What 1,200 performances taught me as a Masquerade violinist

It’s July 2, 2026. As a Masquerade violinist, I have now performed 200 shows.

With six pulses (groups of sixty audience members) at each show, six preludes each show, that’s 1200 performances of the exact same Prelude, 1200 bows, 1200 cadenzas.

Five E strings broken mid-performance. Tens of horse hairs ripped.

Someone asked me once: "Do you get sick of it, playing the same thing over and over again?"

I don’t.

I truly don’t.

If anything, I enjoy it more and more.

And being particularly attracted by innovation, experimentation, new terrains, I’m surprised to hear myself say this.

The key lies in freedom and enjoyment.

The work is physically demanding to the point that if I’m not enjoying it, I will quickly hurt myself — hands, fingers, tendons.

The part also demands a burning emotional energy that, if dissociated from the body, can strain it to a destructive level.

So I try to play as naturally as one speaks or breathes.

As if I’m walking around with a marker and leaving improvised sound graffiti on the walls.

This is how I try to make it feel fresh every time, as if improvised — a quality that’s crucial to me.

I focus on my spine, my feet, like a tree radiating from the ground.

My fingers are but leaves on that tree, reacting not only to the larger branches, but also to the wind — sound, vibration, string.

The body and the instrument enter a sort of dance with the natural vibrations of the violin.

Sometimes giving, sometimes taking.

The string vibrations, the unity of the string and the bow's horse hair, have a way of speaking that one can "catch" like a surfer catching a wave.

And that opportunity exists on every bow, every note.

It is all a balancing act between two forces:

• Innovation, experimentation, trying new things, doubting, asking questions;

• Instinct, honesty, directness, rawness, not overthinking.

Too much of the first creates a brainy performance.

Too much of the second eventually makes every performance resemble the previous one. The result is subtle at first: emotions become duller, less honest with time. Eventually, repeated instinct becomes suffocating. 

Perhaps because we are always changing.

Or rather because life, like a river, flows through us without ever repeating exactly the same pattern.

Sometimes I focus on my left hand and try to make it as soft as a paw.

Sometimes on my right arm and see how far it can go in terms of reacting to the string.

Other times I focus on the space between the notes.

Or the overtones.

Or my neck.

I do this consciously because if I simply play the music every day without exploring, I would eventually fall into unconscious repetition.

Innovation keeps me sane.

Not innovating what’s written in the score, but with the way I play it.

With my body, my mind. My emotions.

But along the way, my true self, my instinct does not disappear.

So I’m playing both with the present, and the possible.

Both with what I'm feeling, and what I can imagine.

But innovation is not always a product of the mind. 

Sometimes it’s accessed best without trying. 

"The most beautiful things happen in performance, not planned. Free your instinct/creativity, then just do it. And don't judge. Make it your way of life, and then your technique will grow all the time because you'll need it." (Notes from classes with Mauricio Fuks)