Warning label- This post contains material that would interest a classical musicophile, which I am.

Remember Nina Miller of NinaMillerStudio? (She is the photographer who made my professional head shots seen here.) 

We live close together, so she borrowed folding chairs from us for a house concert she was hosting last night.  Although we could not attend, I was interested and asked her about it today when she returned the chairs.  She informed me that the Del Sol Quartet from San Francisco performed, and creatively pushed the boundaries of music-making in doing so.  [insert here feelings of disappointment that I missed this] 

Nina went on to say that she enjoyed hosting the concert, since she misses being around music and musicians all the time, and being exposed to music that really pushes the boundaries of what music can be.  She went on to explain to me that her grandfather was a violinist who premiered concertos by Berg and…

Me:  Wait! What? Your grandfather was Louis Krasner?!?!?!?

Nina: Yeah.  You’ve heard of him?

Me: Of COURSE I’ve heard of him!

Nina: How?

Me: Well, why wouldn’t I have heard of him? He was a notable violinist.

Nina was a bit confused- I suppose she isn’t used to people knowing anything at all about what some call ‘art music’, but having worked hard to raise children who could play various instruments and appreciate challenging repertoire, I had read about her grandfather, her grandmother (Adrienne Galimir Krasner), and her grandmother’s brother, Felix Galimir. Nina grew up among the musicians of both the Tanglewood Festival and the Marlboro Festival each summer. 

I am trying to picture what it would be like to have transcendent music filling the air you effortlessly breathe as you learn and grow. It took work to position our own three children to study and learn from the finest teachers and to hear the most imaginatively-performed music we could find. And, here was ‘little Nina’ growing up with the in-crowd of the classical music world.

This makes me see her creative work in a new way.  She comes from a long line of spunky people, people who swept through life onstage, championing the most daring composers of their time, unafraid of the new and the yet-untried.  They left Ukraine and Austria, headed for Palestine and for America, and they thrived despite anti-Semitism.

Nina is visually spunky and unafraid to try new ideas in portrait photography, finding the defining moments for each shot. She comes by it honestly.

You can enjoy some very old recordings of Nina’s ancestors here:

Webern conducts Berg Violin Concerto- Louis Krasner, soloist

Ravel String Quartet- Galimir String Quartet, Adrienne Galimir (Krasner), second violinist