I'll tell my story in two versions: a short version and a (very) long one.

​

   -  My Story (short version):

I received my musical training in Germany. I studied violin performance at the University of  Music and Performing Arts in Munich, and I attended many master classes with eminent violinists, including Nathan Milstein, Henryk Szeryng, and Ruggiero Ricci.

​

I came to the United States in 1986 to attend Brown University, where I was the concertmaster of the Brown University Orchestra for all four years I attended Brown. I graduated from Brown in 1990 with a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature. I obtained my J.D. from Yale Law School in 1994. From that time through 2016 I worked as an attorney in Chicago, and from 2002 to 2016 I held an appointment as Lecturer in Law at the University of Chicago Law School and taught over twenty courses there. My two daughters studied piano, violin, and viola with me from age five to age 17. Both were highly successful in their musical endeavors.

​

Starting in 2017, I returned full-time to a life of music. I am principal violist and violinist in three Chicagoland orchestras, I give frequent solo and chamber music performances, and I maintain a substantial teaching studio, focusing on violin, viola, piano, and music theory. 

​

   -  My Story (long version):

I grew up in in Germany, and that's where I received my first musical impressions. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my parents -- both excellent amateur pianists -- playing Bach's last composition, the monumental Art of the Fugue, in a transcription for four-hand piano. And they always got stuck at the same places!

​

I studied violin with Antonio Mingotti, himself a student of famed violin pedagogue Otakar Sevcik, and later with Prof. Kurt-Christian Stier at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Munich. Master classes with violin virtuosos Nathan Milstein in Zurich (1983, 1987) , Henryk Szeryng in Geneva (1980, 1982, 1984), and Ruggiero Ricci in Baden-Baden (1983) were among my formative musical experiences.

​

Interlude: Stories from my Violin Master Classes

Not that these violin legends were necessarily great teachers. But we didn't pilgrimage to their master classes just to be taught how to play better scales in thirds, or get cool fingerings for a Paganini Caprice. We went for the experience of simply seeing the masters up close. There were unforgettable moments. Here are a few:

• We went to a pub with Ricci (who had the most brilliant technique of them all), where he proceeded to show how he could drink beer and play the violin (a Guarneri worth millions of dollars) at the same time! At heart, I think Ricci was almost more a fiddler than a classical violin player. In the pub there was a talented guitar player from Eastern Europe, and he and Ricci spent an hour improvising on traditional Eastern melodies. It was awesome!

• Ricci was not, musically speaking, quite on the same level as Milstein, Szeryng, or Oistrakh. He could be quite musically undisciplined, and he never cared to cultivate a radiant tone. [Historical side note: in his relative lack of interest in tonal gorgeousness, Ricci was a throwback to the 19th century, where people cared more about transcendent technical skills and focused less on tone -- as we know from recordings of artists who came of age in the 1800s. Some of them, like the soprano Nellie Melba and the violinist Eugene Ysaye, have a tone that is shockingly thin and unappealing to our modern ears -- and that's not due to recording technology! The foregrounding of tone, often veering into a fetishization of tone, started with the arrival of recording technology and the artist who, more than any other, helped popularize it: the tenor Enrico Caruso, whose golden voice recorded extremely well on the early equipment. His first "hit" recording dates to 1902! From Caruso and his female counterpart, the soprano Rosa Ponselle, runs a direct path to the violinist Fritz Kreisler, the dominant violinist of the first  half of the 20th century. Kreisler's absurdly beautiful and compelling tone made tonal beauty de rigeur for all violinists. Ricci is one of the very few great violinists who resisted the reigning tonal dogma. Another is the greatest violinist of our day, Hilary Hahn, who never foregrounds her (excellent) tone, never lets it take center stage, always subordinates it to her artistic purpose.]  But in his own special way, he was perhaps the most musically authentic violinist I ever witnessed. There was an honesty about his playing, a complete lack of pretense. One of my strongest musical impressions remains his rendition at the master class of Chopin's Nocturne in C# Minor, written originally for the piano and transcribed for the violin by Nathan Milstein (about whom more below). It had a simplicity and nakedness and rawness and depth that haunts me to this day. This recording may give you a sense of what I'm talking about.

• Milstein was a violin genius, but his explanations consisted mostly of saying, "don't worry about it, just play," and then demonstrating impossibly difficult passages with total ease and perfection, and always with that special Milsteinian grandeur. Was it instructive? Not in any conventional sense. More in the way that contemplating the Grand Canyon or the Tetons is instructive. One stands, marveling, before the Absolute.

• Milstein was harshly (sometimes brutally!) critical of almost every student's Bach playing, mainly because I believe for Milstein Bach was sacred. When a student -- a brilliant player -- set out to play the perhaps most spiritual of Bach's violin pieces, the Adagio from the C Major Sonata, we all sensed it wasn't going to go over well with Milstein. This piece is above all simple and needs to unfold on its own, and the student was interposing himself all over the place with inappropriate "expressivness." 30 seconds in, it was over. Milstein, furious at the student's immodesty, told him to stop, ripped his violin (the famous "Maria Teresa" Stradivari, today also known as the "Ex-Milstein") out of the case, slammed it on his shoulder, and without any transition began to play. It was magical. Milstein's angry energy went straight into the music. But as grandeur, not as anger. A sound arose that seemed to conjure up the majesty and space and stillness of an old Cathedral, like Chartres or Notre Dame. The miracle lasted not above 10 seconds. Milstein, a modest person not given to self-presentation, put his fiddle down, said, "that's how you play this" (he meant in terms of attitude), and called the next student. 

• On the flipside, when a student got done playing that beautiful soft D Major passage in the middle of the Chaconne (the last movement of Bach's D Minor Partita), Milstein stopped him and said, "Sir, are you a religious person? The way you played this, I thought you might be." That was the highest compliment to a person's musical integrity I've ever heard.

• Szeryng's approach was quite different. He would demonstrate often and at length. For instance, he followed a student's uneven performance of the opening passages of the Beethoven Concerto by simply picking up his Guarneri, playing the same passages with unfathomable mastership, and then saying, "that is how I [with emphasis] interpret the opening of the Beethoven Violin Concerto." It wasn't exactly teaching, but it was a divine moment nevertheless. The student took it with equanimity.

• Szeryng's combination of greatness, generosity, and a gentle approach to correction (you got played at rather than yelled at) had the odd effect on us students of making us feel quite uncompetitive with one another. He was so infinitely better than any of us that we all felt more or less equal before the master. Only once, in 1984, did something noticeably different happen. A young American boy -- he was actually 16 but seemed three years younger -- joined the master class, closely supervised by his parents. We didn't know who he was. The first piece he played in class was Mozart's Concerto in G. We looked at each other, mouths agape. Here was a great violinist, a great artist, not (yet) quite at Szeryng's level to be sure, but also not obviously below him like the rest of us. Well, that boy was Joshua Bell, who became one of today's greatest violinists. Szeryng, to his credit, did not cater to him at all but simply treated him with the same combination of gentleness, respect, and clarity as he did the rest of us.

• Szeryng was fluent in at least seven languages (Polish, Russian, English, German, French, Italian, Spanish), but perfection sometimes eluded him. He insisted on absolute silence during the master class sessions, and he would often ask in French (we were in Geneva, after all) for "un peu de silence, s'il vous plait," only to repeat the request in English: "could we have a piece of quiet, please." I held him in such awe that for years afterwards I thought that this was correct English!

• Szeryng had a huge tone. Probably the most powerful tone in all of violin playing. It came at you with tremendous radiance, like a laser beam. Well, every time he arrived in Geneva for the 3-week master class, he gave his violin, the great "Leduc" Guarneri (a picture of it is further down on this web site) to the excellent local luthier, Pierre Vidoudez, for cleaning and general maintenance. That took about two weeks. During that time, he played on an excellent 19th century Vuillaume. But his tone really maxed out the violin. When he turned it up, you sort of felt bad for the poor fiddle -- it seemed to burst at the seams. And then he'd get his Guarneri back. To say "what a difference!" doesn't quite capture it. We're talking different universes. The Guarneri sat there on Szeryng's shoulder quite unperturbed, and it seemed to provide him with infinite space, like a vast canvas on which he could paint his tonal pictures. Everything he put into it, the Guarneri would instantly translate into an enveloping sound of incomparable sweetness, spaciousness, and transparency -- while seeming to keep infinite reserves. It was eerie, like the laws of physics were being defied. You can get a bit of a sense of what I'm talking about from this recording, from around 4:00 to around 5:30. 

​

I came of age in the 1970s, a golden age of piano playing. During concert season, I went almost every week to hear pianists who set standards of musical and technical excellence unsurpassed to this day (to be honest, almost no one today gets even close). I always bought standing room tickets, but I almost always sat first or second row center. How? Well, I got to know the season ticket holders really well. They were all friends with each other, and they told me which of them wouldn't show up that night, so that's the seat I took. Worked like a charm!

 

Interlude: The Golden Age of Piano Playing

Here are some of the pianists I grew up hearing live, most of them many times, with links to videos of them that I especially love. Check them out, even if you're not a pianist! There's some great stuff here.

• Arthur Rubinstein

Temperament, drive, ferocity​, but always presented with dignity and a sense of proportion -- and the most sumptuous sound in all of piano playing. I heard him live once, in Strasbourg in 1973. I was 11. I remember an incredibly full sound, and a small man with a remarkably large head. For many decades afterwards, I associated Liszt's Mephisto Waltz, which concluded Rubinstein's recital, with that very special sound.

For a video of Rubinstein, I selected his rendition of Chopin's Ab Major Polonaise at a 1964 recital in Moscow. No one, other than Vladimir Horowitz, equals Rubinstein in this glorious and enormously difficult piece. Notice the combination of temperament, abandon, rhythmic drive, and heroic dignity. 

• Vladimir Horowitz

I often watch this video. The greatest of all pianists, a person of frightening passion and despair and inner conflict -- yet at the end of a long and tortured life he has found peace and something like happiness, and he shares his journey with us. I am very lucky to have heard Horowitz live five times: in New York in 1987 and 1980, London 1982, Paris 1985, and Hamburg 1986. I have many powerful memories. One is from the first seconds of the 1978 recital, the opening of Chopin's Barcarolle. I felt that in those bars Horowitz summed up the entire history of piano playing from Liszt to our time. The resonances of meaning that he evoked were uncanny. Two more vignettes: In Paris in 1985, he played the end of Scriabin's D sharp Minor Etude op. 8 no. 12 in a fortissimo so incomprehensibly dark and powerful that I thought the hall must burst. And he was 82 at the time -- a little old man with sloping shoulders! I later learned that the great Polish pianist Krystian Zimerman -- who was in the audience -- used to discuss that moment at his master classes. And in Hamburg in 1986, when I got up from my chair at intermission, an older man was standing there shaking his head and muttering to himself, "it's not possible, it's not possible." I asked him what was not possible. He said Horowitz's pedaling of a certain section of Schumann's Kreisleriana was simply superhuman. "And I should know!," he added. "I'm a professional pianist myself!" 

For a video of Horowitz, I selected his rendition of Schubert's Gb Major Impromptu at a 1987 recital in Vienna. In my opinion, this recital -- all of which was recorded and videotaped in Austrian television -- is the greatest complete recorded live performance of any pianist. Horowitz's interpretation of the Schubert is totally unique in its colorations and shadings, its atmosphere of Viennese charm intermingled with deep melancholy and bitterness, and its virtually motionless delivery which contrasts strangely with the extreme expressiveness of the playing. 

• Sviatoslav Richter

A giant of a man, he seemed to swallow the piano whole when he sat down. I heard him often in Munich and other cities in South Germany. I particularly remember his Chopin's F Minor Ballade in Tuebingen in 1978. The piano seemed to shrink under his hands to toy proportions. You seemed to experience the music from a bird's eye perspective, so complete was his architectural sense.

For a video of Richter, I selected his rendition of Schubert's early A Major Sonata. Richter loved Schubert, and by focusing his overwhelming physical and mental strength Schubert's seeming sweetness, he discovers the music's hidden abysses. Richter's playing is notably slow, but his artistic conception is so strong that the piece maintains its architectural integrity.

• Claudio Arrau

Arrau devoted his art to submission to the composer's will. ​I believe this helped him manage a flamboyant temper. The result was objectivity, insight, sublimated energy, mastership. In an Arrau recital you could relax. You knew you were getting pure music. He came to Munich every year during the time I lived there, so Arrau recitals were an annual pilgrimage. His tone, warm and grand, seemed to bathe the hall in a coppery light. I remember marveling at the perfect shape and structure of the sound emanating from the piano.

For a video of Arrau, I selected his  rendition of Beethoven's two most famous piano sonatas: op 53, the Waldstein Sonata, and op. 57, the Appassionata. These sonatas were mainstays of Arrau's repertoire, and he played them with unequaled drama, integrity, and analytic penetration.

• Wilhelm Kempff

Kempff was like a great British actor. He played Beethoven the way an Ian McKellen might play Hamlet -- performance, analysis, comprehension, knowledge, experience, and wisdom merge into a greater whole. You walked out enriched. He lived near Munich and often played there. Where Arrau's sound was massive and golden, Kempff's was light and silvery. Yet his musical conceptions, always delivered with lightness and a dash of humor, were, how should I say, gigantic in a spiritual sense. Kempff gave me two of my greatest musical memories. Without any thundering or histrionics, Kempff played the development section of the first movement of Schubert's Major Sonata D664 as an earth-shattering breakdown of the innocent beauty of the opening melody. And an encore he played in 1978, the F# Major Romance by Schumann, had such breath and spaciousness that the entire concert hall seemed to levitate. 

For a video of Kempff, I selected his rendition of Beethoven's Sonata op. 106, the Hammerklavier Sonata. It is the longest and most difficult -- both technically and musically -- of all of Beethoven's 32 piano sonatas. I think it is the most musically difficult piece in the entire piano repertoire, so vast are its architectural and emotional dimensions. The heart of this sonata is its slow movement, which eerily anticipates the music of Chopin and beyond. In this movement, Kempff simply has no equal. He sees more deeply, understands more wisely, and lets the music unfold more freely, than anyone else. This is one of the greatest interpretive achievements in all of recorded music. The slow movement starts at 11:38.

• Rudolf Serkin

There is something​ deeply ethical about Serkin's playing. Such love, such devotion to the music, such honesty and pure intensity, such modesty and disdain for showmanship. Some young superstars would do well to consider Serkin's art. He communicated his personality, warm, generous, consumed with love for music and conviction of music's importance, directly to the audience. I was very lucky to be part of a dinner invitation with Serkin once. He was sweet and modest, and kind enough to ask me about my violin studies. A wonderfully genuine, unfiltered artist and person!

For a video of Serkin, I selected his 1987 rendition of Beethoven's op. 109, 110, and 111, his last three piano sonatas. Together with Beethoven's op. 106 (see Kempff entry, above), they pose the ultimate test of a pianist's technical, musical, and personal strength and depth. Serkin rises to the occasion with a profoundly moving performance that vividly shows his absolute integrity and devotion to music.

• Emil Gilels

A great virtuoso with a spectacular technique​ and, with Rubinstein, the most beautiful piano tone of all of them, he sought to put everything he had in service of the music. You can see the intensity of his labor. I heard him only once, in the early 1980s. Other than in Horowitz recitals, I never heard such roaring, soaring bass notes. My most vivid memory is of the Finale from Schumann's Symphonic Etudes. The restraint and discipline he imposed on himself in his later career slipped a bit, and the young super virtuoso peeked out. It was spectacular!

For a video of Gilels, I selected his rendition of Schumann's piano concerto. Gilels's interpretation of this piece is unique in its beauty and noblesse. 

• Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

No one had Michelangeli's smoothness, elasticity of musical line, absolute evenness and clarity. Like polished marble. Like a Michelangelo statue! You sat in his concerts filled with gratitude that such perfection existed. The first time I heard him, I could not believe that the piano was capable of such a legato. He was quite moody. When he was not satisfied with his playing, he could treat the audience with visible disdain. But fortunately, he played in Munich every year, so there was always hope. Once, in September 1978, he was in spectacular form. We all felt, Michelangeli included, that this was an inspired evening. Our ovations led him to play no fewer than eight encores. It went on so long that they started turning the hall lights off. And still he played, concluding -- in half darkness -- with an impossibly atmospheric rendition of Debussy's Cathedrale Engloutie, the sound both roaring and utterly controlled.

For a video of Michelangeli, I selected his studio performance of Chopin's Grande Polonaise Brilliante in Eb Major. This is a fun, virtuosic piece with no pretensions of depth. Michelangeli plays the humor and sheer abandon of this lovely piece. But he does more. He reaches a genuine endpoint of pianistic perfection. Underneath the fun you can hear the utter seriousness of a pianist who came closer to perfection than any other before or since. I cannot fathom what discipline and suffering it must have taken him to achieve the degree of mastership displayed here. This video is a remarkable document, and I often listen to it just to be in the presence of absolute standards.

• Alfred Brendel

A late bloomer, equipped with a merely decent tone and technique, ​Brendel became one of the all-time great pianists through his intelligence and interpretive insight. And a wonderfully puckish sense of humor! My favorite Brendel memory is actually from a 1983 recital at Carnegie Hall in New York, where he played Beethoven's Sonata alla Tedesca op. 79 with a bone-dry humor that almost made one want to laugh out loud. 

For a video of Brendel, I chose a program entirely of Schubert piano sonatas, concluding with the sonata in Bb Major, one of the most beautiful compositions for any instrument. Brendel's achievement here is stunning. He lets the beauty and emotional immensity of the music emerge not by emphasizing emotion and aesthetic appeal, but by a radical focus on the musical text. This has the effect of liberating the audience from distracting intrusions by the performer, and instead allows us simply to listen to the music itself. The effect is powerful. You find yourself genuinely engaging with Schubert, without distractions. 

• Maurizio Pollini

He stormed onto the scene in the 1970s with technical brilliance, musical honesty, and an analytic-modernist sensibility. His devotion to musical objectivity was -- and is -- similar to Arrau's and Serkin's. At one of his recitals in the 70s, I had the best seat in the house -- on the podium, feet away from the keyboard, with no one in between and perfect view of his hands. He played Schumann's C Major Fantasy op. 17 and Chopin's Bb Minor Sonata op. 35, both with his incomparable combination of Michelangeli-like technique, Arrau-like devotion to the text, and his very own honesty and deep care for musical authenticity. It was a musical and pianistic feast. And after all this, several difficult Chopin encores, concluding with the monumental A Minor Etude op. 25 No. 11, which he played better than probably anyone on the planet since that time. 

For a video of Pollini, I chose his rendition of the Nocturne op. 27 no. 2 by Chopin. To me, this interpretation sums up what Pollini stands for: a burning will for integrity, an almost existential drive to serve the musical text and put all of his (huge!) intellectual and technical resources in service of the text. And interestingly, the texts upon which Pollini bestows this immense attention are very often the works of Chopin. Many pianists play Chopin grandly, excitingly, compellingly. I believe Pollini takes the tetx of Chopin's music more seriously than any other pianist. He never treats the music as a vehicle for technical or emotional display. This short video shows the essence of Pollini's approach.

• Martha Argerich

The mercurial genius of the piano from her rise in the 1960s to today. Wonderfully modest and self-effacing as a person, she is the last living true piano virtuoso in the tradition of Hofmann, Horowitz, and Lhevinne. ​Today she has no equal. I heard her twice in quick succession: at the dress rehearsal and the concert of her playing the Tchaikovsky Concerto under the baton of the excellent Kirill Kondrashin. Everyone, orchestra musicians and audience alike, fell under her spell. To this day, there are moments in her rendition of that Concerto that I cannot forget. Walking to the piano and playing ridiculously intricate things on it seemed for Argerich equally easy. Only violinist Nathan Milstein was Argerich's equal in terms of the naturalness with which she related to her instrument.

For a video of Argerich, I chose her 1977 rendition of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto. Vladimir Horowitz "owned" this piece in the first half on the 20th century. Since the 1970s, it belongs to Martha Argerich. Here you can see and hear why. The  great music critic Joachim Kaiser (more on him below) once said to me, "compared to Argerich's Tchaikovsky, all the others sound like flies stuck in honey." 

​

I learned immeasurably from my decades-long friendship with musicologist and literary critic Joachim Kaiser, one of Germany's leading public intellectuals from the 1950s to his death in 2017. Above all, Kaiser taught me the trenchant analysis and uncompromising standards that he believed should be applied to all things musical. From his teacher, philosopher and cultural theorist Theodor W. Adorno, Kaiser learned the existential importance of music and art -- not amusement or entertainment or diversion, but an activity of deepest ethical and political and human significance. Music really matters! That notion suffused all of Kaiser's work, and it's the central notion he passed on to me. I also learned from Kaiser that underlying even the most sophisticated interpretation and analysis of music has to be the sheer love of music, and a burning desire to engage with it. 

​

Interlude: The Man Who Knew Everybody

In the early 1980s, I met an older gentleman by the name of Edwin Bachmann, who was visiting Munich to sell some rare books he owned. He was a violinist, taught at the Curtis Institute, and served for many years as principal second violinist in the NBC Symphony Orchestra under Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957). Toscanini was by far America's most important classical musician and an absolute world superstar. In this video you can see Toscanini in action, with Bachmann to his immediate right. Toscanini and Bachmann were quite  close, and Bachmann visited him often. Apparently, he was not a lot nicer as a person than as a conductor (check out the recording -- he's genuinely scary!). 

 

In May 1983 I had the privilege of meeting Bachmann in his New York apartment on the Upper East Side, just a block or two from the Metropolitan Museum. It was perhaps the most fascinating single hour of my life. Bachmann knew everybody. He told me about playing chamber music with violinist Mischa Elman, who in my opinion had the most voluptuously gorgeous tone of all of them. And, Bachmann believed, the most perfect intonation. The Saturday before my visit, he'd had the Horowitzes -- Vladimir and his wife, the famous Wanda Toscanini Horowitz, the conductor's daughter, a prodigiously talented woman who put everything she had into fostering her husband's career -- over for coffee (they lived nearby). The previous February, Jascha Heifetz -- generally acknowledged to be the greatest violinist in the history of the instrument -- had visited Bachmann from Los Angeles, and they spent time together trying out violins. Jascha Heifetz! I couldn't believe it!

 

But there's more. Bachmann, it turns out, regularly played string quartet with Albert Einstein (yes, that Einstein). Bachmann said Einstein was a passionate but not very good violinist. He played out of tune and wasn't great at counting (!). I asked Bachmann whether he ever got a glimpse of Einstein's mental powers. Only once, he replied. Here's what happened. They were meeting at Princeton to rehearse (Einstein worked at the Advanced Institute there), and Einstein was late. The room they'd been assigned was much too small. They could barely get the four chairs and music stands into it, but there was no room for the people. Then Einstein shows up. He takes one look at the room, arranges the chairs and stands, and poof, everybody has plenty of space! 

 

Upon moving to the United States in 1986, I became concertmaster of the Brown University Orchestra, a position I held for all four years I attended Brown, and won several music awards. After graduating from Brown and Yale Law School, I worked as an attorney in private practice for 23 years, and for fifteen of those years I served as an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Law School. I also taught my two daughters piano, violin, and viola, and continued to perform on the violin and viola.
 

At the end of 2016, I decided to go back to my first love, and once again became a full-time musician. Since then, I've studied with viola virtuoso Elias Goldstein, as well as with Charlie Pikler, who for over 30 years was principal violist of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. I'm principal violist of several Chicagoland orchestras: the Symphony of Oak Park & River Forest, the Northwest Symphony Orchestra, and the Salt Creek Chamber Orchestra. Usually, I have a busy schedule as a soloist and chamber musician, though that's all on hold at the moment (April 2020). But what I love most is teaching, and I'm delighted and incredibly grateful that thanks to Zoom and related technologies, I can fully continue all of my teaching activities!

​

We live in a new golden age of violin and bow making. The first golden age came to an end approximately with the death in 1762 of Pietro Guarneri of Venice, Italy. What followed were nearly 250 years of mediocrity (that's not quite fair, but also not totally wrong). But in the last 30 years or so, things changed. Revolutionary technological developments have led to a burst of creativity among modern luthiers and bow makers. Today's luthiers make instruments that equal and sometimes surpass many of the works of the Old Masters -- and at dramatically more realistic prices. Yes, the 1743 Guarneri del Gesu violin that I had the privilege of playing recently at the renowned Chicago violin dealership Bein & Fushi is the greatest musical instrument I've ever interacted with. But at an asking price far in excess of $10 million, no ordinary mortal can remotely afford to buy it. So I sold my 1756 Italian violin and my fancy French bow. Today I play modern instruments and bows that are better than anything I've ever owned before: a 2015 violin by German luthier Martin Schleske, a 2014 viola by Vermont luthier Douglas C. Cox, and several bows by Indiana bow maker Michael F. Duff.

​