A beautiful fall night, dinner at Indie with Harvey, and Lincoln Center filling up for the evening. Joshua Bell comes on stage and The Red Violin begins. Philharmonic Hall is darker than usual because it's movie and live sound track night; one of my favorite concerts.  Early in the movie a young child in an orphanage, played by Christoph Koncz, is discovered. He is a violin prodigy and heads off to Vienna to learn and play and perform. He looks about 6 years old. The movie is a beautiful story centered on the journey this violin takes, ending up in an auction house. Secrets are revealed as the violin changes hands and all the while Joshua Bell plays whenever the red violin is played.

There is an announcement as we re-enter after intermission for the audience to stay seated through all the credits and music out of respect for the artists. The credits are long, but perhaps not any longer than the ones we often skip as they get to all the last details of the production. And then the conductor picks up a microphone and says that Joshua Bell would like to play an encore on a 17th century Italian violin, made during the same period as the red violin. Bell returns to the stage and then he takes the microphone and announces that he has a special guest who will play with him. Christoph Koncz, now 20 years old and the lead violin of the 2nd violins in the Vienna Symphony, has come to NYC for this opening night performance of The Red Violin. They perform a quick, fast and flashy duet and then leave the stage. A cherry on the top of a spectacular feast of music and cinema.

I am heightened as we begin another intense week of thinking about discussions and events coming up at school. As I replay some of the scenes of the movie and think about the secrets revealed, I realize that the only dark-skinned person featured in the story is the person who holds the secret. He enters as the expert, respected and in charge, but leaves as the one who has played a trick under the gaze of a white community of wealthy auction attendees. There are only a few Asian people in that crowd. Is this another message of bias on the screen to feed our already deeply embedded biases about black people? Do we suspect him of wrong-doing and watch him carefully because he stands out in the crowd? Or do we admire his success against many odds and then have our expectations fulfilled when he falls into wrongdoing as we might be socialized to believe should be no surprise?