Violin

I've been asking people recently for their thoughts on why there is so much murder on the streets of Baltimore. We passed the 100 mark for 2007 last week, with four killings in the space of 10 hours. We're well ahead of last year's pace. Over the last decade, we've had about 2,840 killings on city streets. Too many guns, people say. Too much poverty and deprivation. Too much drugging and competing for drug-selling turf. Too much violence on television and in computer games, re-enacted on the streets.

The morning after a long trip from Austria, and a day before facing a tonsillectomy, stellar violinist Hilary Hahn captivated an overflow house in the intimate recital room at An die Musik. Sunday's informal two-hour session found her in engaging form as she played demanding works for unaccompanied violin, then fielded questions from the audience, which included several small children sitting at the front on the floor. "It's perfectly normal not to like practicing," the 26-year-old, Baltimore-based Hahn told one young violin student, after describing how she had done little else but practice when she was growing up. Relaxed and articulate, Hahn discussed details of her 19th-century French fiddle, the interpretive process, and the value of playing second violin.

Campout planned on working farm Bear Branch Nature Center will hold a "Down on the Farm" campout from 8 a.m. Saturday to 4 p.m. Nov. 6. Participants will stay overnight in a lodge at Hard Bargain Farm in Accokeek overlooking the Potomac River. They will meet the farm animals and help with the cows, goats, chickens and sheep. A hayride on the working farm and hands-on tour of the National Colonial Farm, a nearby outdoor living history museum, will be included. A pre-trip meeting at 4:30 p.m. Thursday is required.

Ensemble concert -- World Artists Experiences and Maryland Hall will present the Vienna-based Merlin Ensemble in a free concert at 7 p.m. Sunday at Maryland Hall, 801 Chase St., Annapolis. The program will feature Dvorak's Sonatina in G, opus 100 for violin and piano; Bartok's Contrasts for violin, clarinet, and piano; Schubert's Rondo in B minor, opus 70 for violin and piano; and Stravinsky's concert suite from The Soldier's Tale for violin, clarinet and piano. Musicians include ensemble leader and violinist Martin Walch, pianist Till Alexander Koerber and Haruhi Tanaka (left)

Southern California trio Nickel Creek blends a multitude of instruments - guitar, mandolin and violin - to create its always morphing sound. The band, whose third CD, Why Should the Fire Die?, came out in August, has been performing together since 1989 and released its major-label debut in 2000. The group is at the 9:30 Club Sunday and at Rams Head Live on Tuesday. Tickets for the show at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. N.W., Washington, are $25. Show time is 6 p.m. Call 800-955-5566 or go to tickets.

Great political upheavals usually get the epic treatment in movies, which tends to flatten wholesale human suffering into cast-of-thousands backdrops for heroic stories of "one ordinary man's extraordinary courage." It's rarer that a film focuses on the effects of large-scale social cataclysms on individuals whose bravery consists of remaining resolutely human and true to themselves, and much more poignant. In Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, which he based on his own best-selling semi-autobiographical novel, two well-bred city boys are shipped off for "re-education" to a remote mountain village in the Sichuan province during China's Cultural Revolution.

The Tri-Factor jazz trio - Billy Bang, violin, Kahil El'Zabar, percussion, and Hamiet Bluiett, baritone sax - has a very big weekend coming up. They play at the Lincoln Center in New York City on Friday night, at An die Musik here in Baltimore on Saturday and at the HotHouse JazzFest Aftersets in Chicago on Sunday, in a celebration of 40 years of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. The Tri-Factor Trio is a kind of summit meeting of superb musicians. Various critics have named all three among the finest musicians in the country on their instruments.

You never know when lightning will strike, indoors or outdoors. Thursday night, it struck three times inside Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, heating up the place something fierce. The first hit came at the start of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's season-closing program, when Vadim Repin, one of today's most gifted and engaging violinists, took hold of Tchaikovsky's over-used Violin Concerto and injected fresh blood directly into its veins. Next came the premiere of a concerto dedicated to Repin and commissioned by the BSO. It did what precious few pieces of contemporary music do - light a fire under the audience.

Hardly anyone can resist tapping their toes to the music of Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), one of the most famous and important Italian composers of the Baroque period. His music is infectious, charming and impassioned. At 8 p.m. Saturday, the Candlelight Concert Series presents REBEL (pronounced "re-Bell"), an early-music ensemble in an all-Vivaldi concert of concerti and sonatas. The concert's title ("Antonio Vivaldi: Shades of Red") refers to the composer's nickname, the Red-Headed Priest, and also implies a vividness that will be apparent in the music and the performance.