Tim Kantor '07 is a performer at heart.
"It's kind of what I've always done," he said. "I'm a violinist, not a composer. I know the intricacies of the instrument."
Kantor plans to showcase that knowledge and love of performing in his Saturday recital, the culmination of a semester of advanced lessons with Bowdoin violin instructor Stephen Kecskemethy.
"When I'm performing, right now I'm the medium that transmits the art to the audience," he said. "I like being able to look at the audience when I play the music?it's a rush."
Kantor has a long history with the violin, as he started playing when he was three. He is a music major at Bowdoin, and played with an Italian orchestra during his semester abroad in Bologna.
"I started very young, and my parents wouldn't let me quit. I didn't want to be a musician because my parents were, so it was because of that reasoning and an immature adherence to that rebellion," Kantor said.
"I wouldn't have wanted to go to a conservatory," he continued. "Music is a big part of my life, but it would be really boring as the only part."
Kantor's mother, Virginia Weckstrom-Kantor, pianist and teacher at the Cleveland Institute of Music, will accompany him Saturday on Brahms's "Violin Sonata No. 3 in D Minor."
"I've been playing with her my whole life," Kantor said. "We work well together, and it makes everything easier. In the piece, the piano and violin are very much equal partners."
In addition to playing the Brahms piece with his mother, Kantor elected to play two Paganini "Caprices" and Bach's "Partita No. 3 in E Major." The Bach piece offers a new challenge for Kantor because he will play it on a Baroque violin, which is the basis for his senior honors project with Professor of Music Mary Hunter.
Kantor's honors project will be to create a manual on how to play the Baroque violin. The project will also explore playing Baroque and classical styles, which left room for the performer to improvise on the piece. A Baroque violin, in addition to having a shorter fingerboard and bow than the standard violin, has gut strings rather than steel strings, making a piece half a step lower on the musical scale than it would be on a standard violin.
"It creates problems with intonation and finding pitches, and you have to adjust your ear to the differences," Kantor said.
Now that Kantor has gravitated toward studying music, he is considering studying at the Cleveland Institute. Along with his mother, his father, accomplished violinist Paul Kantor, teaches there. Most likely, Tim would study the violin under his father.
When asked whether father or son had a better handle on the instrument, Kantor laughed and said, "He's definitely better. You get better at it the longer you do it, and my dad's better. He better know more about it than I do if I'm going to be studying under him."
Combining the technical challenges of Paganini, the depth of Brahms, and the challenge of Bach, Kantor's recital will be held Saturday at 7:30 p.m. in the Tillotson Room, Gibson Hall.