Grillin'

One of the cellists in the opera orchestra had a housewarming barbecue tonight, Sunday being the musicians' Saturday. It was a great little party, plenty of stuff to grill, lots of beer and cocktails.

What this party had that most other barbecues lack was a $4 million Stradavarius violin. I'm not sure why, but someone had it in transit from a dealer in New York to a buyer somewhere else, and brought it to the party. To begin, people were playing it in a bedroom at the back, and not knowing what it was, I thought it was just uncontrolled music geeking. Then it got brought out into the kitchen, and passed around. It surprised me how hard it was to have a converstaion about anything else while anyone was playing it.

I played a few open strings and a scale, and I think they were the nicest sounding notes I've ever played. So warm and clean, and so consistent all the way up the strings, and from the low to high strings. Sigh...