It's a variation on the Pied Piper story, only these musicians are playing the violin and leading their followers to an imaginary meeting ground inhabited by Itzhak Perlman, Jean-Luc Ponty and Vassar ...

If you can't afford it, or just can't find it — make it; motto of Sam Goodall. The violinist had long wanted a five-string fiddle, "I joked I had C-string envy," she says. But under the tutelage of ...