Lara St. John - Another Day in the Life of a Touring Violinist

Just another day in the life of a touring violinist - Not!

As I flew home to New York from Edmonton, Alberta, having just finished the season finale concerts of both Buffalo and Edmonton symphonies, I was exhaling comfortably in the thought that the big orchestral season - having, for me, gone more or less nonstop since mid January - was at an end and I could relax a bit and goof off some. I received a cellphone message as I arrived, that indeed this was not to be the case, that I must more or less turn around at home and get myself on a plane to Europe where there was a cancellation of a soloist with the chamber orchestra of a large city in a certain small mountainous country in the center of Western Europe (which shall remain nameless).

I went back out to JFK that night armed with melatonin, earplugs, and eye covers, knowing that the dress (and only) rehearsal was at 10 AM, an hour after arrival (and therefore at 4 AM my time). It would be important to sleep, I knew, and apparently was so fixated on this idea that I did not manage to sleep at all, despite drugging myself out and looking like a mummy.

I was picked up at ____ airport and was driven pretty much straight to the rehearsal, where I realized I was starting to feel a bit wonky. I asked to have a Coke, as I warmed up for 20 minutes, was duly brought one and was told that it would be 2.60 of the ______ currency. They in fact charged their guest soloist, who came in from overseas on a few hours' notice, and was trying to stay awake long enough for the dress rehearsal, for a Coke in the dressing room.

Well stranger things have happened, thought I, and watched as my change was carefully counted out. The rehearsal went fine, and I went back to the hotel to sleep a few hours before the concert. All went more or less like clockwork, until the concert, where, in the second movement (yes, the slow one) of the concerto, my E string broke (the Bruch concerto, by the way).

This not being the first time for such an occurrence, I turned around and took the concertmaster's violin, and finished out the second movement wondering what on earth it could be that he plays on, poor guy, since it sounded to me under the ear (and to a few friends of mine in the audience) like a pitiful sow crying out from within a tin box.

Obviously I thought it best to remedy this situation, and as the slow movement ended, I desperately tried to catch the conductor's eye to make it obvious to him that I wished to stop, restring my own violin, and continue thus forthwith. Well, he did not even glance at me, or wait even a millisecond before driving immediately into the opening tutti of the last movement.

At this point time somehow slowed, and the next 9 seconds seemed to last forever. In this odd slow motion I somehow felt rather calm, and turned around to the concertmaster, to make some sort of signal to him that I would have to keep his violin, much to both of our chagrins. To my surprise, I saw my own sweet Guad baby being passed up from hand to hand through the section with a gleaming new gold E string on him. I took my shoulder rest off the concertmaster's violin, passed it back to him, grabbed mine and discovered another shoulder rest on it, (meanwhile realizing that I had about 1 second to go before my entrance) took that one off and calmly watched it sail through the air to the floor as I was fitting my own on, and came in with the solo entrance just in time. At this point time restarted, and I was feeling rather pleased with myself that so far utter disaster had been avoided.

This pleasant self satisfaction soon turned to abject horror as I realized, in some sort of time-warp shock, that I sounded like shit. I had no idea what was wrong with myself but I had never sounded so bad or out of tune before in my life. I couldn't even generate any sort of tone from the usually powerful E string, and still having no clue what was happening (no longer being blessed with this Hannibal Lecter-ish stilled time) I decided to stop. It turned out that whoever had restrung my violin had somehow pegged it wrong and the E had just slid down, albeit not all at once, to somewhere around a C. As I played the two open strings to show to the conductor what was wrong, he gave an exasperated sigh and rolled his eyes to the heavens above, as though it were all my fault.

Amid confused murmurs from the audience of this great and sold out hall, I smiled; trying for gracefully; (probably more like a confused grimace) and re-tuned, starting the finale one more time and finishing, in the end, with no more mishaps.

The audience was very enthusiastic. Normally, the same strange impulse which brings a crowd to an accident is present in the reaction to a concert in which something goes wrong. It is as though they are presented with not just the everyday concerto, but also an obstacle course to watch and cheer the soloist through, sitting with bated breath to see what else will happen before the victorious finish line of the last chord.

Meanwhile all of the adrenaline and energy needed to get through all of that had forsaken me completely, and I could hardly make it on and off stage, let alone get through the encore I had to do. I finally slumped into the dressing room couch and sat talking to my two friends, both musicians, who had witnessed the whole debacle. "Why didn't the conductor stop!!?!???" was their opening remark, to which I could only shrug. Then the conductor's wife popped her head in, smiled graciously and told me that she hoped it would be better tomorrow.

Our jaws were still hanging open from that one when the violinist who had unwittingly sabotaged the peg of my instrument stepped in and asked for the string back, for me to take it off my violin so he could have it back, despite the fact that I had another concerto the next evening and had no other string. As soon as this was accomplished, some guy stuck his head in and informed me that in his opinion the really hard part of that concert must have been having to give the Strad back. I realized then that the concertmaster must have some sort of Strad that everyone there was very proud of, apparently to the point of being completely oblivious to the fact that the Guadagnini I play is a thousand times the superior instrument (obvious to anyone but the tone-deaf) and I weakly said that no, it wasn't hard. He seemed confused by this and backed out of the room.

The end of this whole story is that I eventually got a review titled "The Unperturbable Soloist" and the following evening's concert went great without a hitch, the orchestra ended up all being super nice and the conductor managed to at least half extricate whatever it is he has up him.