From TOM JACKSON | The Tampa Tribune
Published: September 28, 2011
“The difference between a violin and a fiddle,”
says Ingrid Richter, nearly 12 and a budding virtuoso, is found in an old joke. “A violin has strings, and a fiddle,” she says, pivoting to a drawl, “has strangs.”
Ingrid has been playing both out of the same instrument case since she turned 6, when brother Steven — then an Army motor pool mechanic stationed in Baghdad’s Green Zone — scored a violin in an eBay auction and threw in a year’s worth of classical instruction, adding a solitary, against-the-grain caveat.
Debbie Richter, mom to both, explains: “He said, ‘I want you to play ‘Devil Went Down to Georgia’ for me on my next birthday.’”
Ever since, Ingrid has been the musical version of Josh Waitzkin, the prepubescent chess prodigy torn between classical training and the rough-and-tumble speed chess played in a Manhattan park portrayed in 1993′s wrenching “Searching for Bobby Fischer.”
With one possible exception. Though the child’s preference may be for Mozart and Vivaldi, Ingrid’s longtime teacher encourages her to fiddle. “Expose yourself to new things,” she says.
* * * * *
So Ingrid does, often accompanied — as she was Tuesday — by Dennis Devine on rhythm guitar. They make a fascinating partnership: the retired Pasco teacher and Civil War re-enactor and the home-schooled sixth-grader in braces, a “thrown-together” gypsy costume and bare feet patting time.
Delighting the handful of San Antonio Rotarians lunching at Tampa Bay Golf & Country Club, they played a little ragtime, a haunting bluegrass waltz and a gypsy dance tune. “Hence,” she says (yes, Ingrid Richter, not quite 12 and home-schooled, says “hence”) while performing a small curtsy, “the gypsy costume.”
She wore a billowing rust-colored blouse cinched at the waist with a suede fringed belt dyed violet, and a long floral skirt. A double strand of wooden beads dangled from her neck, and her straight blond hair was caught by a dark headband festooned with small coins of a foreign origin. Rough woven bracelets cavorted as she fretted with one hand and worked the bow with the other.
The experience was scarcely shy of transportive. Just in time, too.
