He picked the pink rose out of its glass of water, opened the door, and walked out into the lights.
* * *
—
A week before Christmas, the 60 Minutes piece ran. He was the final segment.
Janice: I JUST SAW YOUR FACE ON MY TV
Aunt Rochelle: Sugar this is so exciting!!!!!!!!
And dozens of others who’d seen the teasers and were sitting at home, waiting. He was in Erie, holding Nicole’s hand, about to watch himself on her TV while a half dozen of her friends and a couple other orchestra members perched on chairs, leaned against the walls, or sat cross-legged on the floor.
He’d had no performances booked for most of December and had spent the time in Erie with Nicole. When he’d learned the airdate of his segment, Nicole asked if she could throw him a watch party. It was a chance to meet her friends, too, so he agreed.
The trademark ticking clock of 60 Minutes: 7:42 p.m. Anderson Cooper’s face, and Ray recognized the background: the Chicago Symphony auditorium, lights ablaze, seats empty.
“When you think of classical music,” Anderson Cooper began, “you might think of bewigged men in frock coats playing to ladies in hoop skirts in nineteenth-century drawing rooms. Nothing could be further from the truth today.”
And there was Ray’s face, on the screen, eyes closed, violin uplifted, playing the Mendelssohn Concerto. The camera panned back. The tuxedo twinkled.
“Ray McMillian—his full name is Rayquan, but don’t ever call him that—is one of the most unlikely musicians today,” Anderson Cooper said. “It’s hard to understand his rise to stardom. Most musicians who are in the top ranks learn classical music from a very early age, with private lessons and special tutors. They go to rarified schools like Juilliard or the Manhattan School of Music. Most of them are not people of color. Ray is an exception.”
The piece went on, talking about how Janice had offered him a music scholarship, about how his single-minded devotion made him the top violinist at Markham University, playing doggedly on a beat-up fiddle that his grandmother had given him.
Cut to Anderson Cooper’s interview with Janice as they walked around the Markham grounds.
Anderson went on, “What makes Ray even rarer is that he’s Black. Go look at any orchestra in any city in America and you’ll see the faces onstage are overwhelmingly white.”
Close-up shots of various symphonies, of white musicians.
“In fact, in all major American orchestras, only 1.8 percent of musicians are Black. The number jumps to about twelve percent if you include all people of color. Ray’s story is unique only because he’s more talented, and more single-minded, than many others—and he found a teacher who nourished and supported him.”
The crowd in Nicole’s apartment roared with sympathetic laughter, clapping Ray on the back or high-fiving him.
Cut to a heavyset guy walking down a Charlotte street. Ray didn’t recognize him. “Yeah, Ray and me were buddies,” the guy said. His voice sounded familiar. “We bonded over the violin. That guy couldn’t get enough of it. He loved it. I used to give him pointers.”
Anderson Cooper’s voice-over: “Growing up, he had few friends—except Mark Jennings, another violinist in orchestra, who told us how devoted and disciplined Ray always was.”
Mark Jennings? The racist? Before Ray even had a chance to process this, the piece was moving on.
“And then something unlikely—one of the most extraordinary events in recent music history—occurred. You’ve probably heard the story, since it made headlines. It turns out that the old fiddle he played, the one his grandma had given him, was actually one of the rarest instruments ever made. A Stradivarius violin.”
Shots of Cremona, a brief discussion of Stradivarius violins: “Experts tell us that Antonio Stradivari made about 650 violins, but only 244 have been accounted for—make that 245.”
Interview with Ray, which he’d done in the Chicago Symphony dressing room, trying to look relaxed and calm with the lights glaring in his face and Anderson Cooper sitting across from him asking questions. The makeup woman had to stop the interview several times to blot at the sweat on Ray’s hairline; afterward, under his tuxedo jacket, his pink shirt had been soaked.
“The violin is valued at somewhere between ten and twelve million dollars,” Anderson went on. “It’s a Cinderella story—or it should be. Instead, Ray McMillian has found himself mired in lawsuits contesting his ownership of the violin.
“The first is from his family, who believe that the violin should rightfully belong to them.” Shot of four people: Thurston, Larry, Joyce, and his mom, sitting in what Ray recognized as Joyce’s living room.