Montage Art, books, diverse creations

18 Chapter and Verse 19 Off the Shelf 20 Image Blogger 21 Entrepreneurs’ Evangelist 22 Open Book 23 Voicings: John Adams

presenting child prodigies and [its] administration was very wary of the idea when I pre- sented it,” Zander said recently. “But after the one rehearsal, a woman who had been playing in the orchestra for 25 years came up to me and said this was the most beautiful Mendelssohn Concerto she had ever heard. In Stefan’s playing there is a burn- ing honesty, an au- Stefan Jackiw thenticity, that is performing a Saint- very rare; his play- Saëns violin concerto ing is natural and Strings Prodigy with the Harvard- Radcliffe Orchestra in informed by di- Violinist Stefan Jackiw mixed concert tours and college life. Sanders Theatre rectness and sim- RICHARD DYER plicity, yet at the by same time it is noble and aristocratic.” At 21, Jackiw still looks like a teenager. usical debuts rarely cre- Jackiw (jack-eev) appears headed to- His appearance is striking—his father is of ate front-page news any- ward the most prominent performing ca- Central European origin, his mother Ko- more. But when violinist reer of any Harvard string virtuoso since rean. His manner is friendly, candid, and Stefan Jackiw ’07 made his Yo-Yo Ma ’76, D.Mus. ’91. Already he is unassuming, casual but also marked by a first appearance in London, playing about 35 concerts a year with im- certain reserve. It is clear that an internal Mplaying the Mendelssohn Concerto with portant orchestras and conductors across compass directs him, and that an internal the Philharmonia Orchestra back in 2000, America and abroad. gyroscope keeps him steady on the journey. there he was, his picture on the front page -based conductor Benjamin Zan- “I started playing the violin when I was of the Times. The review inside compared der, a regular guest with the Philharmo- four,’’ he said over a recent lunch in Har- Jackiw to the legendary violin prodigy nia, knew Jackiw from the New England vard Square. “Family friends gave me a Yehudi Menuhin—inevitable, no doubt, Conservatory (NEC) Youth Philharmonic small instrument that their child had out- because although Jackiw was only 14, he and took the young violinist to London. grown. I started with Suzuki lessons at was already a seasoned professional. “The Philharmonia is not in the habit of the Longy School of Music here in Cam-

Photograph by Julie Y. Zhou/Harvard Crimson Harvard Magazine 17 MONTAGE bridge, and I simply kept at it. There was Second Concerto by Henryk Wieniawski. early in the day and usually tried not to no watershed moment when I decided He had just turned 12, but his physicist par- take classes that met in the morning. And that I wanted to be a musician. Instead, it ents ( teaches at MIT, So- then I practice before dinner—and after- was a gradual thing. The better I got at Young Pi at ) did not push wards!” playing the violin, the more interesting it him forward as a prodigy, he says. He played He began as a psychology concentrator, all became.’’ a restricted number of concerts, gradually but switched to music. “I ran into di∞- Jackiw worked with Zenaida Gilels at enlarging his repertoire. Most of his cur- culties with the psychology de- NEC until he was 12, when he started rent performances are with orchestras, partment because I had to miss a studying with the great French violinist but he also plays recitals and cham- midterm exam [to play] a con- Michèle Auclair. Gilels gave Jackiw a se- ber music. This season, he performs cert that had been scheduled cure technical foundation; Auclair “was nine di≠erent concertos; he has before I became a student,” he picky and demanding,’’ Jackiw recalls, tried to add one a year to his reper- explains. “The bottom line was adding, “but that was what I needed toire—Beethoven, for example, is that [the professor wasn’t] then.’’ For the last few years, he has stud- new. He plays an instrument by Vin- that understanding, and could- ied with Donald Weilerstein, former first cenzo Ruggieri crafted in 1704 in Cre- n’t do anything for me, so violin of the Cleveland Quartet. “Mr. mona, the center of Italian I got a zero on that Weilerstein doesn’t listen to my études. violin-making. As he de- midterm.” Instead he understands what I want to scribes its characteris- The di∞culties express and we work on trying to make it tics, he seems to be de- did not entirely clearer, more convincing, more personal.” scribing his own: cease when he In high school, Jackiw played in the “The sound is pure transferred to Youth Philharmonic under Zander’s di- and clear. It isn’t ag- music, because rection and appeared as soloist with the gressive, but it is Harvard’s mu- orchestra on tour, but he didn’t covet the full of colors.” role of concertmaster. “That was his own decision,’’ Zander recalls. “He wanted to It wasn’t easy learn more about music and to meet other for Jackiw to young musicians. They realized that align his sched- something was going on here that was in ule with the re- another league, but didn’t resent him— quirements of they loved him for it. The minute he academic life. For would finish rehearsing for one of his one thing, he prac- concertos he would immediately go and tices six hours a day, his sit in his chair in the orchestra—for him, “number-one priority. I playing a Brahms Symphony was no plan my academic sched- di≠erent from playing a concerto.” ule around my practice ses- Stefan Jackiw’s first professional appearance sions,” he explains. “I do my Jackiw came with the Boston Pops in 1997, in the most productive practicing

Steve Plank hopes to learn who Myers and Pappas are republish- said (as he puts it),“We should each ing (www.perkunaspress.com). conduct our lives in such a way that Chapter & Verse if everyone were to do the same, Correspondence on not-so-famous lost words “error for chance” (March- the world would be a better place.” April). Fred Shapiro, editor of the Yale Book of Quotations (see Tilden Euster requests a definitive “Where turtles moan their loves” “Harvard in Epigram,” January-Febru- source for the following remark (which he (January-February 2002). Karen Myers ary, page 84) reports that the YBQ data- has seen attributed to Justice Oliver Wen- and Nikos Pappas identified this frag- base includes “Regulation [rather than dell Holmes Jr.): “The man who does not ment of a poem from Isaac Watts’s col- “planning”] is the substitution of error know his options doesn’t have any.” lection Horae Lyricae (1706). The first for chance,” attributed to Fred J. Emery, verse runs: “Come, lead me to some former director of the Federal Register, Martin Levine seeks guidance: “James lofty shade/ Where turtles moan their in Paul Dickson’s The Official Explana- Thurber, in his delightful ‘Wild Bird Hickok loves;/Tall shadows were for lovers tions (1980). and His Friends,’ writes of French dime made;/And grief becomes the groves.” novels set in le Far-Ouest: ‘I hope that I shall The text, set to music and titled “Soli- Send inquiries and answers to “Chapter recall them, for anodyne, when with eyes tude,” appears in a shaped-note tune- and Verse,” Harvard Magazine, 7 Ware too dim to read, I pluck finally at the coun- book, The Virginia Sacred Musical Reposi- Street, Cambridge 02138, or via e-mail to terpane.’ What’s he echoing?” tory (1818), by James M. Boyd, which [email protected].

18 July - August 2007 Photograph by Don Hustein MONTAGE sic department is not performance-ori- ented. “I took Robert Levin’s chamber- bling, a struggle Moncreiff inter- music seminar four times,” Jackiw says. estingly puts into legal context. “Some of the music faculty have been Off the Shelf very excited about my career, others not. Havana: Autobiography of a Recent books with Harvard connections Some gave me extensions, others argued City, by Alfredo José Estrada ’80 that other students were not missing (Palgrave Macmillan, $24.95). classes and there was no reason to make Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman’s Novelist and editor Estrada tells vivid- an exception for me. There have been Skiff, by Rosemary Mahoney ’83 (Little, ly the history of his hometown, from some tricky moments, but I have man- Brown, $23.99). “I am not afraid to die; I Columbus to Castro. aged to combine the academic work with simply do not want to. Nevertheless, I am what I want to do, which is to practice also a person who is drawn to doing The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the and perform. I am also grateful for the physically difficult and sometimes even War, Losing the Peace, by Ali A. Allawi, support and interest of the master of Lev- dangerous things. I cannot deny that I like M.B.A. ’71 (Yale University Press, $28). erett House, [Mallinckrodt professor of to find myself in sticky situations….” Ma- “Magisterial,” according to Roger Owen, physics] Howard Georgi, who is a physi- honey’s book is hard to put down both Meyer professor of Middle East history, cist, like my parents, and also very inter- because of the stickiness of a woman “It is authoritative, incisive, dispassion- ested in music. rowing the Nile, alone, and because of ate, devastating in its important judg- “I took my schoolwork on the road the evocative beauty of her prose. ments, and wholly original.” Allawi with me and faxed or e-mailed my as- is senior adviser to the signments in,” he explains. “My experi- The Americanist, by Daniel Aaron, Ph.D. prime minister of ences at prepared ’43, Litt.D. ’07, Thomas professor of Eng- Iraq. me for intense academic experiences, lish and American literature emeritus and I feel I got a good education here [at (University of Michigan Press, $24.95).This Harvard]. Some of it has come from my memoir, eloquent and witty, is about fellow students, who are motivated and both its author and the field he did interesting and passionately doing their much to create. For an earlier ver- own thing the way I am doing mine. I sion of a bit of it, see “The ‘Great would have been immersed entirely in Good Place’” (September-October music in a conservatory and not exposed 2001, page 46). to so many di≠erent things, so I am glad I made the decision to come to Harvard— We’re All Journalists Now: The and I was able to do everything I wanted Transformation of the Press and to do musically.’’ Reshaping of the Law in the Inter- After graduation, Jackiw moved to net Age, by Scott Gant, J.D. ’95 (Free New York, where he will pursue musical Press, $26). Everyone who disseminates goals that come from listening to violin- information and opinion to the public This Rubaiyat FROM THE BOOK ists of the past—in particular, Jascha —your neighborhood blogger, say— of Omar Khayyám (Sangorski and Sutcliffe, London, circa Heifetz, , , should have the same press rights and 1930) measures 1 7/16 by 1 1/4 inches. and . “They all had privileges granted to a staff reporter for strong personalities and always did some- the New York Times, argues Gant. thing personal with the music, but never Miniature Books: 4,000 Years of Tiny [distorted] it, [tried] to do something Cousin John: The Story of a Boy and a Treasures, by Anne C. Bromer and Julian di≠erent just for the sake of being Small Smart Pig, by Walter Paine ’49 I. Edison ’51, M.B.A. ’53 (Abrams, $40). di≠erent. You hear a record of Heifetz and (Bunker Hill Publishing, $17.95).This is a Never more than three inches tall and you know immediately who is playing, true and pleasant story for young read- sometimes almost specks, miniature but if you follow him with the score it is ers, set in the country in Brookline, books may come “gemmed, tooled, astonishing how exactly he follows the , in the 1930s, about a boy locked, illuminated, and illustrated by the composer’s indications. There is a deli- who finds his father difficult, nature con- likes of Picasso, Miró, and Gorey.” In a cate balance between conveying what you soling, and his pig, Cousin John, a pal. volume big and profusely illustrated, believe the composer wanted to convey book dealer Bromer and collector Edi- and expressing your own interpretation, Bart Giamatti: A Profile, by Robert P. son take a close, wide-ranging look at your own emotion. You have to be Moncreiff, LL.B. ’57 (Yale University these delightful diminutives. straightforward and sincere, true to the Press, $35). Social conservative Giamatti composer’s desires and your own per- went from being the president of Yale in Neon Dragon, by John F. Dobbyn ’59, sonal stance.” turbulent times to commissioner of LL.M. ’69 (University Press of New Eng- baseball during the banishment of Cincin- land, $24.95).Take this legal thriller, set in Richard Dyer, A.M. ’64, wrote about classical nati Reds manager Pete Rose for gam- Boston, to the beach at once. music for for 33 years.

Harvard Magazine 19