String Instruments

What we like: A Main Line musical institution for 51 years, the Bryn Mawr store is the place for beginners through professionals in need of sheet music, electronic tuners or vintage instruments. The acoustic guitar showroom is humidity-controlled, and the large selection includes new and used electric guitars, amps, basses, banjos, mandolins, and string instruments dating to the late 1950s. You can rent or buy band and orchestra instruments including violins, clarinets, baritones and drums.

It's been a couple of years since the Ridge String Quartet played in Philadelphia, and in that time the group has changed radically. Now it's a trio called the Ridge Ensemble, and only one original member remains - violinist Robert Rinehart. Rinehart and the new members played Monday night at the Convention Center, exhibiting an impressive sense of cohesion that even much more senior groups sometimes lack. Most confident in Faure's Piano Quartet No. 1 in C Minor (Opus 15), in which they were joined by Philadelphia pianist Cynthia Raim, the musicians made a great effort to match phrasing, articulation and sonorities.

William Harry Moennig 3d, 73, owner of one of the most prominent string-instrument shops in the world - Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman and other famous musicians sought his services - died Thursday of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Started by his grandfather, William Moennig & Son Ltd. at 2039 Locust St. has been a Philadelphia institution since 1905. But that does not do justice to Mr. Moennig's pedigree in the world of classic string instruments.

Voices is a good name for Jennifer Higdon's new quartet, given its first performance by the Windham String Quartet at the Convention Center on Wednesday night. For even as it stresses the commonality of four string instruments, Higdon's deft writing encourages individual voices to emerge, then couple in compelling patterns. Voices shows a fine sense of counterpoint, and the manner in which this young composer uses her forces to convey emotion is considerable. The piece opens savagely, energy bristling on a collision of closely clustered notes.

The Kronos Quartet is now as much of a musical tour guide as a string quartet. The standard four instruments of its basic ensemble have been increasingly augmented by prerecorded tape and amplification as the group extends its scope into world music and indie pop, and that's what dominated the group's concert Saturday, part of the Kimmel Center's Fresh Ink series. Musical and geographic borders were crossed into Iceland and Palestine - to name a few. Such augmentation is fine if the total package is compelling - usually the case Saturday, though in limited ways.

When Clarence Mercer was a boy, in the 1930s, his family and others would gather to dance to fiddle music handed down through generations of Chester County farmers. "It was what my father called old-time music," Mercer said recently. "They had music that was unique to this area, and the fiddle was the most popular instrument because it was small, you could carry it around, and it was a good lead instrument. " Mercer's father and other fiddlers formed the Chester County Old Fiddler's Association and began holding summer picnics where they played their traditional songs.

All composers create. A few invent. Connecticut Yankee Charles Ives pioneered a polytonal style, Californian Harry Partch made unique operas with his own odd instruments, New Yorker John Cage organized noise into concept-music. And who before West Virginia-reared, Philadelphia-claimed George Crumb would electrify a string quartet that also plays with water? Three sets of stemware are bowed by the violinists and violist in the quartet Black Angels (Thirteen Images from a Dark Land)

People who think the craze for original instruments started 10 or so years ago might be surprised to learn that the idea took off earlier in Philadelphia. A lot earlier, in fact - in 1929. That's when the American Society of Ancient Instruments was founded. For the conclusion of its 64th season, Sunday afternoon at the Old First Reformed Church in Old City, the group brought out some rare viols from its collection. Viols form a group of instruments related to the strings we know today, but these 15th- to 18th-century cousins are distinct in some important ways.

Vanessa Jackmon, 11, always wanted to play the violin. But it was a distant dream. Few of the children in the gritty confines of Camden's Roosevelt Manor housing project, where she lives, have the money for such lessons. But recently Vanessa's dream came true. With a broad grin on her face and her hair pulled back into a bushy bun, she screeched out a halting version of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" on a new violin. The song came to halting life under the watchful eye of instructor Elizabeth Thomas, a viola player with the Haddonfield Symphony, who coaxed F- flats, E's, G's and D's out of the ecstatic youngster.

Two sales next weekend will appeal to the nimble-fingered. One involves violins, pianos and other musical instruments. The other features magician memorabilia, including several trick devices, from a less-than-famous sleight-of-hand artist. The magician memorabilia will be offered by Robert H. Clinton at a sale beginning at 9 a.m. next Saturday at the Warwick Township Fire Company banquet hall in the Bucks County community of Jamison. It comes from the estate of the late Robert J. Heiney, a native of Allentown known on stage as "Trebor the Triky Trixster.

Clifford Roberts, 57, a master craftsman who created beautiful violins, violas, and cellos, died Monday, Sept. 6, at his home in Bella Vista from a rare neuromuscular disorder. Mr. Roberts' instruments are owned by members of the Juilliard and Mendelssohn String Quartets, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and several other ensembles. Soon after he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1990, John Koen bought a cello from Mr. Roberts. When Koen played it for a former teacher of his at the Curtis Institute of Music, David Soyer, "he approved because it was loud, and David liked loud," Koen said.

Barry S. Slosberg Inc. will offer words and music next week with two major sales - one devoted to books, the other to musical instruments and accessories. The books, from the library of the late West Chester collector Paul Rodebaugh, will be auctioned beginning at 6 p.m. Thursday at the gallery, 2501 E. Ontario St. It is the second session of the liquidation, with at least one more session planned for May. The top lots among the more than 250, about half of which also will be made available at www.liveauctioneers.

The Kronos Quartet is now as much of a musical tour guide as a string quartet. The standard four instruments of its basic ensemble have been increasingly augmented by prerecorded tape and amplification as the group extends its scope into world music and indie pop, and that's what dominated the group's concert Saturday, part of the Kimmel Center's Fresh Ink series. Musical and geographic borders were crossed into Iceland and Palestine - to name a few. Such augmentation is fine if the total package is compelling - usually the case Saturday, though in limited ways.

What we like: A Main Line musical institution for 51 years, the Bryn Mawr store is the place for beginners through professionals in need of sheet music, electronic tuners or vintage instruments. The acoustic guitar showroom is humidity-controlled, and the large selection includes new and used electric guitars, amps, basses, banjos, mandolins, and string instruments dating to the late 1950s. You can rent or buy band and orchestra instruments including violins, clarinets, baritones and drums.

William Harry Moennig 3d, 73, owner of one of the most prominent string-instrument shops in the world - Jascha Heifetz, Isaac Stern, Itzhak Perlman and other famous musicians sought his services - died Thursday of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. Started by his grandfather, William Moennig & Son Ltd. at 2039 Locust St. has been a Philadelphia institution since 1905. But that does not do justice to Mr. Moennig's pedigree in the world of classic string instruments.

If Jenna Shedd wanted to point to the sky and declare "I'm No. 1!" who could blame her? The modest Pennsbury junior is unlikely to deliver such a display or demonstration. Besides, Shedd's hands usually are too full to point. Chances are, she's either holding a tennis racket and ball, or violin and bow. In addition to being the Falcons' first singles player and the recently crowned champion of the Suburban One League Patriot Division, Shedd is the first violin in the Pennsbury orchestra.

Maverick cellist Matt Haimovitz has successfully tested the communicative boundaries of J.S. Bach by playing that composer's unaccompanied cello suites at the Old City folk music club the Tin Angel over the last year or so. Intentionally or not, he put the club itself to the test on Friday: Having cultivated a sizable, attentive audience at the club, his more sonically complex program with the Miro Quartet challenged the congenial Tin Angel to meet...

The carefully distressed aesthetic of the Tin Hat Trio is something you either buy into or you don't. In classical music, it's all about the polish. And so by guesting with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia on Sunday afternoon at the Perelman Theater, the Tin Hat and its menagerie of acoustic instruments introduced a foreign set of rules, which basically declared that when it comes to instrumental sources and their range of sounds, "funky" is just another name for expression. So much so that when Carla Kihlstedt picked up a glass bottle, I thought she might be getting ready to blow a pitch set across its rim. No, she was only taking a swig before settling in to a rather magical arrangement for the Chamber Orchestra's strings and Tin Hat's celesta, guitar and accordion of "Willow, Weep for Me. " Kihlstedt, conservatory-schooled, is a virtuoso violinist.

Two sales next weekend will appeal to the nimble-fingered. One involves violins, pianos and other musical instruments. The other features magician memorabilia, including several trick devices, from a less-than-famous sleight-of-hand artist. The magician memorabilia will be offered by Robert H. Clinton at a sale beginning at 9 a.m. next Saturday at the Warwick Township Fire Company banquet hall in the Bucks County community of Jamison. It comes from the estate of the late Robert J. Heiney, a native of Allentown known on stage as "Trebor the Triky Trixster.

Regina Carter has not heard the Wu-Tang Clan's "Reunited," but she has heard a lot about it. The song was one of hip-hop's most talked-about cuts of 1997, and one of the reasons it aroused so much interest was that the violin, played by an uncredited but very skilled musician, was an integral part of the tune. "I was talking about that a little while ago with [saxophonist] Courtney Pine," said Carter, a violinist who will perform at Zanzibar Blue tonight and Saturday. "That was nice because it exposed a whole group of people to the instrument who would not necessarily listen otherwise.