- There's a particular young man that I met in Paris.
I was there to visit my former teacher
and mentor and friend, Francois Arbat.
And he was there for six months studying with him.
He'd just finished his undergraduate work.
And we got to talking and he played for me
and I really enjoyed his playing.
And I asked him what he wanted to do.
And he said, "We'll, I just wanna get better.
"I just want to be the best musician
"and the best bass player I can be."
And I said, well, what kind of music do you like?
Oh, I like jazz, I like chamber music.
I like the orchestra, I like chamber orchestra.
I couldn't have been happier with his responses
because he loved everything.
Anyway, I accepted him as a masters student,
and he ended up being my first, and so far,
only graduated doctoral student.
And while he was in the masters program,
he got very interested in early music performance.
He was always interested in new music performance.
But the other thing, he took a class in pedagogy,
and the light went on for him.
And he fell so in love with the concept
of teaching all ages and at all levels
that he decided that he would then go on
and get his doctorate so that he would
be able to become his primary function
in life would be to be a teacher.
And I was a little concerned about it at first
because of his lack of orchestral experience.
So, we focused a lot on his orchestral repertoire
and paid a lot of attention
to his orchestral performance here.
And he also played with the opera while he was here
and did some other serious orchestral playing.
I guess the biggest reward was
the first time he and I did
a major double bass workshop together.
And I would say there were probably
between 60 and 70 students.
And Sandor was like he'd been born to it.
He had organizational skills that I had no idea that he had.
He had ensembles going at four different levels.
They were in love with what he was doing.
He was in love with what they were doing.
The effectiveness of his contact with them,
and his ability to teach as he coached,
and his absolute joy that he was experiencing
that he transferred to them,
I found to be amazing.
And it was a magical experience.
Very rewarding for me even though I had very little
to do with it because it was mostly
about him finding his place and choosing what it was.
He now has a nice respectable university position
and is involved in teaching also young bassists,
as well as university.
And he lives in the Washington D.C. area
so he is in an area where he can freelance.
He does play, gets an opportunity
to put gut strings on and do early music.
He still plays some jazz and orchestral repertoire also.
So, his life is very rich, but it's centered
around his love of teaching.