Since there has been some interest in the late Erica Morini on the list, I thought I would write what little I remember of an article that appeared in the Washington Post perhaps a year after she died. I may still have the article, if I could lay my hands on it. Some of this account comes from the impression the article left on me, not necessarily on facts that it cited. Ms. Morini's withdraw from the concert stage was not a voluntary retirement. She just stopped receiving invitations to perform. She believed she faced a large measure of sex-discrimination throughout her career, and those feelings left a considerable legacy of bitterness. Some of the sweet sound she produced could be attributed to her instrument: the famed Davidoff Strad (at least I think that's its name). It was one of the true elites produced by the master. Ms. Morini lived a retirement of spendid isolation in New York City, never contributing anything of her life experience to the world of music, or any other world for that matter. Her reputation for stinginess was right up there with that of Scrooge. One thing in life she did value was her violin, which she had not played for decades by the time she died in her early nineties. As her death approached, she became quite fearful that someone would try to steal the instrument. There were very few people who had access to her apartment. Sure enough, when she died, the violin had been switched with a garden variety instrument, and it was established that the switch had occurred in the days immediately preceeding her death. At the time the Post article was written, there had been no arrests made concerning the theft of the instrument, although there was one good candidate. Does anyone know of futher developments. By the way, a young fiddler friend of mine noted that if a violin is not played for a period of a few years, it can take a decade of patient coaxing to bring it back to life. Larry Sherwood