Violin

Globetrotting, Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn will breeze through the region this weekend to play a recital. Her appearance at the Music Center at Strathmore with brilliant pianist Valentina Lisitsa, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, is the closest Hahn will be this season to her old stamping ground. The violinist was raised in Baltimore from the age of 3, started her musical studies at the Peabody Institute, and made her orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1991.

My earliest memories of music are of my grandmother singing “Once in Royal David City,” as she drove me the half-hour from our house to her apartment, and of listening to my mother's classical record colllection. The minute I took ballet, my friends and I played her 33-rpm recording of Tchaikovsky's “Swan Lake” and “Nutcracker Suite,” and performed in our dining room, where the table was kept to the side. We marched to clear red plastic 45-rpm recordings of John Philip Sousa and sang endlessly Gilbert and Sullivan's “I'm Called Little Buttercup” from records with pictures printed on them.

On a YouTube video, Tona Brown is first seen playing some Bach on the violin. Then she breaks into song, delivering "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" in a full-throated mezzo-soprano voice. That Rodgers and Hammerstein classic makes a particularly fitting anthem for Brown, who has faced her share of hurdles. None of them, it seems, have fazed this transgender musician who moved to Baltimore about a year ago. "You can't tell me I can't do something," Brown says with a broad smile, interviewed on a warm afternoon in the rowhouse she shares with a roommate half a block from Lake Montebello.

The classical music world, ever on the hunt for bright young stars with box office snap, still has some reliably surefire veterans. One of them is Itzhak Perlman, the most popular, widely recognized violinist since Heifetz. Tickets for Perlman's guest stint as soloist and conductor with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have been scarce for some time, even though, as was the case at his 2010 guest stint with the ensemble, Perlman is doing minimal fiddling. People still want to experience his musicianship, still want to let him know how much he means to them.

A 68-year-old music teacher was sentenced Friday to nine months in the Howard County Detention Center for sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl who took violin lessons in his home. Ming Yueh Liang of the 2800 block of Deerfield Drive in Ellicott City was convicted by a jury in February of two counts of fourth-degree sexual offense and two counts of second-degree assault. He was sentenced to 18 months, half of which were suspended. The abuse took place in April and May of 2009, prosecutors said.

Editor's note: Ten instruments take their parts one by one in a musical performance.With mournful moan and silken tone,Itself alone comes ONE TROMBONE.Gliding, sliding, high notes go low;ONE TROMBONE is playing SOLO.Next, a TRUMPET comes along,And sings and stings its swinging song.It joins TROMBONE, no more alone,And ONE and TWO-O, they're a DUO.Fine FRENCH HORN, its valves all oiled,Bright and brassy, loops all coiled,Golden yellow; joins its fellows.TWO, now THREE-O, what a TRIO!Now, a mellow friend, the CELLO,Neck extended, bows a "hello";End pin set upon the floor,It makes up a QUARTET - that's FOUR.

John Adams's two-year-old Violin Concerto made its first local appearance Thursday evening in Meyerhoff Hall in a masterful, thought-provoking performance by soloist Herbert Greenberg and the Baltimore Symphony.This concerto by the composer best known for such operas as "Nixon in China" and "Klinghoffer" already has received a number of performances. This is partly because the original commission was divided among the Minnesota Orchestra, the London Symphony and the New York City Ballet.This is fearsome music for any violinist.

CHICAGO -- Since the age of 2, Rachel Barton and her violin have been almost inseparable. She has won international violin competitions, appeared as a soloist with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and recently, at the age of 20, made her debut recording on compact disc.Yesterday morning, in a tragic split-second accident, the instrument that had been her life almost caused her death.Ms. Barton's canvas violin case, which she had slung over her shoulder, became trapped in the closing doors of a Chicago & North Western train at the Elm Street station in north suburban Winnetka.

Edith H. Bergmann, a German army radio operator during World War II who eventually became a wholesaler of violins in Baltimore, died of kidney failure Sunday at Greater Baltimore Medical Center. The Towson resident was 74.Born in Wurzburg, Germany, Ms. Bergmann received her higher education in Munich, where she became fluent in French and English. During World War II, she volunteered in the women's army corps as a radio operator in Berlin. She fled that city in advance of the Russian army but was captured by American troops near the Alps in 1945.

The repertoire of 20th century French music received a persuasive presentation Sunday afternoon from the violin-and-piano duo of Adele Auriol and Bernard Fauchet as part of the Chamber Music Society of Baltimore series.The program commenced with Olivier Messiaen's "Theme et variations," one of the composer's more subtle scores and one strongly influenced by Debussy. Auriol perfectly spun the variations in a brilliant arc that kept the momentum throughout the score. Her partner was a perfect match, never covering the violin line.

When he was in his early teens, Andrew Grams saw the sci-fi hit "Jurassic Park. " The visual side of the movie wasn't the only thing that left an impression. "The trumpet theme from the score stuck in my head for the entire summer," said Grams, the Maryland-born conductor who, now in his early 30s, will lead the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra this week in music from that film and others scored by John Williams. "Hearing the music today takes me back," he said, "and I hope it will do that for other people, help them remember who they were when they first saw the movie and heard the music.

On a YouTube video, Tona Brown is first seen playing some Bach on the violin. Then she breaks into song, delivering "Climb Ev'ry Mountain" in a full-throated mezzo-soprano voice. That Rodgers and Hammerstein classic makes a particularly fitting anthem for Brown, who has faced her share of hurdles. None of them, it seems, have fazed this transgender musician who moved to Baltimore about a year ago. "You can't tell me I can't do something," Brown says with a broad smile, interviewed on a warm afternoon in the rowhouse she shares with a roommate half a block from Lake Montebello.

Globetrotting, Grammy-winning violinist Hilary Hahn will breeze through the region this weekend to play a recital. Her appearance at the Music Center at Strathmore with brilliant pianist Valentina Lisitsa, presented by the Washington Performing Arts Society, is the closest Hahn will be this season to her old stamping ground. The violinist was raised in Baltimore from the age of 3, started her musical studies at the Peabody Institute, and made her orchestral debut with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra in 1991.

Harford Tech sophomore Isaiah Gills is all about quality and quantity. A three-sport athlete who also plays four musical instruments, Gills has a 3.3 GPA and would like to study engineering when he goes to college. But Gills has plenty of time left at Harford Tech, and he’s putting it to good use. In football, he plays quarterback, wide receiver, cornerback and safety. For the track and field team, he runs the 400-meter relay and 800 relay, and competes in the high jump and triple jump events.

One newcomer to the Peabody Institute this semester has a great figure, with a particularly attractive backside, and a very pleasing voice, too. Not bad for a 390-year-old. This buzz-generating addition to the music conservatory is a violin made by Giovanni Paolo Maggini, one of the finest Italian instrument makers from Brescia and a major influence on Antonio Stradivari and other legendary craftsmen who came later. Genuine Maggini violins don't turn up too often. They aren't donated to music schools every day, either.

A 68-year-old music teacher was sentenced Friday to nine months in the Howard County Detention Center for sexually abusing an 11-year-old girl who took violin lessons in his home. Ming Yueh Liang of the 2800 block of Deerfield Drive in Ellicott City was convicted by a jury in February of two counts of fourth-degree sexual offense and two counts of second-degree assault. He was sentenced to 18 months, half of which were suspended. The abuse took place in April and May of 2009, prosecutors said.

Mac MacWilliams didn't mind the taste of his own blood.Even as it trailed from a cut high on his left cheekbone, mixed with the perspiration on his face and dripped into the corner of his mouth, he didn't mind.For MacWilliams had just grappled his way to a 5-4 victory over Archbishop Curley's tough Gary Myrncza for the 135-pound title in last Saturday's Curley Invitational wrestling tournament. The victory avenged an unpalatable overtime loss to Myrncza a year ago that eliminated MacWilliams in the tournament's consolation semifinals.

JOHN SCHMIDT could best be described as a Renaissance man. With degrees in physics and psychology, the Town Center resident works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. But it's his hobby that truly defines him. Schmidt, 55, is passionate about making violins. Making violins appeals to Schmidt on many levels. "There's the artistic aspect and the historical aspect," he said. "There is mathematics involved, and the physics of sound. In the varnish, you've got the chemistry.

Shortly after signing a new five-year contract that will keep her in the post of Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director until 2015, Marin Alsop led the ensemble in a hefty program Thursday night that included the East Coast premiere of Jennifer Higdon's Violin Concerto. Written for Baltimore's own classical music star, Hilary Hahn, it's a killer of a concerto for the soloist, and it asks a lot of listeners, too. Cast in three movements, the half-hour concerto makes a grand statement, packed with thematic material and expansive development, all of it delivered with extraordinarily prismatic colors.

Jonathan Leshnoff's Violin Concerto struck me as a major addition to the repertoire when I first heard it in 2006. I'm even more convinced of that quality, having revisited the work on an all-Leshnoff CD from the Naxos label that features violinist Charles Wetherbee and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Markand Thakar. Leshnoff, a Towson University faculty member whose international career has been developing rapidly, found inspiration for the concerto in a chilling tale he heard from a Holocaust survivor - how inmates, forced by SS guards to sing Nazi propaganda songs, subtly wove prayers into the music.