violin

I am a bit of a music junkie, as many of you know. I absolutely love music - all kinds of music. I do have my moments of being picky, but slowly, I'm making my way into loving something from every genre. Polka still isn't very high on my list.

Over the past few years, I have tried my hand at a few different instruments. I started playing piano I believe around age 9, and played through my sophomore year of high school. I'm pretty rusty, but I still love to tickle the ivories whenever I'm around one. I got a guitar for my 21st birthday, and know a total of probably 10 chords. I still can't get my hand to form bar chords, but I also haven't really made a valiant attempt. I suppose I ought to keep working on that, hey? And then about 4 years ago or so, I decided to get a djembe. I was part of a young adult group at my church, and we had a couple djembes and djembe players. I started messing around with one, and got totally hooked on it! So, I purchased one and played it as a part of the worship team at church for about a year. I never really mastered it (though I did finally learn how to do decent rolls) but at least I could keep a beat, and I enjoyed banging around on it - very theraputic.

My newest love is the violin. Well, it's not really new, but more a revived love. I think movie soundtracks are what stoked this love. I remember hearing the music from Schindler's List and being totally overwhelmed with emotion. I hadn't even seen the movie - just heard the music - and I was entranced by the sadness the music conveyed. Just recently, I purchased an album by Hungarian composer Mihaly Vig (music from the films of Bela Tarr). There is one song on the album from Werckmeister Harmonies called "Valuska" (which is the theme for the main character in the film). The song is heavily carried by piano (which obviously, is my first love), but there are also harmonizing violins that make the song all the more beautifully haunting. I absolutely love this song, and the piano/violin combo are absolutely brilliant.

However, what REALLY made me dig the violin are two different people - the violinist for David Crowder's Band, and Todd Agnew's violinist. I've seen both of them perform live, and they TOTALLY get into it. It's so great. I remember hearing the song "Coming Toward" at the Passion '05 conference, and thinking "man, how cool would it be to be able to play violin!" Then, enter Todd Agnew's violin player. I could watch this guy for hours. He would get SO into it, so passionate while he played. To be honest, it looked like SOOO much fun - he was totally enjoying himself. I decided then and there, it was going on my "things to do before I die" list - learn to play the violin.

Well, as I currently do not have any cashflow coming in, right now is not the best time to look into renting a violin and lessons. However, stay tuned for further updates on the possibility of Tory learning to play violin. It may be in the works very soon.

Oh, and if you ask, I still don't know what the difference is between a violin and a viola. I WILL find out, I promise. I won't look like a dunce forever.

(image at http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gris/music/violin/gris.violin.jpg)