"To Encourage or Deny" by D. Blaise Kielar

 – hitting the right note

A musical opportunity denied his father was multiplied many times over though his son’s passion for encouraging others.

D. Blaise Kielar plays violin and clarinet, and leads the Bulltown Strutters, Durham’s community New Orleans brass band. He opened Chapel Hill’s first violin shop in 1978 and later started Music Explorium and Electric Violin Shop, which he helped transition to become America’s first worker-owned co-op music store. He has written poetry and non-fiction since 1991, most recently published in Elsewhere: A Journal of Place. This story comes from his upcoming memoir, A Violin Does Not Tune Itself: The Quiet Kid Who Started the World’s Loudest Violin Shop.