Violin

David Garrett, whose fashion model looks have led him to be dubbed the David Beckham of the violin, will be lent a Stradivarius to play at a Valentine Day's concert tonight at the Barbican Centre in London. It will replace his own priceless Strad, which he accidentally smashed after a concert there Dec. 27. "People said it was as if I'd trodden on a banana skin," the German-born violinist, 26, told London's Evening Standard on Wednesday. "I fell down a flight of steps and onto the case.

It takes nothing away from Richard Vasquez's interesting article on women mariachis to note one error ("Women Are Spicing Up the World of Mariachi Music," Aug. 26.) Los Mariachis Uclatlan was not started by Mark Fogelquist. Donald Borcherdt founded it in 1961 as a performance study group of the UCLA Institute of Ethnomusicology. The founding members included a Javanese guitarron player who spoke no Spanish but sang so convincingly that Mexican listeners frequently mistook him for a countryman; a Japanese Imperial Court musician playing violin; an American elementary school teacher whose singing could give Lola Beltran a run for the money, and several other Anglos, including the undersigned on violin.

Duo Calabrese operates on a charming, even rebellious premise: exploring out-of-the-way repertory that features only the violin and the once flourishing, now rarely used 14-string viola d'amore. The question before the listener: Is it worth the effort? Certainly there was a wide stylistic range among the duos and solo pieces that the husband-and-wife team of John Anthony Calabrese (viola d'amore) and Gabriela Olcese (violin) dusted off at Schoenberg Hall on Sunday afternoon.

At first, officers at the Los Angeles Police Department's West Valley station thought it was a joke. But seeing was believing Sunday morning when a man named Sikowsky Baytoeben walked through the station house door and claimed a trumpet, a violin and $1,269 in cash, which he said he lost Saturday in Canoga Park.

The month was September, the year, 1946. Harold Dicterow, a former first violinist in the San Francisco Symphony and recently discharged from the U.S. Army, was auditioning for Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Alfred Wallenstein. Wallenstein offered Dicterow the post of principal second violin. "But, maestro," Dicterow recalls saying, "I've never played second violin in my life. I'm a soloist. I've always played first."

At 15, Midori Goto seems to be a normal, even typical, teen-ager who lives in Manhattan. A native of Japan, she attends high school in her Upper West Side neighborhood; studies algebra, French, English and history; has "a lot of friends" and enjoys shopping at Macy's. But she also has another life. A violinist since the age of 4, Midori--the single word is now her complete, professional name--came to this country five years ago to study with Dorothy DeLay at the Juilliard School.

It was the day after Christmas, and Eric Castro, a lawyer who also sings professionally, was warming up his baritone by running through trills and hums. After working hard right up to the holiday, wasn't he eager to have a day off? "To tell you the truth, it's a complete pleasure and honor to do this," said Castro as he prepared to sing arias inside a crowded living room where "jam session" took on a whole new meaning. Each Boxing Day since 1998, the Spanish Colonial Revival house at the end of a cul-de-sac off Los Feliz Boulevard has vibrated with the sounds of Handel's "Messiah," performed by as many as 125 choristers and orchestral musicians.

I l prete rosso himself--the red-haired priest, as Vivaldi was known to his contemporaries--might well have blessed the Parley of Instruments for its performance at Beckman Auditorium on Saturday. The Vivaldi program featured soloists Paul O'Dette, lute and mandolin, and Stanley Ritchie, Baroque violin, in a concert of familiar works in unfamiliar settings.