I was venturing into this world a complete innocent.

Given the time pressure I went to every violin shop in Los Angeles, followed every lead.

I began with one of the top shops: Hans Weishaar on Larchmont. It was a very old world, elegant shop with several salespeople. I was helped by a kind young man who understood that I had to find a violin fairly quickly or the offer from my former husband would be withdrawn. I tried out numerous violins.

“You really should be checking out every place you can. There’s a very reputable new guy in town, Robert Cauer, with a good collection. Also, recently divorced!”

I was annoyed that he was trying to fix me up with someone when I was simply in the market for a violin, not a partner. I ignored the suggestion and did not call Mr. Cauer.

I got in touch with an elderly cousin of my father’s in San Diego, who had compiled “the” book at that time on Stradivarius instruments. Who had them and when.

He suggested a few other people to be in touch with in LA and then said:
“There’s a new guy in town, Robert Cauer. He used to be at Wurlitzer in New York, trained by Sacconi. He has some good instruments. And…” wait for it … “He’s also recently divorced!”

I didn’t contact Mr. Cauer after this call either. What was with these violin people? They were moonlighting as matchmakers.

The string instrument business can be a bit shady. And I was going into it with no idea what I was doing. It didn’t feel like anything I’d ever experienced. When you buy a car, it’s standardized and other people have the same car, but choosing a violin you want to spend your life with is very different. And scary.

I remember hearing about a man who would come from Las Vegas every few months with a huge case of bows for sale. You would get a call late at night that he had arrived and practically meet him in some dark alley. I got such a call but I never met up with him.

I don’t remember who told me but apparently there was a man a few blocks away from me who supposedly had an authentic Carlo Ferdinando Landolfi (1710-1784), so I went to see him.

I was in my late 20s, he was probably 70 something. He showed me the Landolfi and I played it for a few minutes. It sounded nice, but what did I know?

It turned out that the man had lived in Boston much of his life.

“My grandfather, Nikolai Kassman, was in the Boston Symphony. Did you ever meet him?”

“Nick Kassman?! Absolutely! I can’t believe you’re his granddaughter!”

“Did you know my mother, his daughter, Elly Kassman, a pianist?”

“Of course! Small world! How’s Elly?” (Author’s note: She died twenty years earlier.)“And my Aunt Vera and Uncle Eugene?”

“Yes! Yes!”

“May I take it for a week, to try it?”
“I wish you could do that, but I promised it to a doctor in town.”
“I see. Well, could I take it to a violin maker to look at it?”

He agreed to that on condition that I bring him with me.

When I got home I called to make an appointment at the Cauer shop and then asked to speak with Robert Cauer, the man I had scrupulously avoided.

We had never met so I told him the situation and about the Landolfi, the doctor the man had promised the violin to, and all the wild family connections.

The next day I picked the man up, with his violin. He was holding a separate fingerboard, which was a bit peculiar, but the world of the violin business is idiosyncratic.

We introduced ourselves to Mr. Cauer and got the violin out. Mr. Cauer looked it over very carefully and asked about the extra fingerboard the man was holding.

“The original fingerboard didn’t fit, so this is the old one. Hill in London made the one on the fiddle.”

“This never would have fit” said Mr. Cauer, holding it up against the violin.

“Exactly. That’s why we replaced it.”

“I understand you knew several members of Constance’s family” Mr. Cauer said out of the blue.

“Yes, isn’t that amazing?”

“And amazing that Constance is so dark compared to her blond mother,” Mr. Cauer offered. Author’s note: My mother was not blond.

“Yes, that struck me too,” said the man with the Landolfi.

Mr. Cauer gave me a sideways glance.
“It is customary to let a prospective buyer try an instrument for a week. Would it be alright with you if Constance tries out the instrument this week?”

“I wish I could oblige but I’ve promised the violin to Jacques Francais in New York”.

Mr. Cauer gave me another sideways glance.

We left the shop and drove back to the man’s house in silence. I had no idea what to say. I’m not sure why I had wasted my time and then Mr. Cauer’s time, with this guy. I didn’t even know whether the violin was a Landolfi, or an instrument from Target. How can you tell?

A few months later Mr. Cauer did find a beautiful sounding instrument for me. When I told a little student of mine, a five-year-old little boy that my violin was 300 years old, he asked me: “Have you had it the whole time?”

My violin has had numerous owners. Unfortunately, unlike the book my father’s cousin wrote about Stradivari violins, I can’t look up who had it and when. It was made by a contemporary of Stradivari, but not a big name, which is why I could afford it forty-five years ago.

Over twenty-five years ago I told our carpool, consisting of grammar school age kids that I was planning on having a party for my violin in 2028 – the year it will officially turn 300 and that they were all invited. One little boy said: “I don’t know if I’m available.”

Finding “your” instrument is a bit like finding the right partner. You’re going to be spending many hours together, for years. You want to be comfortable playing it and hope it’s responsive, opens up and sings when you play it.

Selecting a bow is much more difficult than picking out a violin. And I know even less about bows. Another time…

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If the tuba is the bass of the brass, then percussionists are the orchestra’s gladiators. Armed with drumsticks, mallets, and an arsenal of exotic gadgets, they navigate centuries of evolution—from Baroque timpani to today’s kaleidoscope of pitched and non-pitched instruments. Emil Richards, for instance, fell in love with the xylophone at just six years old. His obsession led him to collect instruments from around the world, each with its own tone color. Richards was just a teenager who mistimed a crucial cowbell moment under Arthur Fiedler’s baton—an incident that taught him about humility and the razor-thin margin between triumph and disaster. Peter Limonick, another percussionist I profiled, married his rock-band backbeat to Bartók’s intricate percussion textures. He described lugging taiko drums onto studio lots and wrestling gongs that stand taller than he does. Yet despite the physical toll—hauling frames, tuning timpani heads, arranging triangle, woodblocks, and vibraphone bars—his passion never wavered. Timpani principal Tom Raney spoke of marathon rests in opera pits, poised for hours until the briefest roll or pitch entrance. Theresa Dimond, the orchestra’s principal percussionist, showed me how patience is as vital as precision; when you play perhaps one note in a three-hour opera that single moment can make or break the entire performance. Through their stories, I came to appreciate that percussionists are the quiet architects of momentum and drama. Every thunderous crash or delicate shimmer depends on their exacting timing and peripheral awareness. Their craft underpins not just classical concerts, but film scores, ballet, opera, musical theater—and every sonic world in between.

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My brother Nicholas interviewed me, opening by describing me as a violinist, violin teacher, and writer. I’ve been called worse. He asked how I ended up doing all three at once. Not a straight path, I told him. I never decided to become a violinist — it was something I always did, and when I moved from New York to LA, I started freelancing. Then a serious hand injury pushed me toward my second love, Russian literature. I got a degree in Slavic Languages at UCLA in case I couldn’t play again. But halfway through that, I went back to playing for a living. Writing I’d always done, though it wasn’t until the mid-’80s that I submitted my first articles to the LA Times.

Having Nick interview me was easy. I’ve been interviewed by strangers and I’m comfortable with that too — talking about something you care about is fun. I love sharing what I know and what I feel about music.

When I read the first excerpt, about violists, the audience laughed hard at the story of the violist with a neck injury who asks his doctor if he should rest. The doctor tells him playing the viola shouldn’t be a problem. The violist comes back weeks later in worse shape after intense playing. “Holding that viola under my chin...” he begins. The doctor’s response: “Oh, is that how you play the viola!”

The Surprising Question, and On Teaching

Nick surprised me with one question: “What is the Suzuki Method?” I gave a quick history of Dr. Suzuki and explained that his goal was not to produce concert artists — though the method can and does — but to raise good human beings. That was part of a larger conversation about teaching children, which is something I never imagined I’d end up doing and now love completely.

I adore children. I love playing for people and passing things on. My goal is to give children music, which I think is the greatest gift you can offer. I get so much back from it that sometimes I feel like I should be the one paying.

Teaching anything requires breaking complicated ideas into pieces small enough to actually use. Every child is different, and getting the technical pieces across in a way that works for each kid is the real challenge. Once I asked an eleven- or twelve-year-old if she knew what a cadence was, because I wasn’t happy with how she was ending phrases. “No,” she said, “but I know what decadence is.” They apparently come from different roots, but it stopped me cold.

Children say astonishing things. One student asked, “Constance, can I ask a non-violin question?” Sure. “Does it make sense to be anti-abortion AND anti-birth control?” A young teenager. I was floored.

Years ago I had a student who came to me at around five. Her mother had abandoned her to join the military in Maine — probably escaping a bad marriage — and the girl was brought to lessons by her paternal grandfather. She was passionate and unusually talented. Then her mother came back and took her to Maine around age eight. The mother had no interest in the violin, so that was probably the end of it. I loved that child and worried about what would happen to her. I still don’t know.

On Playing in an Orchestra

Playing in an orchestra is the ultimate surround-sound experience. You’re part of a huge organism that becomes far more than the sum of its parts. It’s the most privileged seat in the house, and it’s fundamentally about community. I once complained to my father about a conductor and he said, “Someone has to be in charge — it’s not a democracy.” He was right.

There’s no racism in an orchestra. It doesn’t matter what religion or philosophy you hold. All that matters is blending with the people around you. Very pure that way.

I miss playing in an orchestra, though I don’t miss the hours of practice required to stay ready. The hardest thing about film sessions was not watching the screen. Today conductors have a small monitor to follow, but in my day there was a huge screen behind the orchestra and you were supposed to keep your eyes on the podium. The temptation was real. I remember playing on the remake of The Postman Always Rings Twice — musicians glued to the screen, tut-tutting about how explicit the film was, but nobody left the room.

On one of those sessions, all of which ran at night, a violinist called his wife during a break to say we were going into overtime. She told him John Lennon had been killed. It was a shocking thing to absorb in that setting, and I remember how hard it was to go back and play afterward. Just so out of nowhere, and so ghastly.

How the Three Things Connect

At this point in my life I’m not playing outside of teaching. I suppose I’ve put that part away. I miss it, though I still get to play every day. Between a large studio, the teaching, and the writing, I stay busy.

Often while I’m teaching, something occurs to me that I want to write about, so I jot it down in the notebook I keep in my teaching area. I sometimes joke with parents that I feel like a modern-day Scheherazade. A student will play something badly and resist doing it again — and part of my job is convincing them they need to repeat things correctly enough times that playing it wrong becomes impossible. When I hit resistance, I’ve been known to say: “If you play this ten times in a row correctly, I’ll tell you something that happened to me once.” Or if a meltdown is coming: “Did I ever tell you about the time I...” I even get requests for old favorites.

The Sold-Out Crowd and the Next Book

I was genuinely moved when someone at the Diesel event asked when my next book is coming out. There’s real interest in turning my Substack posts into a book, which thrills me. Originally I had wanted Plays Well with Others to be half music articles and half memoir, but I dropped the memoir half because I’m an unknown writer and didn’t think anyone would care about my life story. So receiving warm responses to these weekly pieces every week — and being asked what comes next — means a great deal.

One story I meant to tell at Diesel and forgot: I used to play American Ballet Theatre every March when they came to LA. My favorite ballet score is Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet — divine and innovative, with the love theme introduced by the saxophone, which is so surprising and so gorgeous. Our contractor always hired a buddy of his, a jazz saxophonist, and it always jarred me. All wrong.

Then one year he finally hired the real thing: Doug Masek. After the first morning rehearsal a group of us were standing around talking and I told him, “I feel like I’ve never actually heard the saxophone until this morning.” Everyone nearby went quiet to catch the conversation.

Doug’s entire response: “Do you want to have dinner?”

“I wasn’t flirting with you. I really meant it. You’re a beautiful player.”

“Do you want to have dinner?”

Situations like that are exactly why I decided to start interviewing instrumentalists about instruments I knew nothing about.

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When I first moved to Los Angeles in 1971 after my years at Juilliard’s preparatory division, I had no idea that one of my most enlightening deep dives would be into the world of an instrument so often relegated to comic relief: the tuba. A chance conversation with Craig Fisher of the Los Angeles Times sparked a series on the orchestra’s unsung heroes—those players whose artistry sustains every performance from symphony hall to studio scoring stage. In “The Tuba, A.K.A. The Bass of the Brass,” I trace how an instrument invented in the 1830s rose from scorn to studio spotlight, meeting tubists who wrestle with its massive double-clef music and celebrate its rich sonorities. It’s impossible to imagine Jaws or Close Encounters without the ominous depth provided by this instrument. I profile three key figures who embody the tuba’s rise: Norman Pearson, Jim Self and Tommy Johnson.

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I was introduced to my future mother one night when I was having dinner by myself, nursing a head cold. She told me years later that I was growing my bangs out and she could hardly see my face as she sat with me during supper. She and my father were going out to dinner. As they left the house I apparently raced to the front door and called out: “Papa, please don’t marry some wicked old witch.” Charming. I guess I started being brutally honest early.

I don’t remember what my father said or did in response to my outburst, which means either it wasn’t much of anything, or I’ve blocked it. Who knows?

It sounds very strategic, but my brother and I were both given roles in the wedding. He was the best man, and held the rings, and I, not wanting to be saddled with the ignominious title of “flower Girl” was a “bride’s maid”, along with my best friend. I don’t remember whether that was my idea or just an attempt to make the entire situation more palatable. She and I wore matching dresses, probably from Orbach’s where my father used to take me to buy clothes. I still have mine.

Sometime after the ceremony I shed the dress and put on pajamas so I could do headstands in the living room. You can take the girl out of …

Decades after the event I asked my mother how she could have taken on not just my father but my fifteen-year-old brother and my eight-year-old self.

“What were you thinking?”

She laughed and said:
“I was in love.”

My mother bonded with my brother over movies. Both cinephiles they went to the movies a lot. I’m not sure how she and I bonded though I know I probably put her through the ringer. I insisted that she help me get dressed in the morning, something I had done by myself for ages, and I dictated messages to her to be sure that we were in agreement about certain things.

One such missive on a faded blue piece of paper reads:

“Complaints” It is dated 9/26/61, the day before my birthday and three months after the wedding.

1. Shoes – Decorative brown/black and white, grey and white – not BIG HEAVY oxfords.

2. Cross streets alone and go on buses alone AND taxis.

3. All friends get birthday presents the day before from parents.

4. All my friends are bothered by their pestery mothers.

5. Nice raincoat

6. Mothers always help them get dressed

7. Have more summer clothes than I do.

Then before my mother writes “The End” in my handwriting, in caps:

“I CAN’T STAY IN THE HOUSE ALONE” and then I sign my name.

My poor mother.

In order to start taking myself to my violin lessons on 49^th street my mother followed me as I navigated the trip, walking to the bus, getting off at the right stop and walking the two blocks to my teacher’s apartment. She pretended not to know me, as per my request, and followed a few feet behind me. We did this little routine several times so she could be sure that I waited for the green light and generally seemed to know what I was doing. However, soon after I was deemed good to go on my own, I changed my mind and wanted her to continue to escort me to my lessons.

My brother has always said that our second mother “saved” the three of us, and she did. My father married someone who was perfect for him, but also wonderful for us. There’s a great deal of bad press about “step” mothers and I was steeped in it. That’s probably why none of us ever referred to her as our “stepmother” but always as our mother. I remember one day talking to a cab driver, explaining to him my family situation and he asked me if my stepmother beat me. He wasn’t the only one who reminded me how bad things could be. I was eight and hadn’t outgrown the fairytales about evil stepmothers. I was on the alert.

I don’t remember when we started calling her Mom/Mommy, as opposed to her first name. But it was a very natural occurrence. I also remember once calling “Mom” and my father answering.

“You are not Mom”, I informed him. I guess he had been two parents for a long time, so he had to adjust to the fact that he was just the father now.

So many families that are “blended” don’t blend very happily. I don’t think any of us considered ourselves “blended”. And it wasn’t as if my second mother came with any children of her own. She was a thirty-four-year-old woman who had never been married. They had met at a Physicians Forum Dinner where she was filling in for someone by greeting the guests and taking their tickets. My father reported: “She tore my ticket.” And I guess that was it.

Unlike my first mother who was a professional musician and not interested in having children, my second mother was a dedicated wife and loved having a family. When we were all older she was the librarian at an adoption agency. When JFK was assassinated on November 22^nd, 1963, she was standing by the front door waiting for me to get back from school, knowing I would be hysterical. It was only three years after my first mother’s death. First my mother, then the father of the country. The ground was unreliable.

A year after my parents married my first sister was born and for me this was a miracle. How could something so splendid happen to us after three years of misery? This little person was related to all of us and treasured by all of us. And a year later my second sister was born. Two little cherubs. The sadness of the past was erased by the presence of these two munchkins who didn’t know a thing about illness and death and were just a gift. My brother entertained at their birthday parties, and I eventually became the in-house babysitter, when needed. I was in heaven.

As briefly as my first mother lived, my second mother more than doubled that life span. She was totally with it until she was no more, at age 94. I once said to her:

“You know my first mother had to die so I could have you and my sisters in my life.”
True to her straight shooter-ness she said:

“That’s so weird.”

But she knew I meant it from the bottom of my heart. Good mothers should be here forever. And she nearly was.

I was so lucky to have her, and I miss her every day.

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By the way, if you’re in Los Angeles this Sunday, May 3rd, I will be speaking at Diesel Books (225 26th street) in Santa Monica 3:00

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By the way if you’re in Los Angeles on Sunday, May 3rd, I will be speaking at Diesel Books in Santa Monica at 3:00.

A piano makes a room. You’d think that a big hunk of an instrument wouldn’t exude warmth, but it did. Both pianos did. One could say that I knew my mother’s Steinway inside out. Despite her terminal illness she managed to get down the stairs to the living room to practice when she could. And I, who wanted to spend time with her, would sit under the piano and watch her very swollen feet, in their pink bedroom slippers, on the pedals. The sound must have been deafening, but it allowed me to be very close to her. To this day I have a very clear picture of her feet, but not of any other part of her. I only know her face from photographs.

Whenever my Uncle Eugene was in town, my father and he would play for hours. Not a substitute for conversation, it was just a different form of communing. My brother and father also played together. Playing music with someone else is a very intimate thing. I played one hand in Schubert’s Fantasy for four hands. How can it sound right with only three hands?! How I love that piece! You’d think just knowing every note, and loving it, that it would fall into place, but alas, it didn’t. I’ve never taken a piano lesson, so why should I be able to play Schubert? Unlike the violin a person can fake playing the piano, up to a point. I am a good example of this. My fingering is incorrect, but I can play some Bach, some Schubert, accompany violin students in a fashion.

I’ve always wondered whether pianists have superior brains considering that they read two clefs at once. It just seems so miraculous. Violinists get off easy. We just contend with one clef. Victor Borge, the Danish comedian/pianist said that he switched from violin to piano because he couldn’t put his beer down on the violin. I know he was kidding but my father had very strict rules about beverages and the pianos. They should never be near each other.

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1971, my boyfriend and I lived in a very small room in Laurel Canyon. There was no piano. We had a bed, a table and a couple of chairs. But a piano was like a relative I’d always lived with, and it wasn’t there. Our little place felt as if it was missing something crucial for my wellbeing.

As a teenager when I was finally big enough for a full-size violin I was given my Aunt Ruth’s violin, nothing fabulous but it served its purpose for many years. Then In 1974 when I got married for the first time, Aunt Ruth in Princeton, New Jersey, sent me her Steinway as a wedding gift. Can you imagine getting sent a Steinway? She had been given the piano when she was a child around 1920. My aunt studied at the Sorbonne in Paris and studied piano with Robert Casadesus. Ruth was no great shakes on the piano, but it is a lovely instrument and the most extravagant wedding gift in the world.

As far as I know the Steinway’s trip from Princeton to Los Angeles was uneventful and there was no problem bringing it into our home, which was on the ground floor. It was years later when I was remarried and was living in a second-floor walkup apartment that moving the Steinway was problematic. The two men from the truck were able to bring it nearly up to our front door but an overhang in the stairwell made it impossible for them to get through, so the poor piano spent the night in the truck again, when it had been so close to arriving at its “forever home”. The next day armed with a third man, the piano was brought into the apartment where it has been ever since.

Atop our piano are five miniature pianos that belonged to my mother. Everyone and their brother must have given her piano ornaments. I know as a violinist I have been given numerous violin related pieces of porcelain, Christmas ornaments, magnets and mini violins.

At some point we will leave this apartment, and I don’t think the piano will be coming with us. It costs a fortune to move a piano and you need the space for it. I think our next home will be much smaller than this one, so I will have to get used to the idea of living without a piano.

When my siblings and I emptied our parents’ house we had to find homes for the two pianos. Fortunately, one of my sisters and her husband, who is an excellent pianist, had space for the Mason and Hamlin, so I do get to see it when I go to their home. The Steinway which I always hoped would come to me in Los Angeles didn’t, for very good reasons. It needed very expensive work done, there wasn’t room in our apartment, and it would have been prohibitively expensive to ship. So it went to Tali Mahanor, piano expert/restorer whom I write about it in my book Plays Well with Others, and then to god-knows-where.

I have no idea where my mother’s piano is now. With a stranger.

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On this particular day a very well-dressed woman with no child in tow appeared. Her high heels and business suit looked out of place. She went up to the man in the ice cream truck with a cardboard tray of something and asked him to put it in his freezer for her, for a few minutes. He didn’t seem surprised by the request. It seemed like a routine they were used to. The woman then sat down a few feet from us, on the raised circle around the tree. I asked her what time it was, since I didn’t have a watch on me and had to pick up my older daughter from school. “2:10. Do you come to this park regularly?” she asked me.

“When I’m not working, nearly every day.”

“I’m meeting my boss and his secretary here. I brought him his favorite ice-cream. I’ve never been to this park before.”

I wasn’t quite sure why she thought this was of interest to me. And I wondered why she brought ice cream to an ice cream truck. But my attention was quickly directed back at my little girl, who was disappearing beneath the orange goo, while somehow still managing to hold the stick with her tight little fist.

“I wonder if I could ask you and your little girl to do me a favor,” the woman asked.

“Depends. What?”

“Well, my boss loves children. Adores them. He would be delighted if your little girl could give him his ice cream.”

“Just give him his ice cream?” I asked, looking around for cameras, trying to figure out what was going on. It felt like Candid Camera.

“Simply give him the ice cream?”

I wondered whether my baby was capable of giving away ice cream.

“That’s it.” she replied.

“Sure. Why not.” I agreed. With that she asked the ice cream man for the tray of (as it turned out to be) three ice creams and we headed toward a woody area near a lot of parking meters at the park’s edge.

“I think they’re just driving up now. If you’re here often you see who exercises here.”

Up ahead I spotted a dozen or more men dressed in dark suits emerging from a couple of black cars.

“A lot of people exercise here. Do you mean someone in particular?

At this point we had broken into a trot as we headed toward the group.

“Who is your boss?”

Nearly inaudibly she said “Ronald Reagan.”

I thought for a moment and wondered if my toddler should give him his ice cream, but by this time we were too close to back out. My little girl, whom I had picked up, thought it was hilarious as we raced toward Ronald Reagan. She kept her eyes on the tray of ice cream. She obviously thought she was getting a second one.

“He’s able to exercise?”

“He just walks a bit. He’s fine.”

“I must tell you that I’ve never approved of anything the man’s done in his entire life,” I said, suddenly feeling that perhaps she shouldn’t give him his ice cream.

“That’s okay,” she said.

As we closed in on him, I could make out that it was the secret service surrounding Mr. Reagan as he continued his amble. Out of nowhere a huge crowd of junior high school boys emerged on the hill a few feet away from him, shouting greetings to him. What had been a completely tranquil scene minutes before was buzzing with people everywhere. We were within a foot of the former president, but the ice cream was still in the hands of the well-dressed woman we’d met.

“Mr. President...” the woman with us began, trying to get his attention. Suddenly another woman, clearly his majordomo turned around to her and said curtly:

“Too late, not now.”

“I’m sorry,” our escort said turning to us. My poor baby was distraught as I carried her away, in the opposite direction. There would be no second ice cream. The jogger appeared again, this time a fancy camera in his hands, clicking away.

“No, no!” my child moaned as we headed toward the parking lot.

“I have a muffin for you in the car.”

“No, no!” she cried, pointing at the receding ice cream.

I was still feeling in the middle of a Costa Gavras movie when I picked up my four-year old. My four-year-old was the first person I had seen after this encounter. I tried to explain to her how bizarre it had been to be so close to the former president of the United States, but it didn’t seem to resonate with her. She was interested in more pressing issues:

“Wait Mummy, did she have an orange popsicle or an orange sherbet?”

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They emigrated to the U.S. when she was six, when my grandfather joined the Boston Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Monteux. Like many children of immigrants, she embraced her new country’s language and forgot most of her Russian.

When my grandfather died he left all his Russian library to my mother, for whom it was all but useless.

My mother was Jewish by birth, but paid no particular attention to the customs, rituals or religious aspects of Judaism. She married my father, an atheist (also Jewish by birth) and together they went through over two decades without a prayer.

On the other hand, my mother was superstitious and fervently followed the wives’ tales about black cats, and no open umbrellas in the house.

About a year into her cancer my mother decided to study Russian. Since she was bedridden, an old White Russian Prince, or Count was found who agreed to come to the house to tutor her. I’m not sure if he really was nobility for there were a number of “White Russians” at the time claiming to be former members of the Russian aristocracy.

Luckily for my mother, she was a good student. Knyaz Orloff, or whatever his title was, was not very patient. He appeared to be tough and uncaring but then would suddenly be brought to tears in a discussion about Nikolai Gogol’s death (a suicide brought about by purposeful starvation), or a Chekov short story.

My mother was a slow reader in Russian but, over a period of her lengthy illness I was sent down to the basement to fetch more books from her father’s collection. Not infrequently I would bring up the wrong one, since it was difficult for me to distinguish Tolstoi from Dostoevsky in Cyrillic!

She persevered and I think enjoyed her struggle with her native language. I think she felt closer to her beloved Stravinsky and Rachmaninoff, so studying Russian also brought her closer to the music she herself was no longer able to play. In 1948 she had played Stravinsky’s piano concerto at Town Hall with Robert Craft conducting on the same program Stravinsky himself was participating in. It was this event which introduced Stravinsky to Robert Craft, his future amanuensis, possible muse, collaborator and not uncontroversial person in Stravinsky’s life.

One day early in her illness and early in her lessons with Orloff, he brought her a little box. Children get very excited to celebrate their parents’ birthdays. She didn’t know this but I had told him her birthday was coming up. She was quite touched by his thoughtfulness and couldn’t imagine how he could have known about her birthday. To her it seemed a sign of good luck and she opened her gift with eager anticipation.

Inside the box was an object carefully wrapped in layers of tissue paper. Finally, it was visible. In her palm she held a beautiful, enameled icon, no bigger than her hand. She thanked Orloff, as she held back tears. In retrospect I think she hoped this beautiful icon would bring her back her good health.

I had saved up my allowances and took a small loan from my father so that I could buy her a birthday present as well. It was a gold bracelet of hearts which she tried to remember to wear when I was with her. After holding on to it for over sixty-five years I recently threw it out. I was horrified that it was so tacky. Why had I picked out such a horrible looking thing? Children often go for gaudy, shiny things, and I was constrained by a small budget and absolutely no knowledge about jewelry, but really it was very ugly.

One evening after dinner I sat alone with my father while he sipped his coffee. My brother had left the table. Neither of us spoke. I guess we were both preoccupied with our own thoughts. Suddenly I said:

“Papa, is Mommy very sick?”

“Yes, she is, sweetheart.”

“Is she going to die?”

“Yes, I’m afraid she will.”

I didn’t cry. I probably didn’t know what die meant. I don’t even know where I heard about death. I just felt sorry for Papa because he looked so sad. I climbed onto his lap, gave him a hug and he said:

“Let’s not talk to mommy about it.”

One afternoon shortly before the end I was watching her sleep, wondering how things would be, when I noticed her looking at me.

“Mommy, are you alright?”

“Yes, my love. I was just wondering whether you would do something for me.”

I nodded.

“Take this,” she said as she reached under her book which was lying next to her, and gave me something wrapped in tissue paper.

“Give this away… to anyone. Only take it out of the house. It’s not good luck for me.”

I was determined to get rid of it as soon as possible for fear that it might bring me bad luck too. I wasn’t sure what to do with the icon. I put it in my pocket and took it with me on a walk with my father. I had planned to throw it into a garbage can, but changed my mind when I considered the ramifications of just “throwing out” a magic piece.

The next day I carefully crossed the street to the Catholic Church. I gave it to the caretaker, the little man who swept the church steps. He’d know what to do with it.

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Unfortunately despite this background I wasn’t always a law-abiding citizen. Not that I was on a par with Roy Cohn (Joe McCarthy’s right hand man and Trump’s lawyer) or Leon Black (CEO of Apollo Global Management, and Epstein pal) who also went to The Ethical Culture Fieldston School. My crimes were “petty.” But I can’t deny it, I’ve had a shady past. The thing about my transgressions were that they were so astoundingly transparent.

Many children try out stuff that’s a little suspect. My older daughter hoarded the picture cards from the game Candyland. And I’m sure that a dear friend’s six-year-old little boy was playing fast and loose with me when we played checkers. But what I was up to was unfortunately less innocent. I wasn’t a shop lifter or anything horrendous like that. I was a crook in very safe circumstances. All my transgressions took place in very protected arenas, mostly at school or pertaining to school.

I’m not sure if I pulled any fast ones before the first grade so I will start there. My friend Susie was an excellent crocheter. One day Susie came to school with a pillow she was working on. The yarn was orange, brown and beige, not a color scheme I fancied at all. Our teacher, Miss Resnick, who possessed the most vibrant shade of orange hair, was very impressed with Susie’s work and couldn’t stop admiring it.

During our gym period, when we all went up to the roof to play, I slipped away and scurried back to our classroom. I took the embryonic pillow and hid it in my school bag. I ran back to the roof and continued to play.

When we returned to our classroom everyone took off their sneakers and put them in our cubbies. Susie immediately noticed that her crocheting was gone. We all searched the nooks and crannies of the room, to no avail. Miss Resnick gave us a very serious lecture about respecting personal property. She smiled at Susie and said: “Dear, I’m sure it will turn up.”

At home I worked on the project, taking out several rows, so I could fashion it into what I envisioned, and the next day sauntered into class wearing a crocheted beret. As soon as Susie saw it, she screamed:

“What are you doing with my pillow?! You stole it!”

“I didn’t steal this. I made it. It’s a hat, not a pillow. How could this be a pillow when it’s clearly a hat?!” I argued, unable to suppress my outrage.

Susie got hysterical and tried to pull the beret off my head. But I held firm. Miss Resnick, hearing the commotion, ran over to us and was shocked to see the multi-colored yarn object on my head.

“May I have a word with you, dear?” She said as she took me into the hallway.

I don’t recall the conversation or if I made a confession, but I do recall that the hat was returned to Susie and she finished her pillow. It lay on her bed for years.

The following year I had Flora Sanders again, a teacher I loved. She had been my teacher in kindergarten and then somehow was promoted to the second grade. My friend Nora’s parents came back from France with a gift for her of a beautiful navy-blue wallet covered in fleur-de-lis. The wallet was admired by everyone and then strangely, it disappeared. You’d think suspicions might have been raised…

The next day I came in sporting a very similar looking wallet. In fact, it was so similar, it was identical. I don’t remember how Ms. Sanders or my parents dealt with me on this one. Somehow the wallet was returned though I don’t know if I admitted to stealing it. But somehow the authorities were not called in and Nora went home with her lovely French wallet.

My childhood Halloweens were always spent going to the apartment buildings of friends. I was very dedicated to Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF, a program started in 1950. In those days I don’t think any self-respecting New York kid would have gone Trick-or-Treating without the iconic orange box. When I was around eight I was at a friend’s apartment building at 895 Park Avenue where Leonard Bernstein lived, long before he moved into the famed Dakota. At some point in our travels up and down the elevator, Leonard Bernstein got in with us. I was thrilled. I knew exactly who he was, having attended his Young People’s Concerts, which were brilliant. He apologized for only having one nickel in his pocket. He handed it to me. I remember being torn as to whether to put it in my orange box or keep it. I hope I put it in the orange box.

My last official crime occurred in the fifth grade. John Darr was my favorite teacher at Ethical. I admired everything about him. Music and Peace meant the world to him. He had a deep bass baritone voice and sang in a first-rate chorus. He was a Quaker and eventually left Ethical to become head of the Friends School. My memory is that he spent as much time in jail with “Women Strike for Peace” protesting the Vietnam War as he did in our classroom.

In Mr. Darr’s class I played St. Frances of Assisi in the class play and even remember my opening lines:

“My dear little birds. Ought ye to praise him for he hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere…”

Mr. Darr knew that I too loved to sing, so accompanied by a friend playing the autoharp we performed Greensleeves in a concert.

Music was so essential to Mr. Darr that he had our class sing Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring in another concert. Not exactly typical fifth grade curriculum stuff. I played the violin obligato part. Sylvia Kuperstein was our designated music teacher but I don’t remember anything about her except that she was tiny and wore high heels. It was Mr. Darr who enriched our lives by introducing us to Bach, a composer I already loved.

So, it is mystifying to this day, why I would pull another criminal stunt with this beloved teacher. But sad to say, I did.

Math and I were not a good combination. In addition to feeling that I was just no good at it, I didn’t like it. This probably was a vicious circle. Our fifth-grade class had a math book that we were supposed to do on our own and then check the answers in the back of the book. We were on the honor system. I wrote in some correct answers and some incorrect answers, trying to make it look legit but I suspect I was a very poor cheater. My parents were called in, and I do remember it was the only time in my life that I got spanked.

Many decades after these “youthful indiscretions” I re-met the psychiatrist who made weekly house calls to my mother, when she was dying. What he told me makes me think that even at that time I was on the verge of abandoning the dark side. He told me that one day when he came to see my mother I opened the front door just as he was stubbing his cigarette out on our doorstep.

Apparently I muttered:

“Litterbug.”

The fact that all my transgressions were quite transparent makes me suspect I wanted to get caught. I was just vying for attention. I don’t know for certain. I hope that was what it was about.

Since the math book incident, I have led an exemplary life.

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The nurse at The Ethical Culture School was a wonderful woman named Scully. I knew her very well. It’s probably more correct to say she knew me very well. Starting when I was around four years old, I was in her office four days a week. Five, if there was no fire drill, assembly or other extra-curricular activity going on. Scully taught me how to read a thermometer at a young age since she thought it might help for me to see that my temperature was always normal. Scully did her best to reassure me every time I thought I had a broken limb that I was actually just fine. She was very kind, and I enjoyed hanging out with her. She was very professional looking: White cap, white outfit and white orthopedic shoes. I didn’t have “White Coat Syndrome”. In fact I had the opposite.

At a certain point I suppose my father thought that my anxiety required some professional help. Soon after my mother died, I was sent to a therapist. I wasn’t so “garden variety” at the time, having just gone through something legitimately “traumatic”. I was very frightened by every minor injury. Every black and blue, every little pain. It was understandable given what had just happened. Over three years I had watched my mother die, after she was given three months to live. A series of photographs of me when I’m around four shows me covered in Band-Aids.

So at seven I was taken to Bertha Bornstein, a Viennese child psychiatrist who worked with Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter. The difficulty with Dr. Bornstein, for me, was that she had a thick Viennese accent and I didn’t understand a great deal of what she said. I also may have been confused about what I was doing there.

But I did get the message that because of my mother’s death I was afraid of dying from every little thing. Everything seemed like a big deal. A little cut here, a scrape there. I don’t think I was a hypochondriac then but somewhere along the line it morphed into that.

I don’t know how long I saw Dr. Bornstein. I don’t even know whether she was helpful or not. I would think that someone in my civilian life could have told me that, but sometimes it helps to hear things from an outsider.

I have been a life-long bad sleeper. It was my second mother (my father’s second wife), who suggested that this was probably also because of my mother’s death. She died in the middle of the night when I was asleep. All my aunts and uncles had moved in with us. Everyone was with her but me. Maybe subliminally I was afraid I was going to die if I closed my eyes. I don’t know. It certainly hasn’t been conscious. Knowing this intellectually never seemed to fix the problem.

As a teenager I was sent to another psychiatrist whose name I don’t recall. I don’t think I saw her for very long either. I think I had typical teenage angst and maybe I could have sat that one out, but maybe not.

When I moved to Los Angeles I went to a psychoanalyst, five days a week on the couch. This time was specifically to try to fill in the blanks about my mother whom I could hardly remember, and have another crack at fixing my sleep issue. I guess he was helpful. He was a very kind man. There are two moments in my treatment with him that are memorable.

One was when I was talking about how important violin was in my life and he casually said: “It must be very upsetting to hear of David Oistrakh’s death.”

I leapt off the couch. David Oistrakh was my favorite violinist. I had heard this Russian gem and his powerhouse accompanist Frieda Bauer in person when I was still living in New York. He was sixty-five when he died on tour in Amsterdam after a concert. I was devastated to hear this. My poor psychoanalyst thought I already knew. But I hadn’t heard.

The other occasion was when we were talking about my biological mother. I don’t remember what I had said that caused him to say: “she sounds like a shitty mother.” I was aghast that he would say such a thing and immediately said: “Don’t say bad things about dead people.”

“Kinahara?” he replied.

“Mata Hari” I countered.

I could hear the poor man stifle hysterics from behind me.

“Why are you saying “Mata Hari?” he asked me.

“I thought we were naming spies.”

I grew up in a secular Jewish household. Culturally we were Jewish but we were atheists, and I definitely didn’t know much about Judaism, let alone the expression kinahara which apparently is used to ward off bad luck.

I finally graduated from all this, or as my father would correct me: “I WAS graduated” from this round of therapy. I don’t remember what prompted me to go to therapy again, but my sister-in-law suggested I try group therapy for a change.

So, off I went to a room in a hotel near LAX to try out “The Sedona Method.” There were approximately forty people there. The facilitator was a very nice woman who went around the circle so we could all introduce ourselves and give a brief account of what we hoped to gain from the two day seminar. I listened to a lot of people before me. So far no one seemed to be in terrible shape. When it was my turn to speak I was sobbing uncontrollably. I was sobbing so hard I could hardly talk.

“Constance, what brings you here?” she asked very gently.

“Today is the anniversary of my mother’s death,” I managed to get out.

Everyone sat up. Here was a real “situation”.

“I’m sorry to hear it,” she said kindly. “When did this happen?”

“Twenty-six years ago.”

You could hear the disgust in the room. Everyone thinking “That’s ridiculous,” and “get over it.”

“I see,” said the leader. “So, why do you think you’re holding on to that?”

A gasp from a few of the participants.

“You must be getting something out of it. Why are you holding on to it?” she probed.

“If I don’t get upset, I’ll forget her.”

At the mid-morning break a few people came up to me to register their horror: “she was so mean to you.”

“No, she wasn’t. She was totally right, it’s enough already.”

Sometimes it helps to hear something from an outsider.

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“What on earth is this?!” I asked my friend. As a long-time anti-gun person, I was horrified.

“Oh, we’ve been going to the shooting range with the kids and doing target practice.”

“Jeez” I said, trying to swallow everything I wanted to say about guns in America.

I couldn’t help but mention: “Did you know that there are four registered handguns per American?”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, I’m serious. And many more unregistered handguns than registered.
“That can’t be.”

Today, nearly forty years later the estimate is that there are about five hundred million guns in the United States, with only 6 million registered.

Our regular violist was unable to attend that day, so a new violist walked in and immediately looked at the sheet pinned up on the wall and exclaimed:
“Wow, this looks great! Who hit the bullseye?”

“I did,” said my friend.

“There’s something about the hand eye coordination of a violinist” the violist said, turning to me for confirmation.

“Do you have any guns?” I asked her.

“Only eight.”

I looked at my friend.

“Are you counting rifles?” the violist asked.

I wasn’t sure what I was counting but said “sure.”

“Then we have ten because we have a matching set.”

I looked at my friend again.

Our regular cellist came in and immediately went to examine the target practice sheet on the wall.

“Somebody’s getting very good,” she said cheerily. “Whose shot was this?” she asked, pointing to the bullseye.

What was I doing here? I wondered.

“Mine,” replied my friend.

“It’s really something, isn’t it?” the cellist said, looking at me approvingly. And believe it or not she said: “the hand eye coordination of violinists, huh?”

I had lost my appetite for Schubert. In fact, I really didn’t want to be there at all. Playing music now seemed ridiculous. I didn’t know a soul in New York who had a gun and here I was playing chamber music with people who had an arsenal at home and did target practice with their children. I was living “out west” but I didn’t expect that kind of “out west”.

“Do you have any guns?” I asked the cellist, as casually as one might ask what kind of cello she played.

“No longer. Not since Dan and I got divorced.” Dan was a doctor.
“How many did you have?”

“Twenty -eight.”

I looked at my friend again.

Five years later at my daughter’s five-year checkup the pediatrician told my little girl that “if you ever see a gun at a friend’s house, call mommy and daddy and tell them you want to go home.” I couldn’t believe my ears. Was this what we’d come to?

Two years or so before that visit I went to a musician colleague’s baby shower. We had never been close friends but fond of each other and always happy to see each other at work. It was a particularly joyous occasion as we were celebrating her pregnancy with twins. A few months later there were so many musicians’ babies born around the same time that we all gathered at a local park to meet all the little newcomers and exchange stories. My friend’s babies, a boy and a girl were at the gathering.

When my older daughter was around six and my younger one was three, my friend came over with her twins. My girls looked huge next to the babies. My kids were very amused with the adorable duo. It was a very sweet visit. The babies were eighteen months old and ridiculously enchanting.

My friend told me that she and her husband were having serious problems and she and the babies had moved out of their very big house and were living in a tiny apartment with her sister. She asked my advice. I wish I had simply said “I don’t know what to suggest.” But I stupidly made the point that if parents could work things out that it was probably better for the children to grow up with two parents.

Managing twins is quite a feat and it wasn’t surprising something got left behind. My friend left her sunglasses. I called her and she said her husband would be by to pick them up. But weeks passed and he never appeared. Eventually I just brought them to a rehearsal where I knew I would see someone who would see her at another gig.

Months later I was picking up our first carpool child on the way to my children’s school. The mom asked me if I had seen the news the night before. We didn’t have a television, so we hadn’t.

“Did you read the LA Times this morning?” I hadn’t done that either.

“What did I miss?”
“I just wondered if you knew the violinist whose husband murdered their twin babies and then himself.”

I’m not sure how I drove the carpool up to school that day. I could barely see straight. How could someone murder babies? And how had it been possible? They weren’t even living together.

I couldn’t believe I knew anyone who had been murdered, let alone two babies.

I went to the funeral and like everyone there was unable to stop sobbing. We were all wearing our concert black, but for something so awful and shocking. My friend played a piece at the funeral. It was a beautiful piece written by a colleague of ours. I was stunned that she was able to play. She was amazing. I know I couldn’t have done it.

I would have destroyed my violin with salty tears.

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Nearly twenty-five years later I went back by myself and stayed with a friend’s au pair’s family. On my first day wandering around I bumped into an old friend who had been one of Charlie’s Angels and we decided to go to the Louvre together. We were standing outside the massive museum studying the map, deciding where to go, when three gypsies grabbed my friend’s purse and raced off. It never occurred to me that it was insane to do this, but I took off after the three girls to get her things back.

By sheer luck it appeared that two of the young girls were auditioning the third one to join their operation. They stood back and watched the two of us, nearly mirror images of each other. We were about the same height (I am 5’1” on a good day) and both of us had very long dark hair in a ponytail. I was around 30 and she looked around 12. I knew she had my friend’s things, so I held onto her as she pounded me with her fists. I’d never been in a fight before (or since,) so I wasn’t sure what to do except try to defend myself with my free hand and not let go of her. A large Scandinavian looking man walked by and offered to help me but bizarrely I remember saying: “I’ve got this,” which was truly nuts. I didn’t “have this” at all. She was winning. I’d seen Carmen numerous times, and she could’ve had a knife. Or the other two could’ve joined in and then it would have been three against one. What WAS I thinking? The other two girls continued to stand on the side lines and watch how she handled the situation (me) when I spontaneously yanked her hair. I pulled it as hard as I could and she instantly let go of me and undid the sweater that was rolled up around her waist and out came my friend’s wallet, passport and other essentials. I grabbed everything and ran back to my friend who was some distance away.

My friend, it turns out was completely flabbergasted by this incident. At first she said she thought we were shooting an episode of “Charlie’s Angels” but then she was thoroughly confused since she knew I wasn’t an actress, and after all, we were in Paris. She seemed to be in a state of shock.

We were both shaken by the whole episode but decided to go into the museum anyway.

The cashier at the entrance warned us:
“Faites attention mesdames. Il y a des gitanes dans les environs.”

I thanked her in my best French, which wasn’t very good, and said “we’ve already met.”

We went into the museum, but my friend was bombarded with school children asking:

“Etes-vous l’acrice de Drole de dames?”

She denied being that actress, though she was. It became impossible to go through the museum. The combination of both of us being totally spooked by the encounter outside and the crowds coming up to her, were too much. So, we left.

A few years later I was in Paris again with Elise, a beloved friend. We were both quite jet lagged and decided to stroll along the Seine to wake up a bit and celebrate being in Paris.

As we walked admiring the sights, reveling in being in that most beautiful of cities, a man walked toward us. He was wearing a long multicolored coat which caught our attention. As he came closer, he opened his coat and flashed us which given our sleepy state, caused us to fall into hysterics. You’d think that growing up in Manhattan this wasn’t an unusual experience, but I had only been flashed once before. And it was memorable. It was 1969 and I was about to show a camp friend from Great Neck the new Juilliard building and as the doors to the new subway station opened at Lincoln Center a man flashed us. I never forgot it and I’m sure my friend from the “sticks” never forgot it either. That crazy New York City!

So there Elise and I were in Paris, getting flashed.

Laughing our heads off at our “Welcome to Paris” moment we continued to walk along the Seine. And, wouldn’t you know it, along came another man, in a similar outfit, who flashed us. I couldn’t believe it! “What are the chances?!” I said to Elise. “It must be some kind of club or something, similar outfit.”

“Constance, it was the same guy!” Apparently, he had so much enjoyed our first response, that he decided to go for it again.

One night we went to the Russian nightclub Raspoutine, named for the famed Russian mystic and close confidant of Czarina Alexandra, Nicholas II’s wife. Their only son, Alexei, heir to the throne, was a serious hemophiliac. Rasputin was somehow able to manage Alexei’s delicate health and Alexandra depended on him.

I’d never been in a nightclub before and was game since Raspoutine was a great name for a Russian nightclub and the man, especially his storied death, had always intrigued me.

We didn’t have a reservation and sat by the maître d’s desk waiting for a table. We waited and waited some more. They didn’t seem to be in any hurry to seat us. In fact they didn’t seem interested in seating us at all. Finally, feeling quite exasperated as we watched many people who had come in after us be ushered to tables, we kicked up a little fuss and were finally seated behind some enormous palm trees where we couldn’t see the strolling violinists, or be seen.

No one came to take our order and it was obvious that we were not wanted. My Russian wasn’t great so I must have missed the nuance but Elise spoke Russian beautifully (in addition to six other languages,) and she informed me that the maître d’ had explained to her that WE were a threat to married couples because prostitutes were known to come into the restaurant in pairs. That’s not what I had understood. I thought what the maître d’ was saying was that we were vulnerable, being two women, alone without a man.

“No, Constance, WE are not being threatened, the other people are at risk because of us,” Elise told me patiently. “He said ‘two women without a man are often prostitutes.’”

Elise and me being mistaken for prostitutes was a pretty hilarious idea. There we were, both dressed in our absurd Peter Pan collared Laura Ashley flowered dresses. I don’t know how I misunderstood what he had said. We finally called it quits and left, miffed and hungry.

A few nights later Elise’s dad arrived in Paris and wanted to go to Raspoutine for dinner. “No way. Not after what we went through the last time,” I said. But he was a persuasive man, and so off we went.

I don’t know if the Maître d’ recognized us or not. But this time we weren’t two women alone, but accompanied by a man, so apparently no threat to anyone. We were seated immediately. Elise, after a glass or two of wine, told one of the strolling fiddlers that I was a violinist, so he cheerfully handed me his violin, and the other musicians took a rest while I entertained the clientele. I have no memory of what I played. All I know is I guess we were “in” with Raspoutine.

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