Wherland Violin Performance

The mood was laid back at El Cuartito on Monday night; people were playing chess, cards, or just chatting over drinks as if all were well with the world. Two gringos conversed with a young Guatemalteco about his perilous swim across the Rio Grande, while a gaggle of children played in the courtyard outside. No one paid much attention when Sharon Whereland unpacked her violin and strains of the Bach Suites began to float over the casual conversation. Only one couple could be observed sitting side by side in rapt attention, as if something really extraordinary were in the wind.

With the piercing eyes of an inspired sibyl and the effortless poise of a Zen master, Sharon glided through some of the most difficult and most beautiful music ever written. The violin bow moved like part of her body, lithe and graceful as a temple dancer from ancient Troy. When she launched into the hauntingly intense Second Violin Sonata by Eugene Ysaye, a modern piece complex in both exaltation and despair, the crowd began to resonate to her captive energy. With the infinite patience of a conjurer, slowly and methodically weaving her irresistible spell, she won over the musically unsophisticated audience one by one. There came a point when the music paused to a room completely hushed, expectant, transported, a testimony to her personal and musical magnetism.

Once the crowd fell into her hands, it never escaped. She began to improvise in a style somewhere between Appalachian fiddle, Celtic, and Baroque; a unique synthesis that captures her profound, yet amused, view of life and the world. The myxilodian [Editor’s Note: Don’t feel bad. I don’t have any idea what this word means either.] mode of traditional Irish and Scottish music was transformed into the personal expression of a thoroughly modern observer, much as the folk music of rural Hungary was incorporated into the compositions of Béla Bartók early in the last century. In this case however, the enthusiasm of the performer for her musical creation galvanized the attention of the audience. At its conclusion, the applause was warm, spontaneous, and appreciative. Such an improvisation, like any intimate conversation, is forged in the interaction between speaker and listener, artist and observer, musician and audience. In some sense we had all made this melody together, and we were bonded through the shared experience. The final piece by Vivaldi, with its this-worldly celebration of life and nature, brought the room back to earth and its more mundane joys, the earlier experience now just a lingering, fading dream, but one that will persist as long as we remember anything at all of Guatemala.

Catch Sharon and her violin at El Cuartito every Monday night at 8pm.