DANIEL KOBIALKA

We met at the New England Music Camp (NEMC) in the summer of 1960. He was a great guy and a very talented violinist. We hit it off immediately. The last camp concert of the camp season we both performed, he Saint Seans Introduction and Rondo Capparicio, and I performed the third movement of Beethoven's 1st Piano Concerto. We brought the house down. To this day that Saint Saens piece is my favorite violin piece.

My sympathy. I studied with his father (Harry) at Exeter for 3 years and have played violin and viola with great pleasure ever since. Like Dan, I also went to NEMC in Maine. A special family!

Apart from his talents as a musician, Dan was an incredible teacher, even for older "returning" students like myself. Relearning bowing (etc) in my 50s was excruciating but worth it! Dan was able to breakdown into specific "microsteps" the broader techniques that professionals internalize and perform "automatically". He was also a terrific coach. Under Dan's tutelage, I became more able to express on the violin the music I heard in my head [and heart]. Jan1943 was a good year for music!

Dan, Jan and I were "faculty brats" at New England Music Camp in Maine where our fathers taught. I remember him as an incredibly talented young boy. He was always nice and not at all impressed with himself outwardly. He was by far the best musician there. I have followed his success through the years with admiration. My condolences to Jan and the rest of his family.