On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on
stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center
in New York City.

If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that
getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was
stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both
legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk
across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is
an awesome sight.

He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his
chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the
floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and
extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and
picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the
conductor and proceeds to play.

By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly
while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They
remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his
legs. They wait until he is ready to play.

But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the
first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You
could hear it snap - it went off like gunfire across the room.
There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was
no mistaking what he had to do.

We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps
again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage - to
either find another violin or else find another string for this
one.  But he didn't. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his
eyes and then signaled the conductor to begin again.

The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left
off. And he played with such passion and such power and
such purity as they had never heard before.

Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a
symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you
know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to
know that.

You could see him modulating, changing, re-composing the
piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was
de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they
had never made before.

When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the
room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an
extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the
auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering,
doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated
what he had done.

He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to
quiet us, and then he said - not boastfully, but in a quiet,
pensive, reverent tone - "You know, sometimes it is the
artist's task to find out how much music you can still make
with what you have left."

What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever
since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the
definition of life - not just for artists but for all of us.

Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on
a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a
concert, finds himself with only three strings; so he makes
music with three strings, and the music he made that night
with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more
memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he
had four strings.

So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing,
bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first
with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer
possible, to make music with what we have left 

I have been a fan of Mr. Perlmans for a very long time.
His ability is awesome. When he plays you move into 
the world his music creates.On a personal level he
has great humor and courage.It's out there on the 
stage for all to see. I will tell you this...IF you are ever
lucky enough to see/hear him play you will forget for
the moment every hardship and pain..both 
his and yours....because your world will
be filled with ....music.