About Chris Swanson:
Chris Swanson is an ESL instructor, violinist and web programmer living in Torrance,
California, returned to the U.S.A
in 2007 after spending ten years living and working in
Hiroshima, Japan.
I haved played the violin since four years old, starting out with the Carol
Kerston and the Suzuki Method, in my hometown of San Luis Obispo, California. I later studied with Ronald Copes of the current Juillard
Quartet and attended the University of Texas, Austin on a full scholarship while
playing first stand, second violin in the Austin Symphony Orchestra.
Later I transferred to Indiana University at Bloomington and studied with
several teachers including Paul Biss, Mimi Zweig, and baroque violinist Stanley Ritchie. I also
attended the Oberlin Early Music Institute for one summer, with lessons from Marilyn
McDonald.
At that time Indiana University had Josef Gingold and Janos Starker, as well as
R. Dubinsky, Francesco Gulli, and a bunch of other great musicians. I enjoyed
Gingold and Starker's master classes a lot -- Old world Hungarian fellows, and
memorable personalities.
I recall Gingold marveling about compact disc
technology, and Starker wowing kids in their twenties while playing with a
cigarette between the fingers of his bow hand. Another time, Starker made an
amazing young cellist wait a full silent, smoky, minute before offering his
comment: "Pretty good...". The whole room gasped at this unheard-of thing:
Starker giving a compliment.
As a kid I attended Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (ISOMATA), then the
Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara with lessons from Stuart Canin,
former concertmaster of the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra.
Later in life I lived in Hiroshima, Japan, where I didn't expect to play the
violin, but ended up playing approximately 2,000 times for concerts, school
presentations, class recitals, parties, weddings, bridal fairs, restaurant
events, etc. I consider this period to be my most musical.
In the U.S.A. I played several shows with big names, such as Itzhak Perlman,
Claudio Arrou,
John Denver and Dionne Warwick, who had shows near my university towns. I
also played in shows MC'd by folks like Florence Henderson and Alex Trebek.
Here in Los Angeles I haven't tried too hard to play classical music, but am
playing with a few different bands in different styles, mostly in clubs in or
around Hollywood, using a contact pickup and guitar amplifier or just plug into
the house system. Styles include heavy folk rock, folk, country..others hard to
classify.
Recently I have played for recordings several EPs, a film, and several musicals.
In Hiroshima my main partners were Hashimoto Chidori, piano, and Kawamoto
Hideshi, classical guitar. Chidori was ever the professional, able to change
keys on the fly. She would often write arrangements in taxis or between songs during a gig --
without touching the keyboard.
Hideshi is a rare creature: a great musician with a warm heart, practically
wrapping the audience with a big bear hug every time he plays / entertains.
This webite is mostly a test bed for asp.net / c# coding, such as
online scheduling systems, scripts to syncronize photo collections on home computers and websites, url and content spiders,
rss/xml readers and writers, and email systems -- most of which are not
public-access.
As a fan of sports and classic cars, you can find many photos of them here,
along with scenes from Japan, taken with a
Nikon digital SLR and several Nikon lenses: great 80-200mm f2.8 zoom, wide-angle f4 zoom, and a
middle-of-the-road-zoom with minimum f2.8. Used to have a non-zoom f1.4 50mm
lens but seems to have evaporated.I'm hoping to find that under a sofa cushion
someday. Loved that one.
Feel free to type or choose keywords for photos, or type comments to plug car or
Japan-related sites, as you don't
have to log in to do so.
Besides this website I also have accounts on several popular sites, that I don't
really use, but like to visit to see what they (websites) are
up to:
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