I sat on my Guru's Stradivarius
by Bencasso Barnesquiat
Title
I sat on my Guru's Stradivarius
Artist
Bencasso Barnesquiat
Medium
Drawing - Pastel Drawing
Description
There once was a horrible happening. An event I will forever cringe in mortified horror in every aching muscle and cell of cellulose in my ass. I sat on my guru's strad when I was at the San Francisco Conservatory. I was 21, and my room mate Graeme Jennings of Arditti String Quartet fame (they're like the European Kronos Quartet), and former first violinist with my string quartet Rilke String Quartet, was up at Mark Sokol's house in Sebastopol playing a concert of all of the Carter String Quartets, a Carter modern music marathon, and he had left his music on top of his car and drove off with it.l. I got a frantic call from him asking me to look for and bring his music up to Mark's place (Mark was the first violinist with Concord String Quartet) before the pre concert rehearsal. I wen't out to look for the music, and it was all blowing around on 19th Avenue at half past rush hour am, I dodged cars to collect all of the pages, and stepped on the gas pedal to make it to Mark's house about half way into the Rehearsal. Mark and Julian Hersh were in the house, and Paul Hersh was practicing his viola part. I came in to listen to Paul play, he was my viola teacher. I went to the couch, and weary from my death defying collection of the music on 19th Avenue, and the hurried job of driving an hour to deliver Graeme's music, and didn't notice the Stradivarious on the couch when I dropped my ass down, there was a fucking loud snap, I jumped up as fast as I could, and turned to see my mentor and idol and guru's strad with a broken bridge and marks where the strings had hit the body face of the strad. Oh my fucking god I cried. Luckily, it wasn't totalled. There was only minor damage to the priceless work of art. From then on, whenever Mark would see me in the hallways of the Conservatory, he would yell down at me "Hey Ben, how's your fucking ass?!" after a semester of hearing him say that, and joke realize he was joking, I got used to it, and stopped apologizing profusely whenever he would say that, He liked to get a rise out of the chamber music groups he would coach. What an awesome man he was. I have two recordings of my string quartet playing pieces he coached us on. The Lyric Suite by Alban Berg, and the Brahms Piano Quartet. They are on spotify, itunes and amazon music. Just search Rilke String Quartet. You'll thank me after you hear the performances, or maybe, you wont, but they're available, and I could use the support. Thanks for reading my story.
Uploaded
January 26th, 2022
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