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| The New Phil playing in dress rehearsal at the First Baptist Church in Newton Center. Photo by Marash Girl |
Spencer Anderson was Newton's hometown winner, one of three young people to win this year's Emerging Talents Concerto Competition sponsored by Newton's New Phil. The New Phil says of him, "Spencer is a junior at Newton North High School. He currently studies violin with Piotr Buczek at the Rivers Conservatory where he also plays in the Rivers Youth Symphony . . . he is a committed baseball player, a lefty pitcher for both Newton North and his AAU team, the Newton Minutemen."
Spencer Anderson practiced throwing baseballs from as early as Marash Girl can remember. He would stand out there on our little dead end street and play catch with his brother, his mother, his father. But one day he came home from Kindergarten saying, “Mom, I want to play the violin.” He had recently read a picture-book in pre-school entitled The Bat Boy and his Violin. The message of the book never left him. Daily he would ask, “Mom, did you sign me up for violin lessons yet?” “MOM – I WANT TO PLAY THE VIOLIN… and I want a Stradivarius.” (He had learned about Stradivarius in music-class.) And thus it was that Spencer Anderson, a sophomore at Newton North High School who has made a name for himself in both the world of baseball and the world of music, began studying violin in Kindergarten, about 12 years ago.
Unable to attend the concert itself, Marash Girl was invited to attend the dress rehearsal. As she entered the church hall, she heard -- to her right -- music, as it were, from the heavens. She turned to see Spencer practicing bits of his piece in the back of the hall, but the music was not music of practicing; it was music like she had never heard before. "That's magnificent music coming out of that little box," she commented to Spencer. "It's a magnificent box," quipped Spencer. [He was playing a violin made by Giovanni Pistucci in Naples around 1900. Pistucci was one of the last great Neopolitan violin-makers, working in the Gagliano tradition a violin purchased from fellow Newton resident Greg Vitale, an active free-lance violinist and violin-dealer - VitaleViolins.com]
Familiar as it was to Marash Girl, the Bruch Violin Concerto in G minor (1st and 2nd movements) was a musical moment to be remembered. Spencer played with confidence and passion, a passion matched by the orchestra. It was a concert that Marash Girl will always remember.
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| · Spencer Anderson playing the Bruch Violin Concerto in G minor (1st and 2nd movements) with the New Phil during dress rehearsal. Photo by Marash Girl |
When I played baseball, it was the same as when I played the violin. They both had their own playing field, requiring an accomplished eye-hand coordination, that satisfied the technical demands of both disciplines. What remained, then, was for the soul, like a lark ascending, to soar above the gravity of the pull of the earth
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