Stephen Fine

Old thread, but I'll add that my former student plays a spectacular Tossani made after the Mahler. Like this one: https://www.alessandrotossani.it/en/strumenti/viola-2016/

All my freelancer friends have already lost thousands of dollars of work. As you can imagine, "thousands of dollars" is a lot of dollars for a classical music freelancer. I haven't canceled lessons yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if I'm not teaching online in a week or two. Public Service Announcement: If you have a fever, isolate yourself. If you're in the USA, COVID-19 tests are mostly unavailable; if you're in a low-risk group and you have a high fever and a dry cough, you should try to tough it out like you would the flu. Stay home. Get rest. Drink fluids. If your symptoms worsen, try to get a doctor over the phone. You're doing everyone a HUGE favor by isolating yourself. BUT, People with mild cases often crash. It is extremely important to stay in daily contact with a health professional over the phone, just so you're being monitored.

Tax laws have made this somewhat true. But the bubble is also brought on by globalization. Huge numbers of new investors in China and India. On the other hand, there is so so so much good affordable modern art on the market. It's similar to the violin world, I think. Prices are inflated in some areas of the market but there's also very high quality art priced correctly.

I sometimes mistake portato and portamento for each other (as uncle duke has done here). Portato is the bow stroke. Portamento is the shifting technique.

Obsession with Chocolate. Clever little joke. And a nice rendition of the Ysaÿe. Weird video (that it exists). I want to know if she's actually obsessed with chocolate... I wonder if there is also some ASMR crossover. PS- she is actually obsessed with chocolate. And there's more, from her website:

There are no hard and fast definitions here. People will use expressive terminology differently. That being said... good sound means "even tone". (The bow is running parallel to the bridge, the bow speed and pressure are appropriate for the contact point.) sound color refers to timbre

Some students come in to lessons with me with a strong musical intent, and some do not. You must be doing something very well as a teacher if your students are coming to you not only with good intonation and rhythm, but also with ideas about phrasing. Your tone was fine. But I do think he deserves some defense. Along with Mimi Zweig, Kurt Sassmannhaus is a giant in the internet violin pedagogy era. He's put a huge amount of high quality free violin lesson stuff online and has dedicated his life to teaching. But I feel like it's only by chance that I know that... so, no, you weren't supposed to know it. But maybe before maligning someone, google their name first. Yes! Yes!

Interesting. I guess I teach it all at once too, but for beginners and advanced students both, my goal is for them to show up to the lesson playing the assigned music in tune and in rhythm and from there we can work on the musical subtleties. And memorization follows naturally in my experience as well. I don't "teach" memorization. Once a student has something memorized it's much easier for me to tell them something like, "Keep your eyes on your contact point," or, "Let's try that again, but stronger." He literally called the well-respected teacher with an endowed chair (previously held by Delay) an "anonymous fool." I've never met the guy and I haven't watched too much of his teaching, but at the very least, he's not anonymous.

Taking moveable DO to new extremes.

I can't imagine that Sassmannhaus is telling students to memorize before learning. I think you have misunderstood. First, you learn the piece (intonation, rhythm), then the memorize it, then you work on subtleties of color. I think this advice is for beginners learning easy repertoire. Sassmannhaus is the author of the Bärenreiter violin education series for children. It's quite similar to Suzuki/O'Connor in that it's progressive and aimed at children. I've just started using it for the first time this year, so far, I love it. I have a student who is zooming through Book 1. Kurt Sassmannhaus is not an anonymous fool. He's a prominent German/American pedagogue with decades of experience and results.

It's a bit of a checklist. (It leaves out the first implied question: Am I standing with good posture?) Am I playing in tune? Am I playing in the right rhythm? Do I have it by memory? Once you have those locked down you're ready to start thinking about how you're using the bow (how much bow, where the contact point should be, articulations, etc. . .)

Surely you've never heard Freiburg Baroque play? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLj_gMBqHX8 PS-

Total Dollar

To be honest, I didn't recognize Zukerman. He looks good for his age. Kirshbaum is my favorite too.