Violin

John Blake figures that one of the most important points he can make when talking to youngsters is: Don't give in to peer pressure. Establish your goals as early as possible, he says, and go for it. Blake knows something about such matters. At age 12, residing in a tough part of South Philadelphia, Blake took up the violin and the study of classical music. Is this a cool move for a kid to make? In Blake's case, it certainly was. "I guess in a lot of neighborhoods - and I don't think it makes any difference if you're black or white - the violin is looked on as a, well, sissy thing," said Blake, who will appear tonight in the final concert of the free summer jazz series at Penn's Landing.

Consider the violin as an instrument of jazz, and pretty soon you will have little doubt that it adds quite a dimension to this form of music. Although several musicians play jazz violin - including local favorite John Blake - it is still a relatively rare sound in jazz circles. One is more inclined to think of the saxophone, piano or trumpet as a lead instrument. But the violin can be a potent tool. This is once again being made clear by Billy Bang, one of the newer violin virtuosos to take a jazz stance.

When Anne-Sophie Mutter played with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1984, she was a teenager in jeans and baggy sweater, reserved, guarded in her contact with anything but her violin - a butterfly just emerging from her cocoon. She returns tonight - one of the highest fliers in the music world, all trace of the cocoon lost amid the brilliance of this moment in her life - to play the Tchaikovsky Concerto with the orchestra at the Academy of Music. Now 27, and playing a tour marking the 10th anniversary of her American debut, she embodies the rewards of a world career.

The lower-pressure circumstances of Delaware County Community College agreed with the Philadelphia Classical Symphony in a Tuesday tryout concert showcasing the newly composed Wissahickon Scenes , in which Maurice Wright shows how Lenape-tribe melodies and the traditional violin concerto can mix. A rehearsal or two from now, the piece will be heard in a larger program at 8 p.m. Friday at Church of the Holy Trinity. As of Tuesday, though, it was well on its way, thanks partly to violin soloist Hirono Oka, in an intermissionless all-American evening with the relaxed sense of fun that music director Karl Middleman strives for but sometimes loses in his more sprawling programs.

MuChen Hsieh was praying for a miracle to find the $170,000 violin she left on a bus, and with the help of the Philadelphia Police, she got one. The 19-year-old music student left her prized violin - made in 1835 in Naples - on a Megabus she had taken from Boston on Tuesday. Hsieh, a native of Taiwan, is a student at the New England Conservatory of Music and attended high school in Philadelphia. She reported the loss to police, who called the bus company repeatedly.

Walter Kozowski, 79, a master violin maker who crafted more than 150 violins and 50 violas in the front bedroom of his rowhouse in Feltonville, died yesterday at Parkview Hospital. Mr. Kozowski suffered a brain aneurysm a week ago, and succumbed to the effects of the stroke. Born in Ukraine, Mr. Kozowski as a child loved music. He learned to play the mandolin, guitar and violin while living in the village of Rudnyki. To support himself, he learned the trade of cabinet-maker.

From the start of the Bach Chamber Music Concert by the Chamber Music Consort of Philadelphia last night, it was obvious the amount of time that performers Davyd Booth and Elizabeth Boggs had put into practicing together. Booth, on violin, and Boggs, on harpsichord, performed Bach's G major, B minor and A major violin sonatas. The concert, the first of five in the Bach series, was held at Christ Church, Second and Market Streets. Booth has a lyrical style, and his bow changes are liquid and seamless.

The baroque ensemble Philomel opens its 20th anniversary season with a program highlighted by concertos for four violins from a Vivaldi collection titled L'Estro Armonico. Joining the ensemble for these rarely performed works will be guest violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Lisa Weiss from San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra. Philomel violinists Nancy Wilson and David Myford will join Blumenstock and Weiss for the concertos. Also on the program will be Franz Benda's The Flute Concerto in E minor with Philomel's co-artistic director Elissa Berardi as soloist.

Franz Schubert's violin music sounds like a run of transcriptions - of songs, of piano music, even orchestral moments. It is at once idiomatic and foreign to the violin, and can be seen - and heard - as piano music with violin accompaniment. With all those contradictions, it is plain why the music doesn't often make its way into recitals. It takes a special occasion and setting to make the music possible, the setting that faculty recitals at Curtis Institute of Music offer.

Often lost amid all the exactitude issuing from conservatories today is the reason we make music in the first place. It's not about being able to play all the notes or play them in tune. Interpretation has to mean something if it is to be worth the trouble, especially since the trouble is considerable. How fortunate, then, must be the students of Miriam Fried, the violin pedagogue who teaches at the New England Conservatory. On Sunday night, for the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, she came to the Perelman Theater with one of her progeny - in fact, her prime progeny, pianist Jonathan Biss, who happens to be her son. Whatever their offstage dynamics may be, in terms of musical substance it was a performance of equals - if very different ones.

By Seymour I. "Spence" Toll After my 48 years of blessed marriage to Jean Barth Toll, pancreatic cancer swept her away in 1999. For all those years, and ever since, I have been a one-woman man. At the core of it was the appeal of her warm, gentle, and unpretentious spirit, with its unfailing kindness, deep friendships, and boundless capacity for our singular love. She had another delightful self. Although she could dress as tastefully as a conservatively clad fashion model, she enjoyed clothing that was not only old but beat up. She often wore a sweater in which her elbows poked out of holes in the sleeves.

JOSEPH SGRO, a South Philly guitar virtuoso who played for some of the most prominent band leaders and entertainment figures of past decades and who taught many local guitarists who went on to successful careers, died July 15. He was 94 and was living in a nursing home, but had lived most of his life in South Philadelphia. Joe Sgro taught mostly in his South Philadelphia basement, treating his neighbors to a steady stream of musicians eager to pick his brains, as well as their guitars.

Union Transfer boasts some of the best sight lines in the city, but even with the stage at Thursday's Andrew Bird concert in full view, you might have been tempted to crane your neck to see where he was hiding his orchestra. Even when he was alone at the microphone — or rather, microphones — with only a violin in his hands, Bird used loop pedals to layer swooping solos on top of sprightly pizzicato, seamlessly integrating snatches of styles ranging from the Wild West to the Middle East.

With his chin nestled against the violin and his right hand holding steady on his bow, Kolby Johnson tries to play an E note. "It's not quite high enough, so make sure your forefinger is on the tape. And you need a little more space in your hand," professional violinist Rebecca Ansel tells him. The sixth grader's next try produces a cleaner, higher-pitched sound. "That was good," Ansel assures the 11-year-old with the untucked white uniform shirt, who breaks into a smile.

When the two young stars from the Curtis Institute of Music were summoned to a hotel room, one by one, to try out some high-quality violins, they were met with an odd sight. The room was divided in two with white sheets, and the violinists were greeted by scientists wearing tinted welder's goggles. "It was very mysterious and kind of weird," said Nikki Chooi, a student at Curtis since 2007. Equally weird, by some reckoning, was what happened next. Chooi, fellow Curtis student Benjamin Beilman, and 19 others were asked to compare the sound of three modern violins with that from three made by the Italian masters: two by Antonio Stradivari and one by Guarneri del Gesu.

MuChen Hsieh was praying for a Christmas miracle - to find the $170,000 antique violin she left in the overhead compartment of a Megabus at 30th Street Station. The 19-year-old music student left her prized violin, on loan to her from a cultural foundation in her native Taiwan, on the bus after traveling from Boston. Hsieh, a student at the New England Conservatory of Music, had attended high school at Delaware County Christian Academy and was coming to watch her friends perform in a Christmas musical.

MuChen Hsieh was praying for a miracle to find the $170,000 violin she left on a bus, and with the help of the Philadelphia Police, she got one. The 19-year-old music student left her prized violin - made in 1835 in Naples - on a Megabus she had taken from Boston on Tuesday. Hsieh, a native of Taiwan, is a student at the New England Conservatory of Music and attended high school in Philadelphia. She reported the loss to police, who called the bus company repeatedly.

A 19-YEAR-OLD music student from Taiwan is frantically searching for a rare violin valued at $172,000 that she left on a bus from Boston to Philadelphia, police said Thursday night. The Megabus on which MuChen Hsieh was riding pulled into the bus area behind 30th Street Station around 11 p.m. Tuesday. "She forgot that she had the violin in the upper overhead compartment," said Lt. John Walker, of the Southwest Detective Division. After she was picked up by a Devon family hosting her while she is in the Philly area, she realized in the car that she was missing a very important - and very expensive - piece of luggage.