I was 17 years old and beginning to feel like that as I auditioned for various conservatories playing Fritz Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro over and over. Despite getting into five conservatories, in the end I decided to go to a liberal arts college - the University of Iowa.

I didn’t know anyone at the university. I hadn’t even met my violin teacher, having sent in an audition tape.

There was a lot of paperwork to attend to, and I fixed up my dorm room with pseudo-poetic posters to enliven the hospital green of my tiny quarters. I checked out the music building and spent most of my time in a practice room – preparing for my first lesson.

“So, all the way from New York! What will you play for me?”

I took out my violin which suddenly looked like a foreign object. No need to rosin the bow, I had just been practicing.

The first movement consists of very long, broad notes. It must be played boldly. My bow bounced slightly as I began, which can happen when you’re nervous, but it didn’t last long.

He listened to me with his head tilted to one side.

At the end of the Allegro he was very quiet. I tucked my violin under my arm and waited.

“My! That was lovely. You know my only comment is I want to hear more of it!”

I didn’t know if he meant more of my playing, or louder, but I wasn’t comfortable asking. I stayed in his studio for about an hour or so, had a lesson on the Kreisler, in addition to discussing what repertoire I would be working on.

Lessons with Mr. Ohmes took place once a week. I prepared for them as I had never done for any other teacher. My voracious reading habit was quickly curbed by an insatiable desire to become a really good violinist.

Life in the dormitory was not wonderful. Although I had a single, the room couldn’t dampen the noisy conversations, the shrieks and screams from the hallway. So, I made my first acquaintance with wax earplugs.

Food in the dorm was typical institutional stuff and as such, unappealing. But meals were fun, and it was there that I made some friends.

One morning at around 7:15 I was standing in line for breakfast, next to a tall, elderly gentleman. He was almost entirely bald, save for a little white rim of hair. His teeth were very prominent. His head was shaped like a lightbulb. His posture was perfect and he towered above me at 6’3” while I viewed the fruit juices from a puny 5’1”.

“I vill have von friend egg please. And no bacon.” He told the young woman in the hot foods department.

“Next,” she nodded to me.

“Nothing, thanks. I’m just going to have some cold cereal. Excuse me.”

I walked past him while he waited for his eggs.

Having my cereal and little accessories I found my way to an empty table. At this time of morning the cafeteria was very quiet. I didn’t know whether no one else had an 8:30 destination or if they did, they skipped breakfast. I was off to theory class.

“Excuse me, may I join you?”

“Of course.”

It was the elderly gentleman who was grinning his very broad, toothy smile.

“Permit me to introduce myself. I am Professor Erwin Jacobi.“

“How do you do. I am…”

We chatted for a while, and he explained the reason he was at the university and more importantly how he came to be eating breakfast in the girls’ dorm.

“You see I am a visiting professor from Zurich. I am a musicologist.”

For the entire semester which was the length of his visiting professorship Dr. Jacobi and I had breakfast together, every day. Sometimes he also joined me for dinner. He was a vegetarian and I marveled at his ability to gobble down overcooked vegetables for meals. But he was very enthusiastic and consumed a lot of food.

Dr. Jacobi was born in Strasbourg, the native town of my paternal grandfather. One small difference, Strasbourg (Alsace) has had a tortured history of being French for a time, then German for a time. My great grandfather who fought in the Franco Prussian war of 1870 picked up his entire family and moved to America when Alsace went back to the Germans again. Jacobi’s family, on the other hand were German and because of the 1870 war his grandfather settled down there.

Dr. Jacobi seemed more Swiss than German to me. He had been married twice and divorced twice. He had three children and several grandchildren. He seemed totally content in the Midwest and even hoped to come back the following year to teach again. He was beyond retirement age but a specialist in his field, so was very much in demand. He had been a close friend of Albert Schweitzer and was in fact editing his memoirs for publication. He had played string quartets with Einstein.

While at the university Jacobi lived in a house of a widowed landlady. He had no kitchen privileges which is why he took his meals at the nearest location, the girls’ dormitory.

I was fond of Jacobi. He was an enthusiastic listener. I don’t think he knew much about young American women and seemed to enjoy me. Occasionally we went to a concert together. He had a few friends, but he seemed to relish meals at the dorm with me. He loved it when friends of mine would join us at dinner and he was surrounded by college coeds. He clearly adored women.

Once when I asked him if he thought he’d get married again he told me a man who gets divorced once made a mistake but a man who does it twice doesn’t know how to pick a good wife. So, the answer was no.

The night before we were leaving for Christmas break my friend Rosie joined us for dinner. We had just finished our finals and were off to see our families the next morning. We were in a celebratory mood. Jacobi seemed preoccupied but not depressed. He would be off to Zurich somewhere in the course of my New Year/Christmas vacation.

“See you at breakfast,” I told Professor Jacobi as I picked up my tray.

“Yes… May I take you out to breakfast tomorrow?”

“Oh, come on, don’t be silly. Breakfast is fine here. How can we break our tradition?” I replied.

“As you want.”

“Goodnight, Dr. Jacobi” said Rosie. “If I don’t see you again, I really enjoyed these past few weeks. You were a tremendous asset to the girls’ dorm. Come back soon!” She gave him a little kiss on the cheek which seemed to surprise and delight him.

“See you tomorrow,” he nodded.

Rosie and I went up to my room to chat and pack.

“How do you feel about Jacobi?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, do you realize you have seen him every day this quarter?”

“Yeah. It wasn’t anything but breakfast and an occasional dinner together. What’re you driving at?”

“Don’t you realize the guy’s in love with you?!”

“Are you crazy? For Christ’s sake the man is close to 80!”

“You’ve been leading him on and …”

“I’ve what?! Rosie, get a grip. The guy is practically four times my age. He’s been married twice. He’s got grandchildren my age. He’s in a strange country and I’ve been a friend to him in some way. I’m like a granddaughter to him. Nothing more.”

“Well, Big Shot, have you ever seen the way he looks at you? You are blind and you’ve hurt him by being so goddamn flirtatious!”

I was stunned. None of this made any sense. Rosie must’ve flipped her lid and yet she usually she was a very rational person. Maybe SHE’S got a crush on him!

“Don’t tell me you’re jealous? I mean… Do you have a thing for Jacobi, Rosie?” I asked trying not to laugh.

“You are so insensitive! The man wanted to take you out to breakfast. Your last breakfast together and you wouldn’t let him even have this one last request…”

“Last request? Is the guy dying? This is a ridiculous conversation. I mean, you are reacting to something else. You’re not making any sense. What happened? Two minutes ago we were laughing and looking forward to vacation. What did I miss, huh?”

“Forget it.” With that she shrugged her shoulders and sat down on the bed, leaning against the wall, totally silent.

A few minutes later she left without saying a word.

“I’ll see you tomorrow before I leave,” I called after her.

That night I had trouble sleeping. I attributed it to the excitement of going home. Rosie’s stubborn insistence kept creeping back into my mind.

At around 6:00am, being awake and not at all sure whether I had slept at all, I decided to get up and finish packing.

At 7:15 I made my way to the cafeteria but, didn’t see Jacobi in the dining room. I walked up to the girl in the hot foods section to ask if she’d seen him. “Yeah. He gave this to me to give to you.” She reached into her apron and pulled out a bulky envelope.

“Thanks.” I went back to my room.

Plopping myself down on my bed I opened the letter and beheld bits and pieces of Jacobi. A photograph of Jacobi beside a very large philodendron which his landlady had given him as a housewarming present was the first item. Jacobi had a beatific expression on his face. His looked as radiant as Jacobi could look.

Next was a photograph of his house in Zurich which he had once shown me. Next was a paper in German which he had written over the past few months. I’m not sure why he included this since I didn’t speak or read German.

Finally, a letter emerged which was almost indecipherable. It took me some time to read every word, but the meaning was immediately clear.

“My Dear,

It has been many years since I have felt love for a woman. I surely did not expect, at my age, to ever feel it again -certainly not in the middle west of the United States – and certainly not for someone of such tender years. And yet it is you who has touched my heart and filled it with youthful love and I am, contrary to my whole philosophy, desirous of marrying you. I could not bear to see you this morning. Our last visit together for, I hope only a short while. It has taken me days to assess my situation and perhaps I should have told you sooner.”

The letter continued in this vein for another page and a half. I was totally dumbstruck. He closed by saying that he would write as soon as soon as he reached Zurich and hoped that I would join him there shortly. He signed it “Your loving Erwin.”

I couldn’t believe it. I had never called him Erwin. To me he was Prof. Jacobi. I was speechless.

As I was sitting on the bed surrounded by all this stuff someone knocked on my door.

“Who is it?”
“It’s me, Rosie.”

“It’s unlocked, come in.”

Rosie walked in and looking very sheepish began:
“I don’t know what got into me last night. I’m very sorry. I got carried away and was way out of line… What’s all this stuff?”

“Oh god, you wouldn’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” I shoved all the material into her hands.

She let everything fall on the bed, save the letter which she read, moving her lips for assistance.

“Oh brother,” was her only comment.

I left that mid-morning for New York.

When I returned to school two beautiful boxes of scrumptious chocolate awaited me. Love letters from Jacobi poured in. I was at a loss of how to respond.

Eventually I found myself writing a letter I was not proud of, but one which was succinct. I apologized for leading him on, if I had in any way done so and for causing him any pain.

I never heard from Professor Jacobi again.

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But there’s someone you’re not seeing, someone who may have spent all day in that hall, someone the pianist may have called multiple times in the past hour just to check — the piano technician.

Not the tuner. The technician. There is a difference, and piano technicians will tell you about it at length, with feeling, because almost nobody understands what they do.

Yes, they tune the piano. But that is, frankly, the easy part. A concert-grade instrument has roughly 4,500 moving parts in its action alone — the mechanism between your finger and the string. The technician regulates that action, adjusts the voicing (the tone itself, the difference between bright and warm, hard and yielding), and makes the whole instrument respond the way the pianist expects. A piano that’s perfectly in tune but poorly regulated is like a race car with a clean exterior and a failing engine.

When I was writing the piano technician chapter in my book Plays Well with Others, I got to interview a handful of people who do this work. They were uniformly delighted to be asked. They are, as a species, invisible — which they accept as an occupational condition, but don’t exactly love.

Ron Elliott, who spent years as a piano technician for the LA Philharmonic, put it plainly: “Pianists feel more confident if I’m there. A lot of it is psychological.” He started out in New York in the ‘80s, tuning pianos at Carnegie Hall — ten minutes before the performance, with the audience already seated, the piano sounding terrible. Not what you’d call a low-pressure environment.

Gerhard Feldman, president of Bösendorfer New York, told me he goes to concerts featuring pianos he’s worked on, which you’d think would be a pleasure. It is not entirely a pleasure. “Did something slip, or is something going out of tune?” He listens differently than the rest of the audience. He listens the way a surgeon might watch a patient walk across a parking lot.

Most concert pianists arrive at a venue and meet the piano for the first time that day. They may be playing on an instrument that was prepped by a technician they’ve never met, calibrated to a standard they can’t predict. Some of the biggest names in the business address this by traveling with their own personal technician — a private pre-flight inspection before every takeoff.

Vladimir Horowitz took this further. He traveled with his own piano. And his own food.

The field has no official structure to speak of. Gordon McNelly, retail service manager at Steinway & Sons in New York, summed it up: “There’s no licensing, no certification, no union, no anything. Even the used car business has regulations now. I don’t know of any other industry like this. Maybe bowling ball drillers.”

The high point of my research — for this chapter and honestly for the entire book — was meeting Henry Steinway, the great-grandson of the founder of Steinway & Sons. Ninety-one years old at the time and still going to work every day.

Among the things he told me: during World War II, when the materials necessary to build pianos became unavailable, Steinway built coffins.

I’ve thought about this more than once since. There is something almost poetic about it — the company that perfects an instrument for the living, temporarily pivoting to house the dead. And I confess that my first, somewhat embarrassing reaction was: what a thing, to be buried in a Steinway.

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“That’s not legal!” she yelled.

“Who says?” I said, searching for more change in my purse as I kept ahead of her.

I can’t stand getting a parking ticket. Especially if it’s for being five minutes late.

Ages ago my family and I were on a ferry in Canada when I discovered a five-month-old check in my backpack. It had been written by a student’s mother, of all things, an accountant. I was pleased to have found it. When I told her she was irate.

“How can you balance your checkbook if you don’t keep track of checks coming in?!”

The truth is that I’ve never balanced my checkbook. Like my student who “hoped for the best” I hoped for the best.

I would not describe myself as ditsy, but on occasion I’ve done some weird things.

About fifteen years ago I was put on a medication to help me sleep better. I’ve been a terrible sleeper all my life and I’ve tried everything. I almost approach sleep with dread. Maybe not quite dread, but perhaps like a poor runner who sees that that there are still 25 more miles in the marathon. Then 24, 23 etc. I used to look at the clock a hundred times, noting “oh jezz, it’s only 1:00am, five hours to go.” The medication didn’t help, and I was convinced it was taking a toll on my memory and overall thinking, but it took a while to discover this since, I was both the witness and the victim.

In those days I sat at our dining room table and paid bills quickly and sent them out immediately - I was afraid that if I let them sit around, I’d misplace them. It’s ironic that I wound up doing the accounting considering that I am truly innumerate and my husband is a mathematician, or as our younger daughter called him at four, a “mathitist.” Why me? It just shook out that way.

At some point I got a bill from a credit card company I’d cancelled so I called to see what had happened.

“I don’t understand why I’ve received a bill from you since I cancelled this card quite a while ago”.

“You did cancel it Ms. Meyer.”

“Then why did I receive a bill?”

“You didn’t. It’s not your bill.”

“What do you mean it’s not my bill?”

“You paid someone else’s bill.”

“I did what?”

“You paid someone else’s bill,” she repeated, as if I hadn’t heard her the first time.

“Whose bill?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t give out that information.”

“Was it a relative?”

“I’m sorry, ma’am.”

“Was it someone in my building?”

“I can’t say any more.”

“Was it a person in our apartment building?”

“Maybe…”

“Can you give me the initials of the person?”

“I really can’t …”

“Just the initials, please,” I begged.

“The first initial is C.”

“Ah! Could it be Carl? He’s a new neighbor downstairs.”

“I can’t speak to that.”

“Does his last name begin with R?”

“Maybe…”

This was insane. I was playing Twenty Questions with a woman at a credit card company.

“Thanks!”

I jumped off the phone and, bill in hand, went downstairs and knocked on Carl’s door.

He looked out the little peephole, but the door remained shut.

“Hi Carl, I’m your upstairs neighbor. May I speak to you for a minute?”

The door opened a crack, and there was Carl - very tall, the silent type.

“Carl, I know this is going to sound crazy, but I goofed. Your credit card bill was mistakenly delivered to us, and I paid it.”

Carl had already been looking at me with suspicion, now he looked incredulous.

“What did you do?” he asked, still peering through the gap in the door.

“I was on auto pilot and paid your credit card bill by mistake. Here it is…” I slipped the paper through the opening.

“I’m very sorry for the inconvenience, but I just wondered if it might be possible to reimburse me…”

He read the bill, looked carefully over the various charges.

“Okay” he said haltingly.

I wish I could say this only happened once, but after Carl moved out, the next tenant in that same apartment received the beneficence – I paid one of her bills as well. On both occasions I clearly hadn’t looked at who the bill was addressed to.

A friend in the building thought this was hilarious and said he was going to bring his bills over to me in the future.

It took me a while to figure out that the sleep medication was seriously interfering with my memory and and my thinking in general – though who’s to say it wouldn’t have happened anyway. It was my very dear friend Elise who had the courage to tell me what she was observing. I’d thought I was just aging very rapidly, all of a sudden.

We were at my favorite sushi bar and I introduced her to the waitress I had known for over twenty years.

“Do you remember introducing me to her the last time we were here?” I didn’t.

As soon as I told my doctor what was happening, she took me off the medication.

As for checks, they’ve practically gone extinct.

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During the Vietnam War, a slot in one of the military bands was a coveted safe harbor — a legitimate alternative to student deferment. The Army and Air Force Bands require basic training for their musicians. The Marine Band skips it, but musicians are still expected to stay fit and are weighed regularly. A plane crash in 1960 killed eighteen string players in the Navy Band. The Navy never rebuilt its string section.

My article opens with Stuart Canin, who was eighteen and bound for Juilliard when he was drafted in 1944. He took his violin with him when he shipped overseas — much to the amusement of a soldier watching him cross the gangplank.

“What are you going to do with that?”

“You never know,” Canin replied.

Canin and pianist Eugene List may not be in the history books, but they were at Potsdam, where they played a concert for Churchill, Truman, Stalin, and other dignitaries. Like many military musicians, Canin went on to a distinguished career: Concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony, then a top freelancer in Los Angeles and concertmaster of Los Angeles Opera.

The Marine Band’s “The President’s Own” was founded in 1798, making it the oldest musical organization in America.

To get into these bands, according to former Los Angeles Philharmonic cellist Daniel Rothmuller, you were “auditioning literally for your life.” It was violist Alan de Veritch who negotiated an unofficial unit within the Marine Band called the White House String Quartet. When not performing at the White House, they regularly played chamber music with Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, an amateur violinist, occasionally with Alexander Schneider, second violinist of the Budapest String Quartet.

Each service has a distinct role. The Marine Band strings perform during cocktail hour and dinner at White House state dinners. The Army (Pershing’s Own) and dessert is covered by the Air Force’s strolling strings - playing everything from memory.

The International Musician magazine still lists job openings in the services each month. In this month’s issue, out of thirteen pages of orchestral openings, only two are for the military — far fewer than usual. For Ray Kobler, violinist in the White House String Quartet “we were very lucky to be able to fulfill our military obligation” in this way. Violist Phil Eastham, Kobler’s former roommate did not go this route. “Phil was the sweetest guy, the last person you would think of carrying a rifle. He is on the wall of the Vietnam memorial.”

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On September 23, 1986 the first anniversary of my father’s third heart attack - the one my sister and I were with him for - I woke up in the middle of the night screaming. It is the only time that has happened. I’ve woken up crying a few times, but only once screaming. My husband turned on the light and assured me that whatever horrible thing had just happened, it was just a dream. I wrote it down that night:

I was walking down Third Avenue in NY with my parents and two good friends and was surprised to see my father wearing a brown beret, which he didn’t wear.

“Why’s he wearing that?” I asked my mother.

“He looks cute, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t,” I said bristling at the word ‘cute’ which I’m not a fan of.

My father then took off the beret and instead of his beautiful head of silver hair, he was completely bald, with spots on his scalp.

“What are those spots?!” I asked my mother.

“They’re like freckles. Aren’t they cute?” she answered.

“No, they’re not.”

We then all went into the living room in my parents’ house and my father spun around a few times and dropped to the floor.

“Papa, do you see Mama?” I asked, crouching on the floor.

“No, but it’s very crowded here, and I’m sure I will,” he replied and then died in my arms.

On June 18, 1987, six months after the nightmare, I was walking out of a recording session at Paramount with a violist, when I saw my husband approaching me. The violist intoned “uh oh.” While I, completely missing the weirdness of his being on the lot said cheerfully: “What brings you to these parts?”

“I have some very sad news” he began, as the violist made herself scarce.

“Uncle Harold has died.”

Uncle Harold, my father’s brother-in-law, and one of my favorite uncles had been ill for some time and he was only 83. While it was sad, it was not shocking.

My husband went home, and I went to the Music Center where I was playing in the pit of the first week of Sweet Charity, starring Debbie Allen and directed by Bob Fosse. It was the first week of the run. I played the matinee and then went home to have a quick dinner, before returning for the evening performance.

It was an important day as my husband’s teenage son was flying in from the UK to spend the summer with us. I had never met him.

My stepson and I met, and before sitting down to eat - before I had to leave for the show - I excused myself to call my father.

“This must be so hard on you. Harold was in your life for decades and I know how much you loved him…” I began.

“How does a father tell his daughter this?”

“Tell his daughter what?!”

I thought he was going to reveal something terrible about my uncle.

“I have a brain tumor.”

“You have a what?” I said in disbelief.

“Can you come home?”

I hung up the phone, completely undone. My poor stepson didn’t know what to say. It was a terrible way to meet a shy young man. I wished the timing had been different but that’s how things were.

I drove back to the Music Center, barely able to pull myself together for the performance.

I took an early flight home the next morning.

Up until this point, my father had coronary artery disease. After three heart attacks, he had had quadruple bypass surgery and was totally fine. Or so we thought.

But then, unbeknownst to me, he started having some vision problems. He was having trouble reading music - which made one of his fondest hobbies - playing the piano - very difficult. He went to his eye doctor, who regretfully told him that whatever was going on was not an eye problem. My father, who had started out as a neurologist made his way to a neurologist and was told he had a brain tumor. It seemed particularly cruel that after surviving three heart attacks and being right as rain, whatever that means, that it was another part of his body that was rebelling.

My mother, siblings and I had become experts on heart disease and now we were about to learn about brain tumors - specifically astrocytoma.

There is a strange, perhaps mostly anecdotal phenomenon in medicine that shows a link between what physicians die from and their field of expertise. A dear friend of my father’s, a fellow psychiatrist, who studied suicide, committed suicide. A close friend of my husband’s, also a psychiatrist, who studied astrocytoma died of the very same.

While my father was in surgery to remove the tumor, the five of us waited for news. When the surgeon called to say it was all over, I answered the phone. Because none of us knew anything about the nature of astrocytoma we were relieved to hear that everything went well and that it was non-metastatic – meaning it wouldn’t spread to another part of the body. What we didn’t know was that with this kind of brain tumor you can remove the main mass of the tumor, but not tentacles. So while it’s technically correct to say it won’t spread to another part of the body, it will take over the brain.

My father may have known this. I don’t know. I only know that when we went up to meet with the team who had operated on him at Montefiore Hospital - where he had done his residency - we were informed about this significant detail.

When we got home my father was lying down on chaise lounge in our patio and he was very quiet. “I’m dying,” he said softly. “I can’t believe it.”

My sisters lived in New York and were able to help my parents day to day. My brother in California spent the next year visiting my father as much as he could. I commuted every two weeks, for thirteen months, leaving one violin in New York so I didn’t have to carry it back and forth.

My parents flew to Boston to see a brain tumor specialist who had been at Harvard with my father. To this day, decades later, I regret that none of us went with them.

“Why are you coming to me?!” the doctor asked brusquely. “What do you want me to do?”

My parents returned home looking as if they had been punched in the gut. The Big Shot in Boston hadn’t sugar coated his words.

By this time my father had lost all his hair from the chemotherapy and his bald head had spots on it from the radiation. While he didn’t wear a beret, he showed me a grey toupee he had bought, but never wore.

The dumbwaiter in our house stopped working and the awning in the backyard – ancient, falling apart - needed replacing. My brother, our father and I sat outside in the garden watching the workmen take down the old awning and put up a new one.

My brother and his wife had just had their first baby, so my brother asked my father:
“Pop, how exactly does the Babinski reflex work?”

My father began to explain it very coherently - and then suddenly he was spouting pure gibberish. The tumor had hit the Broca area of the brain which governs speech. My father understood everything we said, but his own words were getting more and more jumbled. He looked at us and said, quite clearly:
“Did that make sense?”

My brother and I exchanged looks. Do you say sure, Papa, it was clear as day or do you tell the truth? There was no time to confer.

“Not exactly” one of us uttered.

And then, like those times so terrible you don’t know whether to laugh or cry, the three of us burst out laughing. Beats the alternative.

It was just a matter of time. We were all together, keeping him company, keeping each other company. When my aunt Vera came to see him, we were all gathered in the bedroom and he was visibly overjoyed to have us all there. My father was passionate about many things, but the top one was his family. And it was so apparent that he didn’t want to exit, didn’t want to leave any of us. He had known Vera since she was a little girl - the last link to his first wife, Vera’s older sister, my mother.

On one of my visits back to LA my husband and I went hiking in the Santa Monica Mountains. We parked at an odd, extreme angle. My side of the car was close to the ground. As I started to put my right foot down, I heard a creepy sound. A rattlesnake coiled exactly where my foot was about to land.

“I’m from New York” I foolishly said to the snake, frozen in place, unable to bring my foot back into the car.

“He doesn’t care where you’re from. Get back in the car” my husband ordered.

On my next trip to New York, I told my father about the encounter. His eyes went very wide with interest, but he was no longer able to speak.

Two weeks later, I was back in California for the Fourth of July weekend. We went to visit my sister-in-law’s father’s ranch in Tehachapi. I had forgotten to say goodbye to him, so I opened my car door to go back to the house. Just where my foot was about to step was another coiled rattlesnake. I shot through the sunroof, shouting. Being a working ranch, a ranch hand ran over with a rifle and hit the snake on the head, killing it instantly. I completely lost it. Yes, I was terrified of the snake - but I hadn’t wanted them to kill it.

I went back to New York and told my father about the second snake. His eyes again grew wide.

A few days later, one of my sisters and I were passing my parents’ bedroom where my father was sleeping. We heard a very strange sound. A rattling sound. It was the death rattle - which sounds quite different from a snake’s, but still constitutes a rattle.

In folklore magic occurs in threes. And here was a perfect set of three.

I just couldn’t tell my father about it this time.

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I first met Irma Neumann through the pages of studio lore, and her story still resonates. Over nearly sixty years, she has played anonymously on hundreds of films, TV and commercial scores from Sol Kaplan’s Titanic (1953) to James Horner’s Titanic (1997), from M8H to The Matrix Revolutions. She began in the all-male, smoke-filled Fox orchestra of 1946, earning pay and benefits under Alfred Newman’s music department. As I listened to her recollections, I felt her pride in those hard-won benefits and the camaraderie in Alfred Newman’s ranks. Neumann adapted effortlessly to freelancing, studio and symphony work, embodying the flexibility demanded of every freelance musician. She evokes the old scoring-stage ritual giant screen, conductor’s streamers, live playback of picture and sound and laments today’s isolated sessions behind video monitors, even as she acknowledges greater gender balance and continued benefits in modern recording sessions. Her narrative taught me that anonymity in the credits can mask deep fulfillment: each session’s paycheck and every collective breath taken beneath the orchestra rails sustained a career defined by quiet dedication.

Rituals Lost and Found: The Scoring Stage Then and Now

Neumann’s memories of the scoring stage read like a relic unearthing a vanished world. She described walking onto a cavernous lot where a fifty-foot-high screen loomed, and the conductor’s baton became a magic brush painting picture and emotion in real time. A live orchestra played back the film to itself with no click tracks, no headphones just a shared pulse and the flick of a page turn.

Today often sessions occur in small isolation booths. Each musician records against a monitor-feed, separated by panels and latency concerns. We communicate by chat or hand signal, our ears plugged into direct feeds. The sense of collective propulsion that Neumann cherished has been replaced by surgical precision and efficiency, while benefits and union protections remain our anchor. In reflecting on these shifts, I see how adaptability has become as crucial as technique. A musician must master both the old-school approach, where breathing together shaped phrasing, and the new-school workflow, where pinpoint timing and digital fluency rule. Between these two worlds lies the core lesson: thriving in the studio demands an unseen agility as well as world-class chops.

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My Driver’s Ed teacher was an older man who noticed that one of my thumbs was thick and unlike my other one.

“We have similar thumbs” he said holding up his two chunky thumbs for me to see, as I buckled my seat belt.

“My left thumb is not my original thumb,” I told him.

“What do you mean?”

“I nearly cut my thumb off in sixth grade when I was slicing a bagel.”

“A what?”

“A bagel.”

This was 1971. Iowa hadn’t discovered bagels yet, or croissants, for that matter.

“It’s kind of like a hard donut which Jewish people eat for breakfast.”

My sisters, when I relayed this conversation to them objected to my description, but it was what came to mind first.

“Oh! I had another Jewish student once” he remarked.

I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. Or, more correctly, I wasn’t in Manhattan.

Our trip across country began in Manhattan. We were driving a Saab 96, a little car, packed to the gills about to head to Los Angeles. I kept running into my house to get more and more stuff. Who knew what they had in California? I have a terrible track record concerning packing. I pack everything I need, and it’s all very manageable and then I seem to pack a ton more stuff, that I don’t need, “just in case.”

In exasperation my father finally said: “Go already!” He couldn’t stand the protracted departure. I guess I wasn’t desperate to leave.

The only catch about this drive was that I had learned to drive on an automatic and we were driving a stick shift. My boyfriend was very patient with me. I was fine when I was on a freeway going sixty or seventy miles an hour. It was when I had to down shift and come to a stop that I would stall the car and fall apart. Lots of tears.

By the time we got to Oregon and were driving down the coast I was feeling pretty good about my driving. Nothing like doing it to give one a sense of confidence.

My boyfriend said he was still not comfortable enough with my driving to nap, which was understandable. After all, I was a new driver.

I was driving down the beautiful coast, and he had just fallen asleep when an enormous MAC truck passed a car in my lane and was headed straight at us. I didn’t even know WHAT a MAC truck was until this trip, because I kept hearing about them from my boyfriend. There were only two lanes, one going in each direction. How could a truck be in our lane?!

“Isn’t that very rude of him to be in my lane?” I muttered.

My boyfriend looked up and screamed: “Get off the road!”

Luckily there was a shoulder. I quickly pulled over and felt our little car tremble as the truck passed us.

“What was he doing in my lane?!”

“He was passing in your lane and he shouldn’t have done it, but you have to be alert to these things.

“But it was my lane!”
“It doesn’t matter! We would’ve been killed if you had stayed in it!” He was very upset with me.

Believe it, or not, he made me continue driving, though honestly, I didn’t want to ever drive again.

I guess my driving improved, though my sense of the mechanics of a car never seemed to kick in. After all I was from a city where there were buses, subways and people walked. You didn’t need to know how to drive in Manhattan.

About a year later I told my boyfriend that “the car is broken.”

“What do you mean ‘broken’?” he asked.

“It just doesn’t drive.” My sense of cars was a little bit like owning a horse that refuses to budge. It didn’t make any sense to me. I just didn’t seem to connect to it.

Fortunately, we were living in Laurel Canyon and could just roll down the hill to a gas station.

We pulled in and an attendant came over.

“What can I do for you folks?” he asked.

“You tell him” my boyfriend prompted me.

“The car is broken. It just won’t run,” I explained.

“hmmmm… Can you pop the hood?”

You’ve probably figured this out already. I had forgotten to put gas in the car.

Maybe a year after this incident we decided to drive to San Francisco with our friend Douglas. The three of us would share the driving. I packed a picnic lunch in a Styrofoam basket, complete with lid and off we went. I was driving as we were coming up on Santa Barbara. Both guys had fallen asleep. So much for not being able to nap when I was driving.

The car didn’t have AC so all the windows were open, and it was a beautiful day with fresh air sailing through the car. Suddenly I noticed in the rear-view mirror that the lid of the basket was flying around. Not wanting to wake the guys I turned around to grab the lid, completely forgetting that I was driving. I know, this is insane.

My boyfriend woke up just as we were heading toward the center divider at sixty plus miles an hour.

He yelled “put on the brakes” which I did, not gingerly. The car spun 360 degrees and then another 180 and plunked us down on the right shoulder.

Astoundingly there was no traffic on the freeway at the time.

A huge MAC truck (again) pulled onto the shoulder and the driver raced over to us.

I was, of course, hysterical.

“What happened?!” he asked, incredulously.

“I forgot I was driving…” I tried to explain.

“She forgot…? Is she on drugs?” he asked the guys.

“Definitely not,” Douglas answered. I may have been the only High School of Music & Art student in the 60’s who had never even tried anything.

I never wanted to drive again, but the guys insisted I get us to Santa Barbara and then they would continue the drive.

Part of my problem when I drive or am being driven is I seem to be rocked to sleep. How many times have I fallen asleep on buses and trains, being lulled to sleep by the motion.

It would’ve been fine with me if I never had to drive again.

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His model was mother tongue language acquisition, how children learn to speak - by endless repetition of sounds and words that they hear.

Dr. Suzuki was convinced that any child, barring unusual circumstances, can learn how to play the violin, that it wasn’t dependent on “talent.” What happens later on may reflect talent, but just the basic mechanics, given no external, complicating factors and given the right, loving environment at home, made studying the violin fun and successful.

He separated the mechanics of learning to play and reading music, likening it to not trying to teach babies who were repeating mama, dada, how to read. He wanted children to develop an excellent ear and ability to play with a beautiful tone, before introducing reading.

Dr. Suzuki felt that the greatest gift he could give children, particularly Japanese children following World War II, was music, and he proved this by setting up a system and teaching literally thousands of children to play the violin. For families who practice the Suzuki method, learning an instrument becomes a shared journey, not a solitary lesson once a week.

In 1961 the great cellist Pablo Casals was awed by seeing four hundred young children perform the Bach Double (violin concerto for two violins.) “It may very well be music which will save the world”.

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One day, soon after I had moved in, I invited Sarah over for lunch. As we sat in the living/dining room, at the little table by the window overlooking the street, I had a good view of the window of Mark, another neighbor’s apartment, on the second story. There was an enormous racket going on behind Mark’s apartment where construction on another building boomed. Sarah and I nearly had to shout to be heard above the din.

Suddenly Mark’s enormous dog appeared in the second story window. More and more of the dog appeared until its back legs seemed to be the only part of him left in the apartment. The poor thing looked as if he’d rather die than hear another stapler.

“He looks completely terrified!” I said to Sarah, pointing up at the second story window.

“He looks completely terrified!” she agreed.

“He’s not going to jump, is he?”

“He’s not going to jump, is he?” she repeated.

“I’ve got Mark’s number, I’ll call him.”

“I’ve got Mark’s number, I’ll call him.”

This was getting a little crazy. No matter what I said she repeated it verbatim.

I had just met Sarah, so I didn’t know if this was unusual for her, or if this was truly a case of echolalia.

I grabbed the phone and called Mark at work who was very grateful to be informed about his dog’s suicidal behavior and said he would get home as fast as he could. I ran out and tried to calm the dog down by speaking to him, as he hung out of the window, trying to get him back into the apartment. Literally as Mark drove up, the dog jumped out of the second story window. Miraculously he wasn’t hurt.

A few years later I was remarried. We were still in the same apartment. My husband and I were going away for a bit and because Sarah was a “cat person” with two cats of her own, I asked her if she could take care of our single cat, Alyosha. She was happy to do it.

Due to flight delays we finally landed close to midnight. We got home around 1:00am, exhausted. We were surprised not to be greeted by Alyosha, who was a very sociable creature. We searched everywhere for him. It wasn’t as if it was a big apartment. But he was nowhere to be seen. I finally located his inert little body in a pool of blood and urine in a closet. Despite being in the middle of the night we bundled him into a towel and rushed him to our vet’s office, which fortunately was open 24 hours.

“Constance, I’m very sorry, this is a dead cat,” our beloved vet informed me.

“No, he’s not. He’s still breathing,” I said, cradling Alyosha in my arms.

“Barely.”

He had uremic poisoning that was off the charts, due to his kidneys having shut down.

“I’ve never seen numbers like these,” the vet told me. “He’s completely dehydrated.”

“Well, can’t you re-hydrate him?” I asked, between sobs. “When a plant is droopy, you water it.”

In the middle of the exam the room began to shake, the light fixture swaying. Oh great, an earthquake. Seemed quite apropos.

“You can leave him here and we’ll put him on an IV drip but I don’t think it will make any difference.”

We drove home, distraught and unsure what to say to our neighbor. But we needed some idea of what had happened.

My husband, being the calmer of the two of us, called her.

“Hello Sarah, sorry to bother you at this time of night. Listen, we got back a few hours ago and couldn’t find Alyosha anywhere and then found him in the closet in a pool of blood and urine…”

“He did appear sluggish the last few days,” I heard her say.

Sluggish?! A nearly dead cat? I was going to explode.

“There seems to be a failure of observation” my English husband said gently.

“Failure of observation!” I screamed. “The vet says Alyosha is going to die!”

Alyosha stayed hooked up to an IV for a week. We went to visit him twice a day and he seemed to perk up a bit when he saw us. Eventually the vet said “he’s so responsive to you that it will probably do him good to go home. I can’t guarantee that he will pull through, but we’ve done as much as we can here.”

We took our little Alyosha home and amazingly he survived. He was very thin and very weak, but he pulled through. My response to the episode was to write “Alyosha’s Tale” a short story about his near-death experience. The vet was astounded that he survived. Maybe that’s why there’s the expression about cats having nine lives. He had used up a few. Everyone at the vet’s office knew that Alyosha was their miracle case. After that every time we were there a parade of other vets came in to admire him, look at his chart and admire him some more.

We didn’t have much contact with Sarah after that event, despite living next to her for eleven years. What do you say to someone who nearly killed your beloved cat?

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If you told me fifty years ago that the accordion would one day grace major symphonic stages and headline film scores, I might have chuckled at the “squeezebox” stigma. Yet here we are. The accordion boasts an unexpectedly serious classical and transcribed repertoire—from Tchaikovsky’s concertina textures to Prokofiev’s partisan works and commissions by Cowell, Foss, Thomson, and Krenek. Its bellows, pushed and pulled by practiced forearms, control airflow across 448 Swedish-steel reeds mounted on wooden blocks, making the accordion as intricate as a pipe organ compressed into a hand-held frame. I wish I could have witnessed jazz-accordionist Frank Marocco in a Los Angeles studio booth, nail crescendos for the score of Doctor Zhivago. His modest demeanor belied a prolific career on soundtracks from The Waltons to Pirates of the Caribbean and Ratatouille. Meanwhile, chamber-music pioneer Nick Ariondo pushed me to rethink the accordion’s place in opera—his work on Adès’s Powder Her Face and Weill’s Threepenny Opera proves that this instrument can balance delicacy with the power to mimic an entire orchestra’s voice. Despite its versatility—capable of vibrato, sustained chords, rapid staccato, even orchestral imitation—the accordion still battles a populist perception that it belongs only in folk dances or polka bands. Yet true aficionados know that for every folk-tune enthusiast, there stands a virtuoso forging new repertoire in concert halls and film studios. Their dedication reminds me that, like harpists, accordionists devote themselves to an instrument both physically demanding and heartfully expressive. In my years as a studio violinist, I’ve encountered accordion players who treat the bellows as a living extension of the breath. They measure phrasing not in bow speed, but in accordion angles and bellows pressure. Watching them is a lesson in precision, strength, and unwavering focus—qualities that resonate deeply with anyone who has slaved over a difficult concerto or endured a twelve-hour scoring session.

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My two passions growing up were violin and political activism. At eleven I was sending my paltry allowance to the NAACP and CORE. I was against the war in Vietnam from a very young age and earned the nickname “Commie Meyer” at school.

I never expected these two passions to intersect. They certainly didn’t during my thirty years as a freelance violinist in Los Angeles. When I first started teaching, my students were mostly white, middle-class families from the West Side. At some point that changed, and I found myself teaching violin to children whose families had come from all over the world.

In my book Plays Well with Others I write about teaching a Kurdish young man in 2014 via Skype. Before working with him, I knew nothing about the Kurds. I was excited when the Arab Spring erupted in December 2010. But the Syrian mother of one of my students warned me things weren’t as simple as they appeared. Her family still in Syria anticipated a bloodbath and did everything they could to get out. Sure enough, one Middle East dictatorship after another cracked down on citizens fighting for freedom.

A shower curtain with a map of the world has helped, but the thing that has genuinely improved my sense of geography is teaching violin to students whose families come from nearly thirty countries.

In 2019, when Donald Trump justified abandoning the Kurds by saying they hadn’t helped us at Normandy, I actually knew why they hadn’t. Kurds live in Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. My student was from northern Iraq. They don’t have their own country — they’re stateless. No, they didn’t help us at Normandy. How could they? Was that really a reason to abandon them when the Turks were threatening them?

While I was doing those Skype lessons, I was also teaching two Turkish families. So why can’t I sort all of this out in my living room? It’s not Camp David, but I’ve got all the players.

Educators talk about teaching the “whole child.” Knowing where my students’ families come from is essential to the same principle — you can’t teach the whole child without knowing something about the world that shaped them.

At the start of my career, I had just one family that wasn’t local. The two siblings were native Angelenos, but their parents were Jews from Peru. Until I met that family, it had never occurred to me that there were Jews in Peru. I knew that after World War II, many European and Soviet Jews fled to South America, but Peru? And how did a man with a Japanese name wind up as president of a South American country? I learned a lot from that family.

In time I had students whose parents were from Greece, Slovakia, China, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Mexico, Israel, France, Cameroon, and many more.

I taught two daughters of a Zoroastrian mother. I had never heard of the Zoroastrians before I met that family. The mother was born in St. Louis, but her parents were from Iran, and like most Parsees, they had escaped Iranian persecution by moving to India. I assumed I would never be able to keep track of the extended family names, let alone pronounce them, but in time I got there.

One day a little girl whose mother was from Wisconsin brought her best friend to her lesson. I had never heard the guest child’s name before and complimented her on it.

“Is it Indian?” I asked.

“It is, but I’m really Zoroastrian.”

OMG. When I had started teaching the Zoroastrian family, I’d done some reading: one of the oldest religions on earth, the original Persians, currently about 120,000 left worldwide. And now I knew nine of them.

“Do you know —?” I asked. Of course she did. Same temple.

Many summers ago I was in Italy visiting family when I got several calls from a Saudi Arabian number. Spam, I assumed, and ignored them. Back in Los Angeles, an email arrived from a man asking whether I could teach his five-year-old son.

“Sure. Come over and meet me.”

The boy arrived with his parents. His violin case was enormous, and out came a full size violin, an adult size violin — absurd for this little person.

“Where did he get this violin?”

“From his former teacher.”

“Well, we need to get him the right size violin. Why don’t we rent one, and if things go well, in six months you can buy one.”

“Unfortunately, that won’t work. We’re only here for the summer.”

“Where are you from?”

“Saudi Arabia.” Light bulb. I was dying to ask about why women couldn’t drive there, or what they made of the fact that sixteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. I stuck to violin. I asked the little boy what had gotten him interested.

“My mom and I watched a documentary about Albert Einstein and he played the violin. I want to be a scientist who plays the violin.”

Saudi Arabia is not famous for producing violinists. His mother suggested I come to Riyadh for a few weeks and teach their friends. I would have liked to take her up on it. But I couldn’t picture playing the violin in a hijab, I knew I was incapable of keeping my opinions to myself for more than twenty-four hours, and there was the small matter of telling my mother where I’d be.

Another Saudi family called a few years later. A woman was looking for a violin teacher for her boss’s four-year-old daughter. We made arrangements to meet her boss and little girl, and then she said: “I don’t know what you should call him.”

“Well, what’s his name?”

“Prince Bandar.”

“I see.”

“He’ll let you know.”

“Okay.” There are a lot of Prince Bandars in Saudi Arabia. Presumably this wasn’t Bandar Bush, the George Bush family pal, but a much younger Prince Bandar.

A few years ago I started teaching a thirteen-year-old boy from Turkey. I happened to video him the first day he played for me — he wore a bow tie. Six months later I took another video of his playing the same piece. Had I not had the music in front of me on that first day, I wouldn’t have recognized what he was playing. His violin was terrible and his training deeply flawed. He was desperate to improve, though, and we rolled up our sleeves and got to work.

Six months later I showed him both videos side by side. He was embarrassed by the first one.

“Look what you’ve accomplished!”

“No, that’s you,” he said.

“Looks like you to me. You did the work. I just pointed you in the right direction.” He beamed. His mother had also rented him a decent violin by then, which made an enormous difference.

I was dying to ask them about Erdoğan — not even the politics, just why the G is silent in his name. That’s as far as I got. I was curious about how Khashoggi got murdered and dismembered in Istanbul, and I was working with people who might have an opinion. But it had nothing to do with teaching a young violinist to play in tune, so I kept my mouth shut.

For many years I had a lovely student whose father is Iraqi and whose mother is Lebanese. I’ve known exactly where Iraq is since we invaded it in 2003 for no good reason — it was on Dick Cheney’s to-do list before 9/11 and the aftermath provided a convenient excuse. I wanted to apologize to her father for the U.S. destroying his country but figured it might be awkward to raise right after she started studying with me.

Lebanon I can locate on a map — it borders Israel and Syria — but I can’t fully untangle what happened there. Beirut, once called the Paris of the Middle East, has been destroyed multiple times. The history is genuinely convoluted: Lebanon’s civil war was stoked by Israel, Syria, and Saudi Arabia in turn. A few years ago Prime Minister Hariri disappeared for twelve days and turned up in Saudi Arabia, where curiously, he resigned. Some people believed he’d been kidnapped. I was dying to ask this Lebanese mother for a thumbnail sketch of her country, but the last time I did something like that — asking a Salvadoran dinner guest to explain his country’s history in front of my five- and eight-year-old daughters — it did not go well.

“You know how your father is a scientist,” he began, addressing our children. “Well, my father was a murderer.” And then he told the history of El Salvador through the lens of being the son of a general in the junta. My daughters’ eyes nearly popped out of their heads.

The mother of another student was from Colombia. It was tempting to drop the lesson entirely and just talk to her. Staring at the map of South America, I was startled to notice how enormous Brazil actually is. Colombia borders five countries: Brazil, Ecuador, Panama, Peru, and Venezuela. All politics are local, and when one neighbor is in collapse with people fleeing across borders, the ripple effects are real. Venezuela imploded. Noriega ran Panama. Fujimori ran Peru. Ecuador, for a while the relatively stable one, is now going through its own upheaval. Colombia is doing what it can to help Venezuelans pouring in. It’s a lot to hold.

Over the years I’ve taught many Korean families. Koreans take classical music seriously — in South Korea, it’s said there’s a piano teacher on every corner, and a generation ago every Korean child was expected to study piano plus at least one other instrument. In 2017, when Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea, the grandparents of two siblings I was teaching temporarily moved to the United States. Despite the whiplash of Trump’s relationship with Kim Jong Un — adversaries one week, intermittent best friends the next — several Korean parents kept flying to Seoul for work. It wasn’t until I had all these Korean families that I learned Seoul is only thirty-five miles from the North Korean border.

I’ve had Chinese families and Taiwanese families. Israeli families and Arab families. Armenian, Kenyan, Mauritian, Slovak, Greek. The list goes on.

Part of why I’m so glad to have all these nationalities in my studio is that I’m an immigrant story myself, on both sides. My Russian mother was born in Finland because her father was concertmaster of an orchestra there. When she was six, they came to the United States so my violinist grandfather could join the Boston Symphony. My French paternal grandfather came over as a teenager and worked as an errand boy in New York’s garment district.

I have a virtual United Nations right in my living room. So why can’t I facilitate world peace?

A president should know where a country is before he’s allowed to bomb it. I’ve extended that principle to teaching: I need to know where my students’ families come from and something about what they’ve lived through. I came to all of it late — the geography, the history, the context. Teaching violin in Los Angeles has been one long, wonderful education.

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I still remember the first time I sat in on a rehearsal with Lou Anne Neill, principal harpist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. From her seat at stage right, Lou Anne summons a “carpet of sound” so lush it seems to vibrate through your entire body. Yet this heavenly illusion masks an astonishing physical challenge. The modern double-action pedal harp, invented by Sebastien Erard in 1810, carries 46–47 strings and seven pedals underfoot. Those pedals are not mere accessories—they are the linchpin of chromatic navigation. With each shift of a toe, the mechanism reroutes the string tension, allowing harpists to move seamlessly between keys in the heat of a live performance. Principal freelancer Marcia Dickstein described to me the full-body strain of a marathon opera, where the harp must stand ready for a single note long before the orchestra breathes. I’ve seen her steel herself against fatigue, arms aloft, waiting for a cue that may arrive after minutes of silence. For many, the harp feels dainty and ornamental, but watching Lou Anne and Marcia reminds me of Harpo Marx’s surprising virtuosity—and the upper-body strength required to maintain even a delicate pianissimo. It’s no coincidence that the harp’s orchestral parts only appeared after 1850, once composers from Debussy to Stravinsky discovered its coloristic potential and demanded more complex writing. Technically speaking, harpists emerge from two distinct schools: the French Renie/Grandjany tradition or the Salzedo method. Today’s players blend these lineages into hybrid techniques that suit their individual style. I’ve watched Lou Anne teach a public-school program alongside Rachel Van Voorhees, introducing children to folk harps before upgrading them to the “gold standard” pedal instrument. In those small hands and bright eyes I see the next generation of plucky few, prepared to champion an instrument that, like the double bass, must be habitually defended for its repertoire and visibility.

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When I was fifteen, I went to Kneisel Hall in Blue Hill, Maine for a month. My violin teacher, Raphael Bronstein, taught there. Marianne Kneisel, whose camp it was, was the daughter of Franz Kneisel, first violinist of the Kneisel String Quartet — a first-rate quartet founded in 1885. Ms. Kneisel was a rather formidable woman despite her small size, rumored to carry a shotgun when she went to check that campers were in the right bunks at night. Probably apocryphal, but she was an intimidating character.

What was I doing there? My father felt I was spending too much time with my boyfriend, so I was shipped off. It was a terrific program, and of course we were on the ocean, though the water was far too cold to swim. One day I decided to pick mussels off the rocks and make moules marinière for the whole camp. The recipe calls for white wine, and I was only fifteen — who knows how I procured that. I spent the day cleaning a gazzilion mussels and cooking them so everyone could have some.

With great excitement I told my parents about my enormous undertaking. Rather than being proud of me — or even sympathetic to what a feat it was — they were horrified.

“You could’ve killed the entire school! You had no idea whether those mussel beds were safe!” I didn’t know there was such a thing as an unsafe mussel bed.

We had always picked mussels off the jetties in front of our house on Cape Cod. It never occurred to me that not all mussel beds were alike.

Mussels used to be considered the poor man’s oyster, and they were plentiful. Now our jetties are mussel-less. I looked it up: wild mussel populations have drastically declined due to warming waters, pollution, and habitat loss.

Back in Manhattan, I decided to make dinner for my boyfriend’s family. Not mussels. I was going to make veal birds: very thinly sliced veal with prosciutto, mozzarella, and a scallion, rolled up and cooked in white wine with mushrooms. His parents bought the ingredients. His grandmother, his brother, and a friend of the brother’s sat in the dining room, ready for dinner.

As I sautéed the veal birds in the kitchen, my future mother-in-law stood over me watching. I asked her, very politely, to go sit at the table. She stayed, hovered over me, and commented on everything I was doing. When I took the birds out of the pan, she said: “They’re still slightly pink. You should cook them longer.”

“It’s the prosciutto that’s pink,” I told her.

“It’s the veal,” she insisted. I put the birds back in the wine and mushrooms and brought them out.

She cut into hers and declared: “It’s raw.”

“Let me re-cook yours,” she said to her husband, reaching for his plate. Then to her mother: “Mom, I’ll re-cook yours.” She reached for the brother’s plate but he held fast: “I’m keeping mine.” She tried the friend’s plate. “I’m keeping mine.” My boyfriend said the same thing. War had been declared.

She took what she could back to the kitchen and put them in the pan. I followed her in, hurt and furious. “It’s very tasty, dear,” she told me. “Just RAW.” My boyfriend appeared in the kitchen to calm things down. We both yelled at him to leave. Poor guy. I told my future mother-in-law she was the rudest person I had ever known. Not sure how that was helpful.

We went back to the dining room and somehow got through the meal.

Years later, I was married to said boyfriend. My father urged me to invite Nicolas Slonimsky to dinner. Slonimsky was a hero of mine — a brilliant musicologist who had been secretary to Serge Koussevitzky, conductor of the Boston Symphony when my grandfather was in it. Slonimsky was a link to my past. He knew my grandfather, who died before I was born, and he knew my mother, whom I barely knew. He also wrote one of the best books I’ve ever read, one I used to press on everyone: The Lexicon of Musical Invective. If you haven’t read it, treat yourself.

I drove from Santa Monica to Westwood to pick up the ninety-something-year-old Slonimsky — a tiny man with a large book under his arm. My father had hoped he would give me a copy of his new Baker’s Dictionary, which he was editing, but there was no sign of him relinquishing it.

My brother arrived with his best friend in a little two-seater. Slonimsky immediately gave him the book. I had spent the better part of two days cooking a Russian feast, including my famed kulibiaka. Slonimsky fawned over my brother, who did his best to redirect attention toward his violinist sister — moi. Slonimsky couldn’t get enough of him.

At some point they were discussing a film about Eisenhower — the scene where he surveys a concentration camp at the end of the war and says: “I’m ashamed my name is Eisenhower.”

“I don’t get it,” I said.

“Eisenhower means iron miner,” my brother explained.

“Well, I didn’t know that,” I said, a little flippantly.

“That, my dear, is because you are ordinary, and your brother is extraordinary.”

Husband, brother, and friend were speechless. I quietly left the table, went into the kitchen, and sobbed. Why do women cry instead of get angry? Is it not ladylike to express rage? It felt pathetic even as I was doing it.

My husband was so disgusted with Slonimsky that he wouldn’t drive him home. My brother had no room in his car. So, to add insult to injury, I drove Slonimsky home myself, barely saying a word. I never saw him again.

Sometimes it’s better not to meet your heroes.

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If the viola is the soul, the double bass is the heartbeat of the orchestra. I’ve witnessed my bass colleagues turn chaos into cohesion, anchoring every piece with pitch and rhythm. Principal bassists carry the weight of their massive instruments—descendants of viola da gamba designs—through narrow backstage corridors and airline terminals with elaborate custom cases. Half-fare flights, parking basses in dressing rooms, and the constant negotiation of French versus German bows are part of the daily grind. Yet their pride and perseverance never waver. These giants of the low end know they’re often the butt of jokes for scant solo moments. Still, pioneers like Dragonetti, Bottesini, O’Brien, Gary Karr and Edgar Meyer elevated the bass beyond its supporting role. I’ve heard bassists recount transporting 7-foot instruments on cramped tour buses, only to emerge onstage as the ultimate rhythmic glue. One principal in Denver once described how her 8-foot model nearly collapsed a stage platform—yet delivered a sound so rich it brought tears to my eyes. In symphony, continuo and even film scoring, the bass outlines harmonic progressions and sets the tempo for complex passages. I remember a late-night scoring session where, in the hushed studio, the bass line guided the string choir through a suspenseful cue. That subtle pulse beneath the melody is the bass’s secret superpower. Without it, every performance unravels. When you next hear that deep, resonant throb, know that it’s the culmination of lineage, dedication and community shaping the very foundation of orchestra sound.

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When our older daughter was a baby we enrolled her in swimming lessons, but she was always freezing and miserable, despite the fact that I was in the water with her. I tried lessons again with my second daughter, but that didn’t go well either.

It was the summer of 1996 when my neighbor — whom I first met when we were both pregnant with our second girls — stopped me on the street.

“Are your kids taking swimming this summer?”

“I want them to, but I’m not sure where or how. I hated the place they’ve been going to.”

“Yeah. Mine didn’t get anything out of the woman who used to come here. Let me see if I can find somebody else to come to the house to teach them.” She had a pool, which we did not.

Two weeks later we were at her house at 8:45 in the morning, waiting anxiously for someone named “Mike” to appear. A few minutes later Mike arrived — six foot something, big smile, cap on his head, bathing suited, towel slung over his shoulder, ready to go.

“Good morning, everyone.” He said it in a friendly, businesslike way. “Is the temperature 88?” — the magic number he had given her. My neighbor looked slightly stricken.

“It feels a little cold to me. I reminded the landlady that we were beginning today.”

Mike took off a sandal and dipped his foot in.

“Oh no. We can’t begin like this. They need it to be absolutely bath-like. No lesson today, kids. Sorry. Tomorrow.” He checked the thermostat, slipped his sandals back on, and disappeared up the steps to the house like the masked man in the Lone Ranger. The children looked crestfallen.

The next day the water was even colder. My poor neighbor was beside herself. The third day the gas company was called in, and the fourth day Mike appeared, everyone raring to go.

The lessons were taught in groups of four, not one on one, which I had assumed was the best way to begin. Equally unusual: ten consecutive days, not once or twice a week for months.

“I want all of you to sit on the steps of the pool. Please don’t leave the steps until I tell you to do so.” The nearly two-year-olds sat mystified, awaiting further instruction, their eyes firmly on my neighbor and me.

A year later I watched my younger daughter, now three, push off the steps and swim to Mike. The other three stood restlessly waiting their turn, impatient to add the next piece. That first summer the four little girls had huddled close to each other, shrinking into one mass, each one hoping Mike would forget to call on her.

In the second summer the camaraderie among the children on the steps was plain to see. After three days with Mike my little one pursed her lips proudly and showed me:

“Mike told me.”

On their first real day of lessons that first summer, when the pool was the right temperature and everyone was seated miserably on the steps, Mike began:

“Okay, we’ll start with the youngest. Moms, please sit on the bench and try not to encourage or interfere with the lesson. When I say they may get up, then you can help them dry off and change. Now…” He reached for my younger daughter.

“I’m going to take you out into the water and help you do some swimming.”

With that he gently lifted her off the step, like a gentleman leading a debutante out onto the dance floor. She looked over her shoulder at me, her lower lip beginning to quiver. They got to the center of the pool — a relatively small pool, maybe 15 feet by 30 feet.

“Mike’s right here and I’m going to let go of you, but I’ll be right here.” With that he let go of that round little body. She bobbed up and down, trying to catch her breath, arms flailing as she tried to stay afloat. Mike put a finger on her back to let her know he was there.

My neighbor, sitting next to me, grabbed my arm.

“Aren’t you going to do something?” She jumped up. “I’ll do something. He can’t do that!” She stared at me in disbelief. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked, gripping my arm with a vice-like grip.

“I think he knows what he’s doing,” I whispered, watching my little one labor to keep her head out of the water, naturally treading — with difficulty, but treading.

“There you go. Very good job.” He gently lifted her to his chest and patted her back. “You just rest on Mike’s shoulder. Okay.”

She was crying quietly.

“Just rest on Mike’s shoulder,” he said reassuringly, patting her back. Burping and weeping, she leaned her little blond head against his massive shoulder. “Okay, I want you to hold your lips tight like this,” he demonstrated the zipped look, “and swim over to the steps now.” He carefully unfurled her from around his neck. The crying picked up as he aimed her in the right direction and let go. One finger remained on her back, guiding her. As soon as she reached the stairs she began to climb out, crying for me.

“I want you to wait till the lesson is over before you go back to Mommy. It’s your turn now,” he said, reaching for my neighbor’s younger daughter. With that, the little girl began to try to climb out too.

“Mommy, I don’t w—”

My neighbor clutched my arm. “How can I do this? I can’t do this.”

“Here we go. You just come with Mike so we can swim.”

The little two-year-old screamed as she was led to the center of the pool. My neighbor had my arm again.

“How could you stand it?!” she asked through gritted teeth.

“I see what he’s doing.”

“You do?!” We watched as Mike repeated the exercise.

“Try not to make eye contact with her,” I suggested.

“I’m not going to do that!” Her older daughter yelled from the steps. My neighbor did her best to ignore her. The five-year-olds were certainly intrigued watching their baby sisters struggle with Mike — though the likely future was not lost on either of them.

My older daughter had just started wearing glasses and was without them, of course. She stared hard in my direction, trying to catch my eye. My little one sat on the steps whimpering.

“Very good! Can you say ‘I did a good job’?” He patted the two-year-old on her back as he brought her back to the steps.

“I did a good job,” he repeated to her as she climbed out of his arms, attempting to make a break for it.

“No!” she said defiantly, climbing out of the pool toward her mother.

“Class is not over.” Mike gently picked her up again and held her against him.

“I want my Mommy,” she wailed.

“What should I do?” my neighbor implored.

“You’re doing just fine,” he assured her in a measured voice.

My neighbor’s little one sat down next to mine, the two of them looking miserable.

That was the first summer. Now nearly three, I watched my younger daughter jump into the pool, swim the width of it, and climb out as fast as her little legs would carry her — just so she could do it again.

“Was that easy?” Mike asked, after she made big circles in the water for her breaststroke and kicked her legs for all they were worth.

She nodded.

“You certainly make it look easy!” he added, patting her on the back.

But that first summer…

“You ready?” Mike asked the older sister.

“I’m not doing this, Mommy,” she said, attempting to climb out.

“Come on,” Mike said firmly, climbing up the steps to get her.

“I don’t want to!” The others forgot their own troubles momentarily watching the standoff. You could feel the thrill of seeing one of their own stand up to this fellow.

“Let’s go,” Mike said in his mellow, firm way.

“No, no, no, no, no!” But minutes later she was swimming, face in the water, lips tightly shut. The other three couldn’t help but be impressed.

And so it went. That was day one. My older daughter had been taught at the swim school where we’d wasted two and a half summers, not to put her face in the water, and she refused to change that policy for Mike. Caught between being obedient and simply being terrified of water on her face, she was seriously stuck. When Mike tried to help her overcome it, she accused him of “trying to kill me in front of all these people, slay me at the pool” and other humdingers.

On day three, a Saturday, our husbands were on hand to observe. The Sturm und Drang had died down, but some resistance remained.

“Where did you find this guy?” my husband asked, looking panicked, out of my neighbor’s earshot.

I pointed to my neighbor. “She knew someone who knew someone who had had him teach her children.”

“Where did you meet her?” he whispered.

“Walking down the street a few years ago.” He rolled his eyes.

“Did either of you do any research on him before you hired him?” he asked, no longer bothering to whisper.

“We didn’t,” my neighbor said sheepishly. “Kinda crazy, huh?”

Each day Mike built on the previous one. By day ten all four children could jump into the pool, swim the width or length to the opposite side, grip the sides and walk their hands back (crab walk) to the steps, and get out. Just as easy for them was jumping in and hoisting themselves back out — particularly impressive for the two little ones. By the end of the session each of the four could swim a few breaststrokes, lift her head out of the water to breathe, and keep going. Most important: by the end of Mike’s first course all the children felt confident in the water. Not a cocky, foolish confidence — a confidence based on ability and reality. They were on their way to becoming swimmers, and they were thrilled.

The second summer Mike picked up exactly where he’d left them. The children could hardly wait for lessons to begin. The older girls started with the frog kick for their breaststroke, then moved on to the crawl, the backstroke, floating, and finally diving.

What a thrill to see my older daughter — the one who wouldn’t put her face in the water at the start of that first season — revel in her first dive: eyes focused on her navel, arms together, aiming headfirst into the water.

That first summer we’d begun lessons a few weeks before my neighbor’s family headed off to visit her parents in Southampton, and we headed off to visit my mother in Provincetown, Massachusetts. Both sets of kids swam freely every day — my neighbors in a pool, ours in the bay behind the house, as easily and happily as if they’d always done it.

One night my family was invited for dinner next door. For some reason we all got dressed up, which was totally unnecessary but fun. We walked around to the front of the house, coming through the street entrance rather than climbing over the fence to the deck overlooking the bay. As we sat enjoying the sunset, the drinks, the company, my older daughter stripped off her pretty dress, descended the steps to the water, and jumped in to swim some more.

Not surprisingly, we signed the kids up for their second season at the first opportunity. I remember it was winter, and it felt nuts arranging ten consecutive days six months in advance. But at least we got in — which isn’t the case for everyone I’ve recommended Mike to. His schedule books almost immediately.

On the last day of lessons my neighbor seemed to be studying Mike.

“Have you ever been in the Olympics?”

“’84.”

“Win anything?”

“Gold medal.”

“Whatever made you ask him?” I said, stunned.

“I just noticed he kept wearing different hats from different cities. One said Barcelona, one said LA. I just wondered.”

So that’s Mike O’Brien. We should have done research. We should have made calls. But we were lucky, and we too struck gold.

Some parents will be horrified to read this — both the description of the technique and the carelessness with which we found a swimming teacher. But it was obvious very quickly that Mike was a gentle, loving, intelligent, thoughtful teacher. A far cry from the day at my older daughter’s swim school the previous summer, when the school still used water wings and, when my daughter’s lesson was over, she slipped them off and went back into the water. Her teacher turned around to chat with someone. Holding my nearly one-year-old baby, I reached across the water to grab my drowning four-year-old out of a crowded pool. She had no idea she didn’t know how to swim and was helpless without the water wings.

With Mike there was never a sense of danger. There are obviously different methods for teaching hard things. Mike’s philosophy is that learning to swim is scary, and you can draw the process out or compact it into a few days and then swim on with the confidence of actually knowing how. Like the Suzuki method of violin playing, it throws the child into the deep end — but the results are immediate, which means you can move on to refining technique rather than building courage from scratch. I don’t know what you do if you can’t get Mike himself. Perhaps others teach the same way.

I’d never been particularly keen on cloning. Mike O’Brien made a pretty good case for it.

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What about the second violin? Many assume “second” means lesser, but I’ve learned it’s a position of refined virtuosity. In chamber groups and major symphonies alike, second violins weave inner lines that flesh out harmony and drive momentum. I sat down with Nobuhiko Smiley, principal second violin of the San Francisco Symphony, who explained how second parts demand acute listening and flexibility—qualities every ensemble leader cherishes. New York Philharmonic concertmaster Glenn Dicterow and Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra founder Margaret Batjer both shared stories of conductors spotlighting their second chairs during passages that highlight those inner voices. Dmitry Sitkovetsky, both conductor and soloist, told me he sometimes brings seconds forward to reveal textures audiences never knew existed. In quartet playing, Emerson Quartet’s Eugene Drucker noted that partners rotate first and second to balance leadership and blend. Second parts carry long accompaniments, require seamless blending and call for stamina equal to any solo line. Seating configurations—from American homophony to the European antiphonal split—shape how seconds interact with principals. I’ve played in both layouts and witnessed how seconds subtly prop up melodies or inject counterpoint that elevates the entire section. When you hear that rich undercurrent in a symphonic finale, remember: it’s the second violins’ collective soul and precision that stitches the fabric of sound together.

As you’ve discovered, the viola, double bass and second violin aren’t just background players—they’re the whispered dialogues and steadfast pulses that make every performance possible. From the viola’s gentle alto calls to the bass’s resonant heartbeat and the second violin’s intricate voice, these parts embody collaboration and quiet mastery. I invite you to listen anew—to hear the mutual trust, discipline and community behind each note. Next time you attend a concert or watch a film score, lean in to those inner voices. Embrace the value of collaborative musicianship, and you’ll find the true magic of ensemble artistry lies not in solo glory, but in the sum of its secret influences.

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Back in New York, I decided to send Bob a present. He was opening in a show in a week and a half, and being a compulsive gift-giver, I was determined to buy him a stuffed animal. Why? No idea. It struck me as an odd present for a college student, but I was committed. Maybe I hoped he’d hug it as if it were me and I’d get some vicarious pleasure two thousand miles away. At any rate, I had no idea where to look, so I took a late-afternoon walk after school to search.

My first stop was a local bookstore called Allen’s — small, pre-chains, a place I’d never been inside.

First thing I did was check the Dostoevsky section, to see how good a bookstore it was and say hello to my favorite books.

The shelves were library-high, and you could only see another person if you were in the same aisle or if books were missing back-to-back, leaving a gap to peer through. I was in the Nabokov section when I spotted just such a space. I thought I saw someone looking my way, so I moved over to peer through. My eyes met a very nice-looking dirty blond, blue-eyed, bespectacled young man.

“Do you need any assistance?” he asked, with an amused expression.

“Yes, maybe you can help. Not with books. Do you know a store around here that sells stuffed animals?”

“Stuffed animals, eh?” His eyes twinkled. “Aren’t you a little old for that?”

“Jeez. It’s not for me. It’s a joke present for a friend. He’s starring in a show that opens a week from Thursday. Kind of a good luck thing.”

“I see. Let me think. Stuffed animal store? Yes — I think there’s one on 67th and Lexington. I’m not sure if it’s an actual stuffed animal store or just a few things in the window.”

“Thanks a million.” I started toward the door, then turned back and peered through the crack again.

“Hello? Still there?”

“Yup. What can I do for you?” he said, coming back into frame.

“Ah — I just wanted to tell you I appreciate it. Bye.”

I skipped out and tore off to 67th Street, where there was in fact a store exactly to my taste. I bought Bob an adorable penguin and had the store mail it for me.

On my way home — it was now five-ish and I needed to help with dinner — I found myself walking out of my way and passing Allen’s again. My friendly information source was now visible in the window, standing behind the cash register, ringing up books for a college co-ed. I felt like running in to thank him, but hesitated. I stood by the window and watched him flirt with the customer. Nose upturned, long sleeves neatly folded back to the elbow.

He must have felt me watching, because he turned to face me.

“Success?” he beamed.

“What?”

“Success,” he mouthed again.

I walked into the store, passing the co-ed on my way in.

“Sex?”

“No — success?” he laughed.

“Oh yes. That’s why I came back. I bought a terrific penguin. Thank you again!”

“Any time.”

“I’ve got to go. Bye.”

“Goodbye.”

I practically skipped the entire way home. I had forgotten about Bob inside of an afternoon and felt madly drawn to this studious bookworm from Allen’s.

After that, I went back every day. I kept him company for hours and fell more and more in love. His name was Matthew. He was twenty-four years old.

I started bringing shopping bags with me — parts of my room, to show him what I was all about. Pictures pulled off the walls, heavy scrapbooks, photographs, other paraphernalia. It seemed essential that he know me through my things. I wrote out a list of my favorite music and brought him records to take home. He gave me Harold C. Schonberg’s book on pianists, which didn’t mention my mother.

In my opinion, my romance with Matthew was extremely racy. No one else seemed to agree.

Matthew took me to the Cloisters one afternoon. We rode the #4 bus up Madison Avenue, brought a picnic, and made a full day of it — going through the whole museum, the gigantic rosary bead with its intricate carvings, the unicorn tapestry, the trees shaped like menorahs. Everything was as it had always been, and the castle looked more beautiful than ever under a crystal-clear blue sky.

After lunch we walked to Fort Tryon Park and lay side by side on the grass discussing very meaningful things. Don’t ask me what. They seemed deep at the time.

Matthew was working toward his PhD in Russian and already teaching a few classes at CCNY. I was already crazy for Russian literature; this connection fanned the flames. He once gave me a photograph of himself with the words written across it: ya tebya lyublyu — I love you. I wanted to know more than that in Russian.

What Matthew saw in me I have never understood.

I visited him several times a week. The bookstore never seemed to be booming, so we had long, lovely chats. On occasion we went somewhere together. Going out with Matthew in the evening was a real treat. By then my parents were aware of my infatuation and maintaining a semblance of calm. My twenty-year-old brother was not as controlled. He had difficulty more than once just being civil.

One evening Matthew was taking me to a film. I sat at dinner with my family. I was slightly dressed up — a pretty turquoise Mexican blouse with a scooped neck, a white skirt, a hint of mascara and green eye shadow. My brother said it looked great. My father didn’t look pleased. Matthew rang the doorbell, came in, said good evening to everyone. My brother didn’t look up.

We were off. Spring night, New York smelling fresh. I slipped my hand into Matthew’s, and we walked along Third Avenue to The Russians Are Coming, which contains some actual Russian, which Matthew happily translated for me and a few eavesdroppers. I was very proud to be with such an accomplished fellow. Madly in love. I squeezed his hand and held it in my lap.

Walking home afterward, I was unusually quiet, wondering how I could have managed to meet the man of my dreams so early. I could clearly picture being married to Matthew — making his sandwiches every day, visiting him at the bookstore.

When we got back to my house, the upstairs lights were out. As I walked through the outer door into the kitchen, Matthew hung back.

“I think I better say goodnight to you here.”

“Oh no, please come in for just a minute.”

“It’s late and I think you’d better go to sleep.”

“Please,” I begged.

He came inside reluctantly and sat on the windowsill seat. The kitchen was dim with only the streetlights coming through, and I made no move to turn on the indoor lights.

“Matthew — I had a lovely time.” I leaned down and kissed him lightly on the lips.

“Well, that’s very nice.” He looked out the window, then back at me.

“You’re so pretty,” he said softly, and wiped a stray wisp of hair from my face.

I leaned down again, conscious this time of the cut of my blouse. He gently pushed the fabric back against me, so I wasn’t exposed, and gave me a quick hug.

Just then the intercom buzzer went off.

“Excuse me a sec.” I ran off to answer it. “Hello. Yes, we’re back. I’ll be right up. Good night.”

“I’ve got to go to bed now.”

“Of course. Thank you for a most enjoyable evening,” he said, standing up.

“Thank you,” I said softly, rising on my toes to fling my arms around his neck.

“Good night.” We kissed quickly and then he was gone.

My love for Matthew just escalated. My thoughts were no longer limited to the platonic niceties of a thirteen-year-old. I was quite certain my love was of a more mature, long-lasting, demanding nature.

After the date, Matthew had little time for me. He no longer worked at the bookstore. He was consumed with moving, and his teaching schedule seemed to expand. I felt rejected, but he still managed to talk on the phone and was as friendly as ever.

Some months went by without contact. I was afraid to call and be a nuisance. He didn’t call either. I finally braved it and dialed. A woman answered.

“Hello, is this the residence of Matthew —?”

“Yes, it is. Just a minute, I’ll get him. Matt, I think it’s your little friend,” I heard her whisper.

“Hello? Oh hi, how are you? I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch — things have been so busy, and I’m leaving for the Peace Corps in a few weeks. Thailand, probably for two years. Maybe longer, who knows?”

The conversation was brief. I was devastated and afraid I’d burst into tears. He promised we’d see each other before he left the city.

Time passed, and the pain of smattered fantasy was just beginning to fade. In May, there were several antiwar demonstrations. One Sunday my friend Jill and I went to Sheep’s Meadow to participate. The thing was badly organized, and we couldn’t locate the group we were supposed to march with.

Jill waited on a bench while I went off to find them. I finally spotted a marshal with an armband way ahead of me and headed toward him, eyes fixed on him as I moved through hundreds of people.

“Hey, aren’t you going to say hello?”

I turned around. There was Matthew.

I threw my arms around his neck.

“You were staring at me. How come you didn’t say hello?”

“I honestly didn’t see you. I was trying to reach that marshal over there.”

“Ah ha! Well, you’d better catch him — he seems to be moving on.”

I was so delighted to see Matthew that I couldn’t have cared less about Jill or the marshal. Then I sensed that Matthew wasn’t alone. Standing next to him was a pretty woman who looked amused.

“This is Jennifer.”

“Hi,” I said, surveying the situation.

“Well. I’ve got to go. Bye.”

And that was the end of Matthew. I don’t even know if he really went to Thailand.

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Today I want to take you behind the curtain of the orchestra’s vital inner-string world. You’ve heard the dazzling solos of violins and the thunderous roar of brass, but what of the voices that weave the rich fabric of ensemble sound? In this post, I draw on decades as a Los Angeles studio violinist to celebrate the often-overlooked viola. Together, we’ll explore how the subtle, supportive role that sustain every performance—from symphonies to film scores—and reveal why collaborative musicianship is the secret to every great musical moment.

Viola: The Orchestra’s Mellow Heart

I’ve always been drawn to the viola’s warm, alto voice. Though often stigmatized as the orchestra’s “stepchild,” the viola aches with a unique resonance that rivals any solo star. Dan Neufeld, a busy studio violist, once confessed that he stumbled onto the instrument, but a passion for it was immediate when he first drew the bow across its strings. At USC, Pam Goldsmith described her own lightning-strike wonder at the viola’s deeper timbre. These personal epiphanies underscore how the viola seduces players who embrace its mellow midrange and chamber-music humility. In my own experience, swapping my violin for a viola revealed a world of intricate inner voicings. Concert violinist Brian Dembow walked away from the spotlight to anchor the Angeles Quartet, explaining that the joy of blending and supporting textures outweighed solo acclaim. Ronald Kato once told me how a Ouija-board mishap persuaded him to trade his violin for a life in the inner voices. These anecdotes illuminate the camaraderie and creative devotion that violists share. Yet the instrument is far from easy. Players battle repetitive-stress injuries, grapple with nonstandardized sizes and negotiate the trade-offs between weight and sound projection. The solo repertoire remains limited—Mozart’s string quintets, Brahms’s Serenade and Hindemith’s viola concerto—but as Kato quips, “playing well is the best revenge.” In studio sessions, I’ve watched colleagues blend into the harmonic tapestry, filling gaps between cello and violin with a rounded warmth that no other instrument can match. The viola is humility in action and ensemble artistry at its finest.

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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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