The Strad: Celebrating Humanity through the Viola

“Have the patience with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like closed rooms, like books written in a foreign language.” -Rainer Maria Rilke  

All my life I have lived with the question: why the viola? When I began at age ten it was simply a way to help my school’s orchestra; at age 16 it led me to fall in love feverishly with quartets of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven while also falling in love with lifelong friends. In my 30s and 40s, I was in the midst of raising a family alongside raising young violists. Now at age 50, I feel ever more like a student, a kind of archeologist of my own life, looking both inward and forward. My desire is to use the viola as storyteller, a bridge to connect people and cultures, a medium to serve music as medicine. 

Read the full article on The Strad’s website here.