“The thing Andréa Tyniec wants is not to come last,” writes Ian Brown in Monday’s (9/24) Globe and Mail (Toronto) reporting from the Canada Council’s triannual Musical Instrument Bank contest. “For more than a week, the country’s most promising string players have been vying for the right to borrow a priceless instrument, at no cost for three years, from the instrument bank. The contest is down to 13 finalists for 13 violins. If Tyniec comes last, she is stuck with what is left. If she wins, she has first pluck of the bank, which includes three Stradivarius violins—some of the oldest and therefore best violins left on Earth, coveted handmade anachronisms in a technologized world because they can make a musician feel music in a way nothing else can. … The winners will be announced on Sept. 26. In the meantime, the finalists each have an hour alone to play the 13 violins lined up on a shelf on the second floor of Geo. Heinl & Co., the downtown Toronto music shop where the instruments are stored, repaired, tuned up and maintained.”
Posted September 26, 2012
