Lara St. John

Naturally, I was a bit of a curiosity, being the first hydrogen peroxide ingestion patient they had ever seen.

I am very lucky and grateful to have this living link to a past era, the violin presumably having much more history to it than the later portion that I know.

I thought that maybe it is not so much, as he seems to think, that the world loses interest in female performers after they hit a certain age, than the performers lose interest in the world.

Ergo, because of the money problem, it is probable that our orchestras will soon go down in quality.

However, the thought hit me that this was a pretty pathetic way to kick the bucket - being accidentally poisoned during a photo shoot, of all things - and I started weeping at the idiocy of it all.

Normally, the same strange impulse which brings a crowd to an accident is present in the reaction to a concert in which something goes wrong.

Another thing: despite my youthful appearance, I am quite capable of making decisions.

What is classical music if not the epitome of sensuality, passion, and understated erotica that popular music, even with all of its energy and life, cannot even begin to touch?

The concept is basically; that the pieces we know and love are made up of scales, arpeggios, and the like.

Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.

I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.

And apparently things like a Vindaloo curry are out for the rest of my life, or at least a long time.