The road out of LA was equally bittersweet for me. I, too, was married and in possession of a young child, my daughter Clara. Yet there was an ominous cloud forming on my personal horizon. In my early 40’s I had begun to experience unwanted muscle contractions in my left hand. It turned out to be focal dystonia. By the time Clara came along a few years later I realized that at some point down the road I wasn’t going to be able to maintain my playing at a level commensurate with my professional status.

I had been an active member of the Hollywood scene for twenty-five years and was ready for a new challenge. I had, for some time, thought of creating a DVD instructional course built around the 42 Etudes and Caprices of Rudolph Kreutzer. And so, one year and a transcontinental move later, the original Violin Mastery.com launched with the release of my first course, “Kreutzer for Violin Mastery, vol. 1.” The Kreutzer course, which grew to 4 volumes, was an immediate success and led me to create several more, serving absolute beginners right through to highly advanced virtuosi.

Clayton Haslop as Concertmaster

During this time, I did maintain my higher priority contacts in Hollywood and continued to serve as concertmaster for James Horner (Avatar, Titanic) and Michael Giacchino (Ghost Protocol, Ratatouille, Up). Eventually I was even to move back to Los Angeles, but not before injuring my left shoulder in a way that hastened the end of my four-fingered playing days.

As the curtain came down I went into a tailspin. Violin Mastery was, for several years, one casualty of this period. I just didn’t have the mojo to counsel others on the fine points of violin playing when my own abilities were declining precipitously. I also recognized the need to step down from my positions in Hollywood and, somehow, reinvent myself. As luck would have it, the way forward came from an unlikely place, the life experience of a 20th century jazz legend.

If you know anything about jazz history you will probably know the story of Django Reinhardt. Django was a gypsy credited with “inventing” what came to be known as gypsy-jazz. He came to international prominence in the 1930’s, playing his unique guitar style using just two fingers on his left hand. What I didn’t know, and what changed everything for me 5 years ago, was that Django was not born with his disability. He, in lost the use of his third and fourth fingers in a fire aboard the wagon he and his wife traveled in during his early years. When I learned of his amazing accomplishment I resolved to emulate him, as both the shoulder injury and focal dystonia were affecting the same two digits on my left hand. Suddenly, despite the challenge of it, I found that I could improve again, with practice!

It was some 4½ years into my new journey, and just a few months after the Covid-19 pandemic struck, that Doug approached me about working with his 14-year-old son Alex on a dream Alex had of learning the Tchaikovsky Concerto. It worked for me, as I had been studying this masterpiece seriously for several months with the intention of performing it with piano accompaniment in my home.

Our lessons were conducted over the internet, Alex making terrific progress during our almost daily lessons. And as the pandemic hardened and the thought of an in-home live event dimmed, Doug floated the idea of releasing a solo video of my playing Tchaikovsky without accompaniment, to which he would add something of a brief introduction. It wasn’t the first time he’d had such an inspiration.