[John Warren, artistic director of the New World Baroque Orchestra, holds photographs he took of the Carabajal violin that was later stolen from the San Miguel Mission. Photography: Anne Cusack, Los Angeles Times / April 12, 2010]
This intriguing story of a violin, The Salinian Indian Tribe’s love of music and Franciscan Friars work in California, captured my attention today. L.A Times has the story:
“Reporting from Jolon, Calif. — “Jose Maria Carabajal was toiling for the friars at Mission San Antonio on California’s Central Coast when he first heard the exalted strains of a violin.
His people — the Salinan Indians — had been making music for thousands of years, but he’d never heard anything like the sounds soaring from the priest’s polished chunk of wood and gut.
Intrigued, Carabajal decided to make his own. The instrument he crafted in 1798 from bay laurel and other native woods was solid enough to last more than two centuries and sweet enough to build a reputation of its own.”
Sad this violin got stolen, before most of heard about it. What an interesting tale. Would make for the basis of a great Opera, or musical as a theme.
~Posted by Horiwood.Com, Hollywood California USA. 7.27.2010~
