NEW TO YOUTUBE | VC Artist Tessa Lark Discusses Her Instrument

Violist Masumi Rostad chats with violinist Tessa Lark about her Maggini violin

In this newly released video, Tessa explains how she acquired her instrument made by G.P. Maggini (1600), which is considered to be one of the earliest modern instruments available today.

The instrument is on loan from an anonymous donor through the Stradivari Society of Chicago. Tessa remembers the moment she first saw the instrument after it was assigned to her in 2018. "I just laughed out loud, because the first thing I noticed was how huge the f-holes are," she jokingly said in the interview. "I always tell people that I can fit a whole meal into this violin!"

She soon realized that this violin was special. "I picked it up and started playing it, and I fell in love with it right away," she said. "There are very few instruments that I feel that way about immediately." She describes this instrument as being warm, deep, and sweet, which you can hear in Kreisler/Dvorak's "Songs My Mother Taught Me" below.

This video is part of the series entitled "Soundpost" made by acclaimed violist Masumi Per Rostad — in which he sits down with his friends and colleagues to discuss the ins and outs of their instrument.

TESSA LARK & MASUMI ROSTAD | DVORAK/KREISLER | "SONGS MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME" | 2021

A graduate of the New England Conservatory and The Juilliard School, where she studied with Miriam Fried, Lucy Chapman, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Ida Kavafian, Tessa is a former major prize winner at the Indianapolis, Michael Hill, and Naumburg International Violin Competitions. She is also a recent recipient of a prestigious Avery Fisher Career Grant and Leonore Annenberg and Borletti-Buitoni Trust Fellowships.