For years, Colin Maki and his associates \u2014 purveyors of some of the finest and rarest violins ever made \u2014 had been circling the Playfair, an ultra-rare model crafted by the famed luthier Guarneri \u201cdel Ges\u00f9\u201d in 1741. Little is known about the Playfair\u2019s passage through the centuries, but its profile suggests a life spent moving between gifted hands. It was last sold by W.E. Hill & Sons, a storied London shop. From there, Maki says, it passed to \u201ca noteworthy collector, then another one, and then a very prominent musician,\u201d who eventually chose to part with it, relinquishing the instrument to Maki and entrusting him to find a player worthy of continuing its legacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn opportunity arose,\u201d Maki says, \u201cto play matchmaker.\u201d The artist they landed on was a 24-year-old from San Gabriel, who plays both violin and piano: Ray Ushikubo.<\/p>\n
Ushikubo has performed at Carnegie Hall and Walt Disney Concert Hall, appeared on NBC\u2019s \u201cTonight Show With Jay Leno,\u201d and won numerous awards including the Davidson Fellow Laureate Award and the Hilton Head International Piano Competition. Now comes one of his greatest feats: his debut on the Playfair, one of the most exceptional instruments in violin history.<\/p>\n
Asked what the Playfair is worth, Maki shakes his head. \u201cI\u2019d rather not go into that, for reasons of discretion.\u201d After a nudge, he allows only: \u201cIt\u2019s well into the eight figures.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The 284-year-old violin was made by one of the greatest violin makers of all time, Guarneri \u201cdel Ges\u00f9\u201d, who is revered alongside Antonio Stradivari.<\/p>\n
That such a violin should surface for loan is astonishing enough; that it should be placed with such a young artist, who has spent most of his life studying at the Colburn School across the street from the Los Angeles Philharmonic, feels momentous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opportunity to have access to a violin of this vintage is really quite rare,\u201d Maki says. Together with his colleague Aur\u00e9lien Fort Pederzoli, Maki began the search. It was Pederzoli who thought of Robert Lipsett \u2014 a Colburn instructor who has taught Ushikubo for the past 16 years \u2014 and called to inquire who he would deem worthy of such an instrument. Within days, they flew Ushikubo out to play for them.<\/p>\n
In Ushikubo they found, as Pederzoli puts it, \u201cnot only an extraordinary musician, but someone with extraordinary character. He has the composure of a musician well beyond his years.\u201d Ushikubo is charming and affable, with a poise that radiates outward. He sits straight, eyes bright, maintaining contact with subtle showmanship.<\/p>\n
For the past few months, he has been learning the violin\u2019s temperament. \u201cWe communicate with each other,\u201d he says. \u201cI say: I want this, what can you offer me?\u201d At first they misunderstood each other, as many new companions do. But soon the violin seemed to mold itself to him. \u201cWhen I put my chin down, it feels like I\u2019ve been playing it for years.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It took some time for Ray Ushikubo to wrap his head around playing an instrument that\u2019s been around longer than the United States.<\/p>\n
He carries it everywhere. He enters Colburn\u2019s 400-capacity Zipper Hall, where he will debut it on Dec. 3, with the case slung lightly on his back. When he opens it, the violin gleams with the sheen of a freshly split chestnut. It is scarcely believable that this instrument is 284 years old. Fewer than 200 of these violins were ever made.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m only 24,\u201d Ushikubo says. \u201cThis instrument is from 1741. It\u2019s older than the United States. I can barely comprehend that amount of history.\u201d Then he smiles. \u201cBut mostly I feel happiness. And honor. It sounds better than any violin that\u2019s ever been made.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demonstrating the instrument, he removes his bracelets and jacket, steadies his breath, rests his chin on the violin as if preparing for impact. Slowly brushing his bow against the instrument, he closes his eyes, and looks almost on the verge of tears. His vibrato is disciplined and finely grained; when he moves up and down the neck, the motion is smooth as a jet plane lifting into altitude.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Del Ges\u00f9 instruments tend to be dark, rich in color, with a tremendous power that fills a hall with little effort on the player\u2019s part. Ushikubo remembers tuning the Playfair for the first time a couple of months ago. \u201cThere was a shine to it that I hardly recognized,\u201d he says. To test it, he played a Tchaikovsky concerto, spanning its high and middle registers, finding sounds he \u201cdidn\u2019t even know violins were capable of.\u201d He describes its palette as chocolate: white to dark, streaked with caramel.<\/p>\n
For his debut, Ushikubo will perform four maximalist Romantic pieces: Tomaso Antonio Vitali\u2019s \u201cChaconne in G minor,\u201d Nathan Milstein\u2019s \u201cPaganiniana,\u201d Ernest Chausson\u2019s \u201cPo\u00e8me\u201d and Maurice Ravels\u2019 \u201cTzigane.\u201d They trace his own coming of age. \u201cEvery one of these pieces has made me grow,\u201d he says. He admits he hates practicing. \u201cBut these pieces remind me why I do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
If Ray Ushikubo has to return the violin on indefinite loan, he said he\u2019d grieve the loss. <\/p>\n
His path to this moment began with a Japanese TV show he watched as a child, featuring a charismatic violinist-pianist he quickly came to idolize. He begged his parents for a violin. For his sixth birthday, they bought him a $20 instrument from a local shop. Soon they discovered Colburn, and spent years driving him 90 minutes each way between Riverside and downtown L.A. for lessons, before moving to San Gabriel. He studied there until 17, then went to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and returned to Colburn to pursue his master\u2019s; he\u2019s now completing his artist diploma, a highly selective post-graduate program at Colburn. A typical day of practice lasts around 10 hours, divided between piano and violin, an arrangement that Sel Kardan, president and chief executive of Colburn, calls \u201cunprecedented.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ushikubo is one of a handful of Colburn students poised for lifelong solo or chamber careers. The school\u2019s in-house management program, Colburn Artists, aims to shepherd musicians like him toward professional life, helping them build repertoire and shape his image. Kardan describes Ushikubo as \u201cvery compelling onstage, with great virtuosity. He absorbs music.\u201d But even with the school\u2019s infrastructure behind him, the experience of playing the Playfair exists outside any practical career calculus; it marks an inflection point, a rare chance to inhabit history while shaping it.<\/p>\n
Asked how he\u2019ll feel if the indefinite loan of the Playfair ever ends, Ushikubo pauses. \u201cI\u2019ll grieve it,\u201d he says, setting the instrument down and zipping it back up into its case. Although this could be the rarest instrument he\u2019ll ever play, he remains resolute: \u201cFor the rest of my life, I hope to discover new sounds every day.\u201d<\/p>\n
An Artist’s Next Chapter: Ray Ushikubo Debuts the 1741 Guarneri “Playfair” Violin<\/p>\n
Where: Colburn School\u2019s Zipper Hall, 200 S. Grand Ave. in downtown Los Angeles<\/p>\n
Tickets: Free, tickets required<\/a>. The event will also be livestreamed<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For years, Colin Maki and his associates \u2014 purveyors of some of the finest and rarest violins ever…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":70324,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[41423,41419,41420,41418,217,41424,36525,48,52,51,1637,47,50,49,34604,41417,41415,41421,41416,41422,72],"class_list":{"0":"post-70323","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-carnegie-hall","9":"tag-colburn","10":"tag-colburn-school","11":"tag-colin-maki","12":"tag-day","13":"tag-del-gesu","14":"tag-instrument","15":"tag-la","16":"tag-la-headlines","17":"tag-la-news","18":"tag-life","19":"tag-los-angeles","20":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","21":"tag-los-angeles-news","22":"tag-piano","23":"tag-playfair-violin","24":"tag-ray-ushikubo","25":"tag-sel-kardan","26":"tag-violin","27":"tag-violin-history","28":"tag-year"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70323"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70323\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}