A trip to the Musical Instrument Museum in Arizona offered profound and uplifting insights into the human condition, and interesting results at an instrument blind test Do you get depressed watching the news and reading Facebook? Does it feel to you that the world is imploding, with cultures at war, nations fragmenting, and ancient hatreds resurfacing? Well, I have just the tonic for you. Last week I went to Phoenix, Arizona, to give a talk at the Musical Instrument Museum, a

I'm currently reading this charming book about Guarneri 'del Gesù', written in 1974 by Leonard Wibberley. I found it on a bookshelf and didn't realise it's actually supposed to be for children (imagine a children's book about lutherie – it had to be the 70s!). So it's very readable, in a quaint sort of way, although it presents rather a dark view of the great maker. He's drawn as a violent drunk whose instruments sound good but who could never be bothered to finish them nicel

A couple of weeks ago I interviewed Arnold Steinhardt, leader of the Guarneri Quartet for 40 years, for the Cozio website. Steinhardt is articulate and warm, and he doesn't need an interviewer asking questions to draw him out – indeed, his Key of Strawberry, is one of my favourite blogs and his endearing wisdom should be read by all students and lovers of music. The Cozio article is about the instruments he's owned over the years and Steinhardt is forthcoming about how he fel