The Adventure for a Violin

A great deal has happened in the last week but I’m going to focus this post on the conclusion of my quest to find a violin, a saga which began in October when I mentioned to Rod (the Fulbright music professor/student) that I wanted to play and learn some Moldovan folk music. He found out that one of his teachers, Diana, had a violin at her house that her husband didn’t really need. His name is Marin and he’s a fantastic professional musician. When I was home for break I opened up the book “Playing Moldovans at Tennis” by the British comedian Tony Hawk and saw Marin’s picture in there. He has traveled around the United States, Canada, and Europe playing with various groups and he performs at the popular restaurant for tourists “La Taifas” in Chisinau every evening. I’ve seen him play there a couple of times.

So anyway, Diana and Marin told Rod they would be willing to let me rent the violin during my stay here but they didn’t have a case for it. Not wanting to pay $70-$80 for a new case which seemed to be the going price in Chisinau, we put off getting the violin for months. Last week a student at the music school tipped Rod off to the costume shop in another building of the arts school that might have an old empty case I could buy. We went to this building which would be absolutely beautiful if it weren’t so run down. Rod helped write a grant proposal to the US Embassy to provide funds for its renovation so hopefully that will pan out. We ventured inside and after walking around for a bit we found the costumeria. In my best Romanian I told the lady that I wanted to buy a used violin case and asked if they had any around. She was very nice to us and closed down the shop to lead us up the rickety staircase to another room upstairs in which we found a variety of dusty old cases. After some discussion, she agreed to let Rod sign out the case since he is a student at the music school so he left his information and I was able to take a case home for free. Good deal.

The next step was to go to Marin and Diana’s house to pick up the violin, and we did this yesterday. Marin met us on the street and took us to his home which is very nice and located about a 10 minute walk from where I lived when I first got to Chisinau. When we arrived we were greeted by Diana and their two daughters who are 4 and 18. Marin pointed out to me that my case is actually for a viola. Whoops. They gave me a towel to wrap the violin in and that worked but I’m going to buy a nice, legitimate violin case for it to give it back to them in when I return the instrument in June. We both played the violin and it sounded great so I was very happy. After that Diana served us lunch of zama (a traditional Moldovan soup) and mamaliga with baked apples for dessert and, of course, lots of homemade wine. We’re in Moldova after all, she said. During the course of lunch their son came home and I realized that I had met him before at the ultimate Frisbee event put on by Winrock. Chisinau has been feeling like a very small world lately. Immediately following lunch and tea we sat down and watched a video of Marin playing at this big Jewish festival in Krakow. It was really incredible. There were musicians from Moldova, Germany, Poland, the US, and some other countries I believe playing all kinds of instruments and doing improvisations. I’m trying to find the video right now to post but am not having any luck. At any rate, it was very impressive.

Rod asked Marin about buying a book of Moldovan folk music he had been wanting to pick up, so Marin immediately called the guy who compiled this book of 1000+ melodies and said we could go to his house right away to buy the books directly from him. We walked to his apartment which turned out to be in the same complex that I had lived in. A bit of a surprise. Turns out this guy is a pretty famous musician/conductor but is quite old now, not in very good health, and is a bit of a pessimist as Marin mentioned. He brought out the books for us and gave us a couple of cds of his music as souvenirs. After Marin told him that I play violin, he took out an old violin for me to play and then he played himself. For some reason listening to him play made me emotional and I felt like I might cry, then I noticed when he put the violin down there was a single tear rolling town his cheek. It was a pretty touching moment. He autographed our books and then we left. Quite a day.

Another interesting note is that when I had my Romanian lesson I told my tutor about the guy and she said that he used to be the director of the Moldovan folk orchestra that her father is the director of now so they know each other well. Seriously a small world.