Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I used to be a musician. In my early years, it was my destiny, my fate, and my doom.

It was my destiny because of my mother. Her father was a music teacher and she herself played piano. She encouraged all her children to enjoy and play music, leading us in “kitchen band” sessions where we accompanied her rendition of “The Girl from Ipanema” with our percussion section made of pots and spoons. I showed an aptitude for it, and thus I graduated from a ladle-struck saucier to a real instrument: a violin.

Fate stepped in when it became clear that my aptitude was actually a talent. In addition to playing in school orchestra (back when every public school had a music program) I also began private lessons. These torture sessions–scales, arpeggios, the dreaded Kreutzer etudes–were held in the back room at a neighborhood music shop. The shop was a dark, cluttered space that smelled of rosin and slide grease. Instruments hung on the walls like hunter’s trophies, and the glass case was filled with paraphernalia of all kinds, from strings to reed cutters to mutes of all sorts. Mr. Meacham, my violin teacher, was a stern, unhappy man with curly grey hair and a prim smile that never reached his eyes. He set a very high bar which I approached but never met; it always seemed to be just out of reach, moving higher each time my skills improved. (more…)

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