I play the viola. I started out learning the violin but around twenty years ago I picked up a viola and found that the tonal possibilities of the instrument were far more in step with my own ideas of sound: My viola concert debut, when I was working in America was playing the New World Symphony at Carnegie Hall, so its reasonable to say that it’s been downhill ever since. Over the years, I have had real privileges in the instruments that I have handled and played. New string technologies are changing the way that many instruments sound, and I increasingly find that selected instruments under sixteen-inches that may have struggled to be taken seriously in the past can produce fabulous professional concert properties when coupled with 21st century string technology. Moreover there are many competing demands upon a viola player today – the right instrument for Bartok or the Walton is vastly overpowered for playing tutti in a Mozart opera. Superb violas are a scarcity, but something I always take seriously, and always aim to have something of note available.