JAVS Fall 1997

Bernard Zaslav chooses:

"My personalpreferencesfor exceptional beauty oftone and playability - violas by ]B Guadagnini 1781 Tttrin, the ex- Villa,' andAnthony Lane 1996Petaluma." BemardZaslav - Stanford, CA 1996

Anthony Lane Maker ofViolins, Violas, Cellos

276 Liberty Road, Petaluma, CA 94952 USA Tel/Fax 707-795-5929

And if Ayres would stoop to her tormentors' level, what would she say? "Why are viola jokes so simple?" Ayres asks. Answer: "So violinists can understand them." Reprintedfrom the Beaumont, Texas, Enterprise (3 October I 997), courtesy of author Shari Fey; submitted by Carol Ayres, who asks any fine solo violists looking for a symphony engagement to contact her at R.R I Box BI2, Newton, TX 75966-9726, since she is on the soloist sekction committee.

can be found in the violin section, says the good natured Ayres, who refused to say much more on the subject. " I have tons of violinist friends and they're wonder ful, sweet people," she says diplomatically. But these wonderful, if arristically temperamental, friends are not above telling jokes about an instrument that most people can't even pronounce, Ayres says. (It is VEE-o-la, not VI-o-la.) Nevertheless, Ayres stays philosophical about being the object of so much sym phony humor.

"We don't like it," Ayres say about violists being the butt of so many jokes. To violinists, she would like to say: "We just go about our business. We'll just sit here quietly and prove you wrong." ''I'll keep my mouth shut and just play. I'm in good company." Ayres and the other seven violists at the Symphony of Southeast Texas are definitely in good company-Bach, Beethoven , Dvorak and Mozart played the viola-as does Symphony of Southeast Texas maestra Diane M. Wittry.