Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Quotation of the day for April 13, 2010

The Quotation Of The Day Mailing List

Quotation of the Day for April 13, 2010



"I remembered an extraordinary musical performance at a tiny AIDS hospice in Thailand, during a tour by violinist Maxim Vengerov in his role as a cultural ambassador for UNICEF. Vengerov took out his Stradivarius violin and played to the audience of fifteen - including visitors - with all the energy and concentration that I had seen him give to a packed Sydney Opera House a few months earlier. He played a fugue by Bach and the music seemed to take on a life of its own. It floated around the bed where a young soldier lay: his AIDS was discovered after a sergeant beat him so badly his intestines fell out. And it rested for a moment on a little boy whose hill-tribesman father was HIV positive, and who would soon be an orphan. It swirled gently around a middle-aged woman with purple blotches on her arms, and an old man, so weak that he couldn't even raise his head.

. . .

"It is the secret of knowing yourself and your materials so well that you can wrap your life's experiences into the very body of an instrument, just as a true musician puts his or her life experiences into the playing of it, as I had seen at the hospice. And when both elements are right, then together - maker and musician - you can persuade your violin to sing and cry and dance the orange."

- Victoria Finlay, from Color, A Natural History of the Palette.

Submitted by: Kathleen Magone
Mar. 5, 2010

Shopping through our Amazon links supports Quotation Of The Day. Find
Victoria Finlay
at Amazon.ca.

Visit our Amazon.ca store
Find
Victoria Finlay
at Amazon.com.

Visit our Amazon.com store