Orange County Register, December 6, 1998 PROFILE: Her sexy album covers draw attention to Lara St. John, but so does her skill by Scott Timberg Canadian-born violinist Lara St. John got the attention of more than just the classical music cognoscenti with her first compact disc, "Bach Works for Solo Violin". Despite the standard-issue title and sturdy repertoire, this is the kind of music, conventional wisdom holds, that can be approached only after a long, full life, the way one would train for a lifetime to climb Kilimanjaro - the album cover was anything but conventional. It showed, instead, the youthful violinist topless, in dim shadow, with her strategically held violin her only protection from a viewer's leer. But while many assume that this was a premeditated way to draw attention and boost album sales, the pose - however arresting - just came to her. Whether misunderstood or not, the album helped launch the violinist in a major way; it has sold about 30,000 copies, an almost unheard-of number for a new record of classical music. "That was really just a fun bit at the end of a shoot," she says from her apartment on Manhattan's Upper West Side, the day before catching a plane for California. Most of the photo session, she said, had included "a lot of very traditional portraits," like old-fashioned head shots and pictures of her posing in ball gowns. But, she adds, "You loosen up at the end of a shoot." When the photos came back, St. John recalls, the topless shot was "by far the most interesting. It was an impression of aloneness that I thought was important for the music. Well, of course everybody took it wrong." Then, she adds, always the good sport: "Well, not everybody." Whether misunderstood or not, the album helped launch the violinist in a major way; it has sold about 30,000 copies, an almost unheard-of number for a new record of classical music. (Her second album, "Gypsy", which came out last year, shows her almost as scantily clad; this time it's her long hair, draped over a bared breast, that keeps the photo just this side of respectable.) St. John says her covers are always the first thing interviewers ask her about and that she doesn't worry much about whether it might make some people take her less seriously. "It seems to me that if anybody should take me less seriously, they might like, listen?" she says. And if the cover drew people to the record who might not otherwise know about her, so much the better, she says. Between her Web site and frequent tours, she hears from all kinds of people - a man in the Sudan, a farmer in Iowa, fishermen in small towns in Newfoundland - many of whom are being turned on to classical music for the first time and communicate an enthusiasm she rarely hears from New Yorkers. (Much of the press, too, has also been impressed with St. John's playing: The Chicago Tribune has praised her "superb technique" and "irresistible vitality".) "People will write and say, 'I didn't know anything about this music,'" and ask her for suggestions of other musicians or composers they might like. "Basically, if that's not a boon for classical music, I don't know what is." Restless as a Gypsy St. John has always wanted to do things differently. In some ways her biography is typical of Suzuki-bred kids who were handed instruments before they could climb out of the cradle. Raised mostly in Ontario, Canada, she began playing violin at age two, performed as soloist with an orchestra at age five and made her European debut in Lisbon as a ten-year-old. "I cannot remember a life without the violin," she says. "Whether that's good or bad I don't know. Since I grew up with the violin it's like an extra arm or an appendage." The Suzuki method - which advocates teaching children music through early exposure to an instrument - has made her a relaxed player who is familiar with the violin, she says. "As far as the psychological part," she says with a laugh, "I don't know." Here's where her life diverges from other diligent violin virtuosi and takes a path more characteristic of a restless pop star. Upon graduating from The Curtis Institute, a prestigious, all-scholarship conservatory in Philadelphia, she realized that her whole life had been concentrated, perhaps to the exclusion of all else, on music. "I hadn't really learned a lot about life." And she had the urge to make an unusual choice. "Everybody else was going to Bloomington (Indiana University) or Juilliard or something, but I wanted to do something different." So she caught a plane for the Moscow Conservatory of Music. "I was 17 when I went there. Everybody thought I was crazy. But at the same time they thought it was cool." Cool or not, within six weeks her teacher had defected to the States and the school's strict rules made it nearly impossible to change teachers. "So I just put the fiddle in the closet and traveled around Europe and learned Russian." "My best friend was a gypsy, so we used to go around to the caravan on the outskirts of Moscow, and I knew a lot of (gypsies) in Yugoslavia. To this day I know a lot of them in Paris; I go back to visit them every year." St. John says she has always been drawn to the music of gypsies. "It was a style that even as a young child I felt a real affinity for." She's drawn to more than just the music; it's a way of looking at life that appeals to her. "Sort of a, 'tomorrow may never come' version of life, and a complete outpouring of emotion." She points out though, that despite the title of her most recent record, her album is music inspired by gypsies - Bartok's "Second Rhapsody", Ravel's "Tzigane", the "Carmen" Fantasy, and some traditional gypsy numbers adapted by Ilan Rechtmann, who plays piano on the album - and not actual gypsy music. "Real gypsy music can get pretty weird - and it's mostly vocal," with little emphasis on the violin, she says. St. John's appearance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts is the second in the art center's Jose Iturbi Gold Medal Series; Wayne Shilkret, the center's executive director, describes the series as a way to build audiences and expose young and emerging artists. Shilkret, ironically enough, was one of those who initially judged the book by its cover: "I received the (Bach) album and I looked at the cover and I said, 'If they're selling this record, it's because of the cover.' And then I played the record and said, 'This is amazing...'"