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• Simon Hewitt Jones, Violinist

  English concert violinist. Asking essential questions about what's happening to music and the arts, and the role of the violin in contemporary world culture.

• Contact Me: T: +44 (0) 20 7060 0607 E: shj [at] courtlanemusic [dot] com W: www.courtlanemusic.com Instant: Message My iPhone

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It all starts at about 11.30am. I’ve arranged to meet a new student at the studio for a lesson. We walk upstairs together, and I push the key into the lock.

It’s jammed.
"That’s strange", I say, doing my best to combine polite only-just-met-you small talk with Urgent Mental Brainstorm Of What On Earth Might Have Happened.
I […]

But I hate being told what to do by older people, because it’s often rubbish! Seniority does not always guarantee wisdom… Especially if it is dated experience, closed to change. If my blog ever turns into a satisfied, one dimensional view of the world, then please tell me to wake up!
The best ways I find […]

THE FREDERICK MARTENS INTERVIEWS
LEOPOLD AUER
A METHOD WITHOUT SECRETS
from VIOLIN MASTERY by Frederick Martens

When that celebrated laboratory of budding musical genius, the Petrograd Conservatory, closed its doors indefinitely owing to the disturbed political conditions of Russia, the famous violinist and teacher Professor Leopold Auer decided to pay the […]

THE FREDERICK MARTENS INTERVIEWS
EUGÈNE YSAYE
THE TOOLS OF VIOLIN MASTERY
from VIOLIN MASTERY by Frederick Martens
Who is there among contemporary masters of the violin whose name stands for more at the present time than that of the great Belgian artist, his “extraordinary temperamental power as an interpreter” enhanced by a hundred and […]

I’ve been meaning to do this for ages: audio snippets of things I’m working on.
These are rough drafts - literally performed to a laptop with no edits - so you can’t download them, as the sound quality is inevitably not what you’d expect elsewhere. But it’ll give you a taste of things to come. Some […]

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There was a lot of attention in England recently to the sensational Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela.
(A video from their BBC Proms performance is here.)
A wonderful editorial in The Week magazine points out that the energy, pride, teamwork, long-worked-for skill and sense of belonging, though profound, is perhaps not the only reason for […]

When you next come across a violinist with an ego fit to burst, try this one on him:
"How is a string quartet like a bottle of wine?"
"The cello is the bottle, the violist and 2nd violinst are the wine, and the first violinist is the label!"
This old joke came to me whilst I was listening […]

I’ve received several requests from people who used to visit the old ViolinMP3.com website for access to the Frederick Martens interviews. These are quite an interesting set of old articles from nearly 100 years ago, with some key violinists including Kreisler, Elman, Heifetz, Thibaud etc., not to mention several less well known exponents of the […]