[Leica] My Cello

[Bernard Quinn]

This is a picture of my friend John Lemoine. He is an extremely talented violin maker who lives in Washington, DC. That is my cello he is working on. It is over three hundred years old. It was made in the Austrian Alps and it has a wonderful deep, dark, mellow tone. 

When you acquire an instrument like this it is made clear to you in a hundred different ways that you are not its owner, you are its custodian. Your job, along with playing it, is to make sure that it is preserved and maintained so that it can be handed off to the next generation to play and care for.

I am the care giver for a special needs cello. Many years ago John found an antique cello case in the garbage in New York. He fished it out, opened it, and found the abused and broken last mortal remains of my cello. He knew exactly what he was looking at. He took the pieces home and spent the next two or three years restoring it. My wife’s health problems and my back issues have kept me from playing recently. But now that I am retired and doing better I am going to give going back to it a try.

http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Barney/John+Lemoine.jpg.html <http://gallery.leica-users.org/v/Barney/John+Lemoine.jpg.html>

Comments and Criticisms Welcome!

Thanks,

Barney