Hello, Maw family. Have you listened to our new podcast, Grown yet? Grown, that's GROWN,

is a podcast filled with true stories all about the joys and pains of growing up.

Listen with a young person in your life, or by yourself to hear Maw stories,

storyteller interviews, and audio diaries from young voices that tackle family dynamics,

heartbreak, culture, mental health, and so much more. If you love listening to Maw stories,

then share Grown with a young person in your life. Find it by searching GROWN on all major podcast

platforms.

From PRX, this is the Maw radio hour. I'm Meg Bulls and in this hour we'll hear three stories

told live on stage in Northampton, Massachusetts, New York City, and Flint, Michigan.

Our first storyteller, Frank Ommand, is the concert master of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra.

Frank is a professional violinist and has performed as a soloist in some of the world's most

important music venues, including the Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, where he told this story.

The only difference this time he took the stage without his violin. Here's Frank Ommand,

Liza Kamaas.

In 2008, I received an email and the subject line was a violin. And the center

went on to explain that they had in their position a Stradivarius violin from 1750,

and it was part of an estate situation, and they were looking for some guidance.

I'm a professional violinist and have had the good fortune to play any number of Stradivarius

instruments for decades all over the world, even in here a few times, as I recall.

And the thing about Stradivarius, the mystique is not that they're 300 years old or that they're

worth so much money. It's that they're these amazing functional antiquities and they're powerful

and they're sonically nuanced and they're perfectly crafted and engineered. And they have these

...