Timothy Judd

A native of Upstate New York, Timothy Judd has been a member of the Richmond Symphony violin section since 2001. He is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music where he earned the degrees Bachelor of Music and Master of Music, studying with world renowned Ukrainian-American violinist Oleh Krysa. The son of public school music educators, Timothy Judd began violin lessons at the age of four through Eastman’s Community Education Division. He was a student of Anastasia Jempelis, one of the earliest champions of the Suzuki method in the United States. A passionate teacher, Mr. Judd has maintained a private violin studio in the Richmond area since 2002 and has been active coaching chamber music and numerous youth orchestra sectionals. In his free time, Timothy Judd enjoys working out with Richmond’s popular SEAL Team Physical Training program.

Schumann’s Dichterliebe: On a Radiant Summer Morning

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Let’s finish out the week and follow up on Wednesday’s post with more music for summer. Am leuchtenden Sommermorgen is the twelfth song in Robert Schumann’s Dichterliebe, Op. 48 (“A Poet’s Love”), written in 1840. The song contains some interesting harmonic surprises. The first hint of strangeness comes at 0:33. Then, we get an even bigger surprise around the 1:00 mark. The conflict of the opening chords returns unexpectedly at 1:45. Schumann’s music evokes the kind of mystery you …

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Three Pieces for the Beginning of Summer

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Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer’s lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,  And often is his gold complexion dimm’d; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature’s changing course untrimm’d; But thy eternal summer shall not fade  Nor lose possession …

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June is National Accordion Awareness Month

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  As unbelievable as it sounds, June has been designated National Accordion Awareness Month. It began in 1989 “to help spread the word about the resurgence in popularity of the accordion” and to promote education about the instrument, which originated in Berlin in 1822. When you think of the accordion, Polish polka bands, Lawrence Welk, or the tango music of Astor Piazzolla may come to mind. Additionally, if you’ve ever wondered what the accordion would sound …

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Schubert’s Mysterious Final String Quartet

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Slow down, maybe even close your eyes, and listen attentively to Franz Schubert’s hauntingly transcendent final string quartet, No. 15 in G major, D. 887. It’s one of a handful of pieces written in the final years of Schubert’s life that moves into strange, mysterious new territory. Schubert wrote this music in ten days in June of 1826, but it wasn’t until 1851 that it was published, posthumously. During the same time, Beethoven was completing …

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Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha

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A pop song about the prominent violinists of the day? It seems hard to imagine now. But around 1921 George and Ira Gershwin wrote Mischa, Jascha, Toscha, Sascha, a lighthearted ditty about four great Jewish Russian violinists who were well known at the time: Mischa Elman, Jascha Heifetz, Toscha Seidel, and Sascha Jacobsen. The lyric also refers to “Fritz” (Kreisler) and the legendary teacher Leopold Auer. According to biographer Charles Schwartz, George Gershwin enjoyed …

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The Wound-Dresser

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Thus in silence in dreams’ projections, Returning, resuming, I thread my way through the hospitals, The hurt and wounded I pacify with soothing hand, I sit by the restless all the dark night, some are so young, Some suffer so much, I recall the experience sweet and sad, (Many a soldier’s loving arms about this neck have cross’d and rested, Many a soldier’s kiss dwells on these bearded lips.) -Walt Whitman, The …

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The Mozart of Modernism

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It’s been estimated that 3,000 performance majors graduate from American music schools and conservatories each year, while there are only 150 to 269 yearly openings in full-time professional orchestras. To that end, recent advice from internationally renowned British architect Sir Norman Foster seems relevant, not only to music students but to all of us: Foster captured attention in the 1980s with his innovative design for the HSBC Building in Hong Kong, a …

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