To earn a living as a classical musician meant that either you got a regular paycheck in an orchestra or you traveled around as a soloist or a featured artist, performing with the regular orchestra or at festivals and giving master classes to less-experienced students. Depending on the festival—Interlochen, Bridgehampton, and Aspen were very competitive and highly sought after—he could make bank as a featured artist, and the more fee-based master classes he taught, the better. More to the point, the more he played, the more chances that bigger venues—Powell Hall, Carnegie Hall, or the Chicago Philharmonic—would want him to solo with them.
The obvious way to get your foot in the door was to apply to the festivals, but nobody ever just sent their application in: it was all who you knew. Luckily Janice had been teaching and performing for the past thirty years—many performers she’d worked with now were festival organizers; many of her students went on to set up classes and teaching programs. Over the past months, she and Ray had reached out to her network and set him up for the summer to play, judge competitions, and start networking. Janice was a powerful force, convincing them that Ray was a talent not to miss while they could get him. Plus everyone in the industry had heard about the Strad, so his summer was already packed. Flying everywhere and being picked up by drivers or town cars took some getting used to. Janice convinced him it was worth it. He was actually saving money.
Coaching younger players and getting paid for it would be a new experience for him, and he looked forward to sharing what he could, especially with students who didn’t have the advantages—the nice instruments, the private coaching, the effortless travel to work with a big-name teacher—that wealthy students often possessed.
On one of his rare trips home, he found another white business envelope awaiting him.
Mr. McMillian,
We are getting concerned that we have not heard from you, and that troubles us. Do you require any assistance setting up our violin’s return?
Please continue to take excellent care of our family violin until such time that we or our representatives can retrieve it. I know our great great great grandfather would approve of your playing his violin for a short while longer.
We would prefer not to hire a lawyer, or go to the media, about this. It’s a private matter and we want to work it out among ourselves. Please either call or email us at the numbers below at your earliest opportunity.
Sincerely,
Andrea Marks
He tossed the letter in the drawer with three others from the same woman. Our family violin. And: I know our great great great grandfather: somehow the specificity of the number of greats unnerved him—as if she spent fifteen minutes counting, to make sure she got the number right.
After Christopher Newport University, they were off to four other colleges in the next two weeks, and then up to Michigan’s Interlochen Music festival, where he taught three master classes, played a recital, listened to some of the finest musicians he’d ever heard, and earned $9,000.
Later that night, his mother texted him. She rarely texted these days, unless, as now, she wanted something.
Mom: where u
Ray: Michigan music festival
Mom: How much you make
He didn’t answer but sent more money to her and to Aunt Rochelle for distribution to the family.
The money he was sending did not seem to appease his family. As the summer stretched closer to fall, emails or texts dripped in regularly from one or another of them, asking how he was doing and when his next big payday would be. He wondered if they were coordinating among themselves, as if they were afraid he’d forget them. Little chance of that. He tried to keep a running tally of how much he was sending them—it was well over $10,000, and easily more than half his take-home pay.
In Goldsboro, North Carolina, he judged the solo festival at the Academy of Performing Arts, where local students from the surrounding area performed solos for ratings, later in the afternoon. Besides judging, he would also give a master class to a handful of students. But first he and his fellow judges were assembled in the auditorium. He introduced himself first to Jessica Deitcher from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He’d seen her perform when he’d been in school. She was a self-proclaimed musical prodigy who always played the exact same program year after year.
The other judge, Henry Mason, the conductor from the Wake Forest University Orchestra, was equally taciturn. He was a short, heavyset man with jet-black hair that smelled like shoe polish.
Ray wasn’t uncomfortable sitting on a judging panel with these two. He was clearly just the Token Black, a guy with no talent and no discernment, and absolutely not worthy of listening to. What a pity that he just happened to own one of the most expensive violins in the world.