Sickness, Limbo, and Amazing Grace

Last Saturday my friend Ken Greider died of brain cancer, and yesterday I played this arrangement of Amazing Grace at his memorial service. Ken, the grandfather of one of my students, went above and beyond all conventional measures to support his second grade granddaughter's violin habit. He listened to her practice, gave her excellent instruments, gifted her with nifty violin accessories, and took her to concerts. He built her a music stand, and then, one day, he built one for me.

It's the music stand I use every day to practice. I just now took all the music off so that I could take these pictures and share them here:



Yesterday afternoon there weren't any reports of Coronavirus in our part of the state, so I felt fine about playing for the memorial service. I still did my best to keep physical distance from people, which is very difficult in a memorial service. I played a couple of pieces with my student that I arranged for violin and viola, and I played this arrangement of Amazing Grace that I made for the occasion (and am sharing here for other people to play).



You can find it in PDF form this page of the IMSLP.

In the evening, shortly after the memorial service, Michael and I played for Shabbat services, and I said Kaddish for Ken. It was a very lovely community/musical experience.

This morning we learned that someone had tested positive with Coronavirus in the local hospital last night.

The schools and universities in Illinois are closed now, all my orchestras have prematurely ended their seasons, and the St. Patrick's Day concert I was planning to play with John David is cancelled. Rehearsals for all my ensembles will have to wait for a time when we know we are all safe from the virus. Thank goodness I can give my students their lessons using FaceTime. I am hoping that they will use their time off from school to do some good practicing.

Even though there isn't a concert to play on Tuesday, I still have scales, etudes, and music to practice. And I know that there will be a time in the future when life, musical and otherwise, will return to normal. In the meantime there are books to read, movies to watch, blog posts to write, and I have a new piece in the works (and time to work on it). I also have excellent company here at home.