Electric Violin Shop wants to channel support for the Haiti relief effort through Haitian-American electric violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain's blog. DBR has been updating his site on ways to help the Haitian relief effort. Read his news page and follow his blog for updates listing charities Daniel is recommending, as well as possible benefit concerts and other events as they come to light.

Electric Violin Shop on the road to TMEA and ASTA!!
Attention Texas and California residents -- Electric Violin Shop is coming in February to a convention center near you! As usual, we'll be bringing along a great representative sampling of our huge variety of electric bowed strings gear to an exhibit hall near you! Meet the staff you've talked to on the phone! Play different brands! Demo effects! Y'all come see us . . . .

February 11-13, San Antonio, TMEA booth 340: The Texas Music Educators Association Clinic/Convention, held in San Antonio, is one of the largest gatherings of music educators in the world. This will be our first time to exhibit here, and we're all very excited (especially Mike, who did graduate work at the University of Texas - El Paso). EVS is bringing a wide selection of inventory for the projected 25,000 attendees to peruse. While the daily in-booth demos and the deepest product knowledge in the industry would be reason enough to stop by booth 340, we're also excited to announce that Electric Violin Shop is sponsoring a $1000 raffle at the convention. The world's best collection of amplified bowed strings AND free money? What could be better?

February 18-20, Santa Clara, California, ASTA booth 112-211: We're finally going to the West Coast to exhibit at the American String Teachers Association (this makes 5 years out of the last 7 we have exhibited). Meet Blaise and Duncan at booth 112-211 to chat, or to play through the gear you are curious about. We are also sponsoring the Alternative Strings Master Classes with Christian Howes, a very energetic teacher of many styles of playing.

Where does EVS find new gear that works well with bowed strings? Although we are always searching, the annual NAMM show, in Anaheim, California puts a huge assortment of gear in one place.

Blaise was one of 87,569 attendees who walked through over a million square feet of displays from 1,373 exhibitors, in search of cool new stuff for players of electric bowed strings. There's a whole 2010 NAMM page on our website, detailing what's up and what's new in the electric violin community.

We welcome your inspiring story or a favorite quote.

We have included a musical quote in every email newsletter we’ve sent since 1999 - so, let the tradition continue!

Concentrate on the joy of music making. Sure it's a skill and it takes hard work to learn, but it should always be fun. That's something that my teacher [Josef Gingold] passed on to me: the sheer joy of making music

-- Joshua Bell (American violinist b. 1967), in School Band and Orchestra magazine, December 2009.