Katherine Winikoff: Staying Connected to Music

When Katherine Winikoff was a small girl, she started taking lessons in the violin. Each day, she would practice holding the instrument properly, and she would rake her bow across the strings and hope the music she produced sounded as excellent as the songs she had floating through her head all day long. Often, in those early days, Katherine Winikoff was unable to make anything close to musical noises on her violin. Screeching and hooting noises were common, but melodic passages were rare.

Since Katherine Winikoff practiced her instrument each day, without fail, she slowly started to improve. The screeching noises and hooting sounds became less prominent and Katherine Winikoff started to pull soft and sweet noises from her violin instead. She worked on her fingering techniques, as well as her bowing skill, and she started to develop a deep like for the instrument.

Katherine Winikoff’s playing was deeply personal, but her talent also started to bring her some outside attention. She went up to the second chair position in her orchestra, and she was named to represent her school in a countywide orchestra. Her peers appreciated her work, and she started to realize that she did have a right talent for playing the violin.

Now, Katherine Winikoff has completed school and she is living on her own, taking courses to work in the healthcare field. She lives a demanding life, full of classes and of work, and often, she finds that the demands on her life are a bit overwhelming. It seems that she must be in multiple places at the same time, and sometimes, she finds that she simply wants to plop on the couch at the end of the day, instead of playing her violin.

And yet, Katherine Winikoff does play that violin every day. She’s come much too far in her talent to let her skills deteriorate. In addition, playing the violin has been a part of Katherine Winikoff’s daily life for many decades. It’s not something she can easily abandon now, not when she has come so far. So each night, she pulls her violin out of the case, and she plays her favorite songs. It’s something Katherine Winikoff is likely to do for the rest of her life.