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| NewsMonday, November 26, 2007 11:09 AM CST |
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Musician to be reunited with $100,000 violin
CHICAGO --A Michigan City, Ind., musician plans to meet with police on Monday to pick up the rare violin he reported stolen from the back seat of his car a week ago. The instrument, made in 1892 by Jerome Squier in Boston, has been valued at $100,000 because of its superior sound quality, violinist Nicolas Orbovich said. “It’s got this tremendous balance of different characteristics,” said Orbovich, 42, a violinist with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra. “You don’t want a violin that has too much ‘brightness,’ or what you might call stridence or tinniness. And you don’t want it too mellow, either. You don’t want it too much either way.” He bought the violin for $2,000 in 1985 when he was a student at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. “Back then, as a student, I didn’t have a penny, and $2,000 might as well have been $2 million,” he recalled. He managed to scrape together the money, and he has never owned another violin since. A professor of his found it in a Boston violin shop. Orbovich said it was an extremely good deal for the time, and that the value has also appreciated because the sound quality of the instrument has improved over the years as well. Michigan City police recovered it with the help of a Lake Station pawn shop, according to the violinist’s wife, Sunny Orbovich. “We will know more (Monday),” she said. “He got a call from the police Saturday morning that it had been found.” Nicolas Orbovich reported the instrument stolen from his car on Nov. 17. The unlocked vehicle was in a Wal-Mart parking lot for about five minutes, and when the musician returned he discovered that the violin was missing. At the time, he likened the theft to “losing an immediate family member.” Police in Michigan City confirmed Sunday that the instrument had been recovered, but no one involved in the investigation was available to provide details on about how it was found. Nicolas Orbovich said he thought police had a suspect, but had not yet made an arrest. He expected to learn more about how the instrument was found when he picks up the violin on Monday. Sunny Orbovich said she had heard that a pawn shop in Lake Station, near Gary, assisted in some way, but she was not sure how. All she knows is that her husband is ecstatic that it will soon be back home. “We’re happy,” she said. “We’re very happy.” Besides his work with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra, Nicolas Orbovich said he has performed as “freelance violinist” with the Elgin Symphony, the Chicago Sinfonietta and the Illinois Philharmonic. He founded the Michigan City Chamber Music Festival. A Chicago resident for 12 years, he has lived in Michigan City for the past nine years. He’s been excited to play his instrument again. “The violin also had a very big sound,” he said. “It was very loud. It was never hard to be heard from the back of the hall with it.” (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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