Violin

Itzhak Perlman and Pinchas Zukerman have been rivals, colleagues, and friends for most of their lives. Opportunities to hear them perform together do not arrive very often, so Symphony Hall was sold out last night for their joint Celebrity Series appearance -- one of seven they are giving in various cities this season. Both violinists were born in Israel, Perlman in 1945, Zukerman three years later. Both came to America, enjoyed the patronage of Isaac Stern, studied with the same teacher, and won the Leaventritt Award to launch their careers.

Andrew Bird has always made the case that he doesn't need a band. He's a one-man symphony, equipped with only his violin, a system of looping and effects pedals, and one of the most vivid imaginations in modern indie rock. Who needs more than that? That was the impression Bird imparted during his first song at a sold-out House of Blues Sunday night. When his three bandmates emerged, they seemed superfluous – until they started playing and suddenly transported the songs to a more tangible realm.

TOKYO — A Japanese music foundation has sold a renowned Stradivarius violin for $16 million at a London auction to raise money for tsunami relief. The nonprofit Nippon Music Foundation said yesterday that the proceeds from selling the nearly 300-year-old violin, known as the Lady Blunt, will go to relief projects in northern Japan. The group’s music affiliate owned the violin, which was made in 1721 and hardly used. The new owner was not identified. Hideo Fukuda, the foundation spokesman, said the group plans to use the proceeds to support and promote traditional arts in the region.

Few composers write music that is as painterly as Kaija Saariaho's. The Finnish composer is a master of color, timbre, and texture, seemingly able to create an array of previously unimagined sounds from any combination of instruments. More than once during the International Contemporary Ensemble's "Composer Portrait" at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum on Thursday - a series imported from New York's Miller Theatre - one almost felt the light in Calderwood Hall change when one of Saariaho's new sonorities emerged.

The Boston Philharmonic and conductor Benjamin Zander opened their season this weekend with a mixed bag: a comparative rarity, a venerable warhorse, and a novelty that stole the show from both. Alberto Ginastera's eloquent 1953 "Variaciones concertantes" were given their second Boston hearing in less than a year, the Pro Arte Orchestra having essayed the work last spring. Cellist Rafael Popper-Keizer provided an electric start with a mercurial, searing delineation of the opening theme, but the following 11 variations ran into trouble.

In the sky-lit third-floor library of Somerville's Brown Elementary School, 8-year-olds sit in a semicircle and, following the lead of their teacher, chant in an almost robotic, harmonic madrigal, "oh, oh, oh, three, three . . . oh, oh, three, oh, four, four, oh, oh. " It could easily have been a choral group exercising its voices, but what made the moment unique was that each third grader, while chanting the notes to "The Blue Danube," was...

The composer and conductor James Yannatos, who as leader of the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra for more than four decades worked with thousands of young musicians, died at his home in Cambridge Oct. 19. The cause was complications of cancer, said his daughter, Kalya of Marlboro, Vt. He was 82. "He was an all-around musician and an excellent musician," said Lewis Lockwood, a professor of music at Harvard who knew Dr. Yannatos since they were...

There's consistency and there's consistency, and on "Cynic's New Year," Portland, Ore., indie-folk duo Horse Feathers stick so firmly to their sonic guns that it becomes tightly constricting. "A Heart Arcane" and "Summer for Capricorns" open and close the album and while there's a charm to their baroque simplicity, the preponderance of shared elements speaks to the lack of movement in getting from the one to the other. Despite additional instruments augmenting Justin Ringle's acoustic guitar and Nathan Crockett's violin, the album rarely wavers from a rustic hush.

New England String Ensemble Federico Cortese, conductor, Mark O’Connor, violinAt: Jordan Hall, New England Conservatory, Friday It was ironic that on what seemed like the city's umpteenth consecutive day of clouds and rain, the New England String Ensemble staged a gala concert with two musical representations of the seasons, those durable markers of cyclical change. It's now common to see Vivaldi's well-trodden "Four Seasons" paired with a lesser known piece on the same topic.

Andrew Bird has always made the case that he doesn't need a band. He's a one-man symphony, equipped with only his violin, a system of looping and effects pedals, and one of the most vivid imaginations in modern indie rock. Who needs more than that? That was the impression Bird imparted during his first song at a sold-out House of Blues Sunday night. When his three bandmates emerged, they seemed superfluous – until they started playing and suddenly transported the songs to a more tangible realm.

A signed Fender Telecaster once owned by guitarist Roy Buchanan (1939-88) and a cane made of wood from Ulysses S. Grant's funeral carriage are among the finds being auctioned this week. The 1952 electric guitar, one of several that Buchanan customized for his own use, will be offered at Skinner's auction of musical instruments next Sunday at noon at its Boston gallery. Signed in 1982 by the blues musician for a fan following a set at My Father's Place in Old Roslyn, N.Y., the guitar has a $75,000-$100,000 estimate.

There's consistency and there's consistency, and on "Cynic's New Year," Portland, Ore., indie-folk duo Horse Feathers stick so firmly to their sonic guns that it becomes tightly constricting. "A Heart Arcane" and "Summer for Capricorns" open and close the album and while there's a charm to their baroque simplicity, the preponderance of shared elements speaks to the lack of movement in getting from the one to the other. Despite additional instruments augmenting Justin Ringle's acoustic guitar and Nathan Crockett's violin, the album rarely wavers from a rustic hush.

You can count on one hand the number of significant living composers who are also conductors of international standing. The combination makes for perilous professional juggling but also, in theory, a kind of complete musicianship rarely encountered today. The Finnish-born Esa-Pekka Salonen is one such musician. He returned to the Boston Symphony Orchestra podium Thursday night and led what was easily one of the most artistically rewarding performances of the season. It had been more than 20 years since he last conducted the BSO, for much of which he...

Sometime in the late 1970s or early '80s, Esa-Pekka Salonen went to hear "Siddharta," an opera about the early life of the Buddha by Danish composer Per Norgard. Salonen no longer remembers what the music sounded like; what stuck with him was how the composer handled the story's crucial dramatic moment, when the title character leaves his past behind. "He becomes the Buddha in maybe the last 30 seconds of the piece or so," Salonen explained recently, speaking by phone from Philadelphia.

A Viking, a pirate, and a witch walk into a bar. . . Actually, this is no joke; rather, it's Paganfest America III, a touring package of bands blending folk traditions, esoteric spirituality, and theatrics into heavy metal. This subgenre of heavy music is tough to define but easy to spot. Turisas, for example, is perfect to headline Paganfest, as the band members arrive covered in black and red war paint, singing songs about Viking valor, and punctuating the whole thing with lacerating violin riffs.

The Greek violinist Leonidas Kavakos is no stranger to the Boston Symphony Orchestra, having last been spotted in 2008 sailing through the Brahms Violin Concerto. Things look a little different this week, as Kavakos has returned to Symphony Hall with his violin, yes, but mostly with a baton, making his BSO conducting debut. A relative newcomer to conducting, and still predominantly a violin soloist, Kavakos has been adding more conducting dates to his schedule in recent years, mostly in Europe.

MEXICO CITY - Angel Tavira, a one-handed violinist who dedicated his life to Mexican folk music and won a Cannes Film Festival award for his first movie at age 82, has died. He was 84. Mr. Tavira died of kidney problems Monday in a Mexico City hospital, said Eugenia Montiel, a spokeswoman for Camara Carnal Films, the company that coproduced Mr. Tavira's 2005 film, "The Violin. " Mr. Tavira was born July 3, 1924, into a family of musicians in the southwestern town of Corralfalso and started playing the violin at age 6. When he was 13, he lost his right hand while setting...

In the sky-lit third-floor library of Somerville's Brown Elementary School, 8-year-olds sit in a semicircle and, following the lead of their teacher, chant in an almost robotic, harmonic madrigal, "oh, oh, oh, three, three . . . oh, oh, three, oh, four, four, oh, oh. " It could easily have been a choral group exercising its voices, but what made the moment unique was that each third grader, while chanting the notes to "The Blue Danube," was...

CAMBRIDGE - It's not often you see a classical-music performer go through four instruments in a single concert. Which is not to say that, Sunday afternoon at Cambridge's First Church, Congregational, Christina Day Martinson took to smashing her violin à la Pete Townshend. She was simply dealing with the unusual tuning demands of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber's "Mystery Sonatas," in a Boston Baroque concert that packed the hall. "The Mystery Sonatas" are a mystery in more ways than one. The 1678 (even that date is a guess)