David Garrett

German violinist David Garrett performed in the Whitaker Center on Friday, September 18th. I was in the audience. He played a lot of fast music, and most of it was classical based. Garrett says he didn’t listen to anything other than classical music until he was 14. He has set a world record playing The Flight of the Bumblebee in 66 seconds, and his wonderful playing is enhanced with the 290 year old Stradivarius violin he plays. Among the many songs he played were He’s a Pirate from Pirates of the Caribbean, Smooth Criminal, Summer, Nothing Else Matters, Who Wants to Live Forever?, Ain’t No Sunshine, Chelsea Girl, and Rock Prelude. Many other songs were original. He had funny stories for some of them, too.
For Summer, he said that in March up in New York he was playing outside, and it started to rain. As the rain got nearer, he began to worry about his instrument. Just then, a woman from the audience came up and held her umbrella over him, and he finished the concert. Afterward, he went to thank the woman for thinking of his violin. She said that she hadn’t thought of his violin; she was worried about his hair.
David Garrett is an excellent violinist and it was a real privilege to get to hear him.