[Leica] RETROSPECT 116

[Brian Reid]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_Antonio_de_Jesús_Alvarado

On 2020-04-21 7:32 pm, Bill Clough via LUG wrote:
> In 1980, on a cultural exchange assignment to Guatemala, I was paired
> one evening with the first-chair cellist of the Guatamala City, Mr. 
> Manuel
> Alvarado. In high school, I held first chair cello in the orchestra, 
> but I
> never learned how to read music. My mother was a trained concert 
> pianist,
> so I had her play the music and then I played it mostly by ear. At the
> start of my senior year, I was hit with a sight-reading challenge and I
> went from first to fourth chair in 20 minutes. I looked at the class
> schedule and discovered the same time period for orchestra was a 
> journalism
> class. The rest is history. I told Mr. Alvarado the story. After 
> dinner, he
> asked me to play his cello. It had been 21 years since I had held a 
> cello.
> It took me 15 minutes just to get the fingering for scales. “You have 
> music
> in your soul,” he said. “Let me show you something.” He got a 
> flashlight
> and illuminated the inside. I had been playing scales on a 
> Stradivarius.