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Fiddler aloof
Step inside the peculiar world of iconoclast-violinist Vincent P. Skowronski.
Tucked behind a Starbucks in downtown Evanston, Vincent P. Skowronski’s studio—“the European-style studio I always envisioned,” he says—occupies a cozy ground-floor apartment not far from his home. Three decades’ worth of music paraphernalia—vinyl LPs, a piano, framed certificates of achievement—clutters the room. Two sand-colored cats snooze on a worn couch. “I don’t like the contemporary look,” Skowronski says in a thick Chicago accent. “I’m not a contemporary guy.”
Skowronski, dubbed by American Record Guide as “clearly one of the best violinists in America,” bids goodbye to his guest, longtime collaborator and pianist Saori Chiba. In 1995, the two traveled to Rome to give a private performance for Pope John Paul II. His friend ushered away, the 65-year-old regales us with tales from more than 50 years of professional playing.
“I would have to say I’m an elitist,” the affable eccentric cautions up front, settling into a leather chair behind his large wooden desk. He wears blue jeans and a button-down shirt; though his hair has grayed, he looks young for his age. “I don’t go to recitals anymore. I refuse to pay $50 to see a guy who doesn’t know what he’s doing. I won’t put up with something if I think it can be done better. If that’s the case, well, I’ll do it myself.”
When asked to name a local musician he admires, Skowronski is stumped. “I’m a loner!” he proclaims, picking up his large reading magnifying glass and slamming it on the desktop for emphasis. “You just don’t see many soloists anymore. They’re all in ensembles—this quartet, that trio, the eighth bird and the monkey bird or whatever! I admire an elderly guy I saw at the Lyric Opera. He was dressed in tux and tails, snoring away during the performance. His wife woke him up and he belted, ‘For this I’m missing The Guns of Navarone?’”
Yet he’s not all steam and bluster. Days after our meeting, an envelope arrived from Skowronski; inside was a pencil we’d left behind, carefully wrapped in pink tissue paper.
Part of a large musical clan of Polish heritage, Skowronski was handed a violin at age five. Realizing he wasn’t “half bad,” he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music from Northwestern. Tired of the standard university repertoire—“you do the Tchaikovsky, you do the Brahms”—he set off on his own path. During the Vietnam War, the young fiddler auditioned for the Marine band. “The colonel pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re really good. You gotta stay out of this and pursue your career as a musician.’” In 1970, he became one of only seven U.S. musicians chosen to enter the fourth International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow. He earned high praise—despite breaking the rules by reading the score. (Having recently undergone surgery for a cyst under his chin, he’d lost valuable practice time.)
Struck by a need to preserve his legacy, the violinist recorded a staggering amount of material in his prime younger years, with the foresight to release one recording per year during retirement. Rather than waiting for labels to come knocking, the fierce independent released and promoted records himself, using funds from a violin brokerage firm he ran for 40 years. Disgusted with the ruthless editing on many classical recordings, which leaves no room for error in a quest for “Hollywood-type” perfection, Skowronski accepts a few natural kinks along the way: “If someone cuts a finger, it bleeds like hell! What you see is what you get.” Last year’s stunning Dichotomy captures two Ernest Bloch sonatas taped for WFMT on Pearl Harbor Day in 1988.
And yet, despite his accomplishments, the master violinist now insists, “Whatever you do, don’t call me a musician! I’m just a guy that plays the hell out of the violin. Do I yearn to play the violin? No. Do I lose sleep over it? No.”
Today, with fingers knotted by arthritis, Skowronski is unable to perform and teaches privately in his studio. “Don’t wait, like Muhammad Ali, until you’ve been punched silly, to make a recording,” he advises young players. When we ask to speak with one of his students, the charmer pleads, “If you’ll indulge me, cara mia, I think it best not to involve a student at this time.” Cara mia: Italian for my dear.
