500 Year Old Viola
There aren’t many man-made, breakable items in North America these days that are older than Richard Young’s viola.
His instrument was made in the mid-1500s back in the days, Young points out, when many in Europe thought the Earth revolved around the sun.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said recently by phone from the Chicago area. “This is one of the very first violas ever made.”
Richard is part of the world-class Vermeer Quartet whose players are resident faculty members at Northern Illinois University in Dekalb. The Quartet regularly performs in the Chicago area and viewing a performance of theirs would be an interesting complement to the National Festival of the States in Chicago.
