Welcome to my

ViolinMusicSite

Harris Shilakowsky, violinist: Holiday Music for Violin

Boston is rich with great schools, world-famous performance organizations, and a constantly evolving scene in which violinists participate. Though this website won't be limited to the Boston scene, I will draw deeply on the expertise, poetry, creativity and humor of many of the resident participants in the violinistic world of New England.

After 40-something years of playing the violin, its time to share some of what I've figured out about this whole business of expressing yourself through a wooden box with wires stretched over the top. Maybe I can get other violinists and music specialists to share what they've figured out, too.

You figure it out. Its not all about just what your teacher says it is. Although, that's certainly the point from which you start the journey. Tradition, like the song from Fiddler on the Roof... that's what we learn from first. I'm a classical violinist, but its true for a fiddler too. Someone passes the info...passes the torch to you. Here's how you turn a phrase. Here's how you hold the violin. This is how you must stand....how you must vibrate, hold the bow... "to press or not to press, that is the question..."

So, your teacher's now got you producing a passable sound, and your playing pretty well in tune, and it seems you can read notes and pretty hard rhythms well. But you're still...well...still just playing. Your music isn't 'pushing peoples' buttons' the way (enter the name of your favorite famous violinist in this space) does. What gets us onto that bridge across the starry divide? How do we transition towards Artistry with a capital A?

Back to the teacher. Or not just any teacher. Its got to be the one that made you change your feelings...not just your technique. With me, my first real change was with the same person who als got my technique happening; Leo Panasevich of the Boston Symphony. Out went the slouching violin. Along with better posture came a solid fingering approach. The fingers became hammers instead. Power and strength crept into my playing. Then the piéce de la résistance; "play with fire" he told me one day. I was probably working on the Dance Espagnol by Da Falla, or something romantic. Whatever it was, the image of the fire danced behind my eyes forever after. My playing was never the same after that one comment.

Others came after. Great ones. Nancy Cirillo taught me that I must develop my own sense of good taste. that was scary. I suddenly realized that I had no idea what taste was. I hadn't a clue what the great authorities on violin playing had decided was in good taste. So I tried imagining it. Dreaming it up, figuring it out. And then I went to the conservatory's record library (I went to NEC before they had a lot of CD's. Most everything was LP's then) and listened to all kinds of different versions of the Beethoven Violin concerto that I was working on and found common ground between my own 'tempo comfort-zone' and the ones I listened to. Between Heifetz and Zukerman and Oistrakh and others I found Grumiaux and decided that was it for me.