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

Facebook just kindly reminded me that two years ago today I was in Sarasota, Florida, enjoying the La Musica Festival, and tasting wine – in the name of research, of course. Here's the blog I wrote for The Strad, in April 2013: I’ve taken part in a few violin blind tests in my time, but yesterday evening I experienced my first wine one, as part of the La Musica chamber music festival in Sarasota, Florida. It was billed as an Old World, New World exploration, with six wines in

I discovered this tirade in a seminal string pedagogical work: 'It is most regrettable that our present-day instrument-makers take so little trouble with the finish of their work. (Most instrument-makers, it is true, work nowadays merely for their bread, and in one respect cannot be blamed. People demand good work and pay little for it.) And what is more, each works away according to his own notions and his fancy, without justification for either one or the other... They all