Philippe Quint (Arts Management Group)

During the 2005-2006 season, the Akron Symphony was led by candidates for their music director gig. These auditions were all musically satisfying. You’d expect that, since any finalist in such a selection process is going to have pretty good chops.

The October 2005 concert was given a further boost by the presence of a rising young violin soloist. He played Mozart’s Turkish concerto (#5) with a heady level of musicianship and precision.

This impressive fiddler was Philippe Quint. Since then his career has continued to blossom. In 2009, he recorded the Korngold concerto; the CD hit the Billboard classical top 20 in its first week on the market.

Now it’s taken an intriguing new trajectory. Quint has become an actor – at least for one film.

Downtown Express turns on the tension between the tux-and-tails world of the concert hall and the blue jeans attitude of popular music. Philippe Quint plays Sasha, a Russian violinist on scholarship to Julliard. From the time Sasha was a child, his traditional cellist father has been grooming him for a career on the concert stage.

But Sasha finds himself drawn to the gritty, raucous attitudes and rhythms of New York’s downtown music scene. Then he meets Ramona, a bohemian singer-songwriter. Soon he is a part of her band – and her life.

Afraid of his father’s censure, for a time Sasha tries to live both lives – the concert violinist and the pop fiddler. A crucial recital looms. Which path will he choose?

“I was instantly swept away by this story because it mirrored my life,” says Quint. He was born in Russia and defected to the US as a teenager, to avoid army service in Russia and to study with Juilliard’s Dorothy DeLay.

Many musicians have appeared in films as themselves or as famous virtuosi of the past. However, it’s not at all common for a classical musician to play a fictional character. To prepare for his role, Quint has been studying with producer and acting coach Sondra Lee.

Downtown Express is based on a true story. It was filmed on location in New York last summer (2010). Singer-songwriter Nellie McKay plays Ramona, the street musician. The director is David Grubin and the producer is Michael Hausman (Brokeback Mountain, Gangs of New York, Amadeus).

Does this mean an end to Quint’s concert hall careeer? Not likely, given the success that’s been bringing him. He has a full schedule ahead, including a 17-city US tour this month (February 2011) with the Cape Town (South Africa) Philharmonic; March 2011 appearances with the Wichita Philharmonic and at the Mexico Festival, Mexico City, where he is artistic director; and other performances in coming months with the Pacific Symphony and Minnesota Orchestra. In August 2011 he’ll play the Brahms Double concerto with Alisa Weilerstein in Mexico City, and appear at the Moritzburg Chamber Festival in Germany.

No release schedule for Downtown Express has been announced.

Further reading:

Downtown Express at the Internet Movie Database (IMDB)

Philippe Quint at Arts Management Group

The Vieuxtemps Guarneri del Gesu

What would you do if the tools you use to do your job cost you a half-million dollars?

This is the quandry that working musicians face. Responsive, sweet-toned instruments have never been cheap. Even 20 or 30 years ago, a good midrange historical violin would easily have cost an orchestra player a year or two’s worth of salary.

Since then, prices have soared. In 2006, a Stradivarius violin sold at auction for over US$3.5 million. This year (2010) a Chicago dealer is offering a Guarneri del Gesu once owned by composer Henri Vieuxtemps. The asking price: an eye-popping US$18 million.

Even for soloists of international stature, these instruments are simply out of reach.

The problem is that fine musical instruments are increasingly seen not as vehicles for musical expression, but as investments. They are slipping away from musicians and falling into private investors’ collections.

Thoughtful musicians treasure the living art from history’s great instrument workshops. They play them daily. They become one with these instruments. They share their art with us.

But increasingly, these artists are shut out. Many of those who didn’t or couldn’t buy – maybe I should say "invest" – in the 1980s or before may now never own an historical instrument.

What to do? For many, a modern instrument is the only answer. Fortunately, outstanding instruments are made in 21st century workshops all over the world, including right here in the US. And increasingly, students and those just beginning a career are turning to the world’s low-cost manufacturing center for help. Look inside the instrument, and the words “made in China” are on the label.

WKSU’s arts reporter Vivian Goodman recently spoke with musicians and instrument makers about the situation. Here’s her take on the story.

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Further reading:

The Mona Lisa of Violins in The Guardian

A Modern Strad in WKSU Classical

A Nation of Pianos and Pianists in WKSU Classical

A 1703 Stradivarius (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Nearly every accomplished violinist lusts after a Stradivarius instrument, but few will ever own one. The number of surviving violins from Antonio Stradivari’s workshop has been estimated at fewer than 700. Instruments are seldom offered for sale, and the few that are command stratospheric prices. In 2006, a Strad sold at auction for over US$3.5 million.

Not surprisingly, many modern instrument makers and researchers have tried to duplicate the sound of a Strad, or at least to determine its secret. No one has yet conclusively done either.

The latest to claim he’s built a modern Stradivarius is Francis Schwarze of the Zurich-based Federal Materials, Science and Technology Institute. His secret: mushrooms.

Schwarze asserts that treating the maple wood used for the violin with Xylaria Longipes mushrooms, which grow on the bark of trees, reduces the wood’s density and at least comes closer to mimicing the unique Stradivarius sound.

However, many other researchers have suggested that the wood used in Stradivari’s violins was actually denser than usual. Between 1645 and 1750, extraordinarily cool temperatures in Europe caused trees to grow more slowly.

Still other scholars attribute the instruments’ distinctive sound to Stradivari’s subtle changes in the shape of the instrument.

Perhaps Schwarze has indeed discovered a way to make a better-sounding (or at least different-sounding) violin. But has he really duplicated the sound of a Stradivarius? The jury’s still out.

Last month, violinist Philippe Quint got out of a taxicab in Manhattan – and left his four million dollar Stradivarius violin behind.

You might think, "This is not going to end happily." But it did. The next morning, Quint had his instrument back, and taxi driver Mohammed Khalil had a $100 tip. The city of Newark awarded Khalil a medal for his honesty.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Quint wanted to do something more for his driver. So, on Tuesday (6 May 2008) he gave a concert for Khalil and about 50 of his cabbie friends, at Newark Liberty International Airport, by the taxicab holding area, outdoors.

The drivers danced.

Read more (New York Times website; registration required)