A Street Musician's Symphonic Movement

THE SOLOIST: A LOST DREAM, AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP, AND THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF MUSIC

Back in September 1964, Jascha Heifetz, the formidable fiddler, was attempting an ill-advised comeback recital at Carnegie Hall. The crowd out front was enormous, and it naturally included many people with long faces hoping for a turned-back ticket to this sold-out event. I was covering it as a music critic for the New York Herald Tribune of lamented memory. At that time, there was a violinist, 20 or so, nice Jewish boy, reasonably talented, who played in a regular spot in front of Carnegie on most concert nights, with his violin case open to receive coins. I had the idea that this guy would make a pretty good story for my paper, and what better time than after I had taken him to this night of nights? I proffered him my extra ticket; he looked at me the way Little Orphan Annie must have first looked at Daddy Warbucks.

Come concert time, the seat next to me was fully occupied, not by my grateful minstrel but by a corpulent heavy-breather who had bought my extra ticket, at a fairly inflated price, from the street fiddler. When I came out at intermission, that guy was still sawing away at his sidewalk station. I've never trusted one of those street players since.

Until, that is, Mr. Nathaniel Ayers began to restore my faith, with help from Steve Lopez. The slice-of-life columnist for the Los Angeles Times comes into the picture where I might have, if that klutz in New York hadn't sold my ticket. Lopez's splendid new book, fashioned from his columns, is called The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music. Lopez discovers Ayers first, a lone fiddler playing astonishingly well, on a downtown street corner. They meet, some bullshit is exchanged for better or worse, they part, they meet again. “...[Nathaniel] plays for a while, we talk for a while, an experience that's like dropping in on a dream," writes Lopez.

Nathaniel takes nonsensical flights, doing figure eights through unrelated topics. God, the Cleveland Browns, the mysteries of air travel and the glory of Beethoven. He keeps coming back to music. His life's purpose, it seems, is to arrange the notes that lie scattered in his head ...

“Your violin has only two strings," I say. “You're missing the other two."

“Yes," he says, he's well aware. “All I want to do is play music ..."

THE SOLOIST: A LOST DREAM, AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP, AND THE REDEMPTIVE POWER OF MUSIC | BY STEVE LOPEZ | G.P. Putnam's Sons | 273 pages | $26 hardcover