Violinist James Ehnes Photo: Ben Ealovega
Canadian violin star James Ehnes still misses the prairies - "but not today".
He tells RNZ Concert host Bryan Crump he just checked the temperature back in his home town of Brandon, Manitoba: "minus 30 degrees Celsius".
Manitoba country - there's a pretty good music school at the end of the road. Photo: Ken Lund
Ehnes grew up in a very musical family that settled in something of a musical oasis on the Great Plains.
His father was professor of trumpet at Brandon University's School of Music, his mother ran a ballet school. They'd migrated to the prairies from the metropolis of Chicago, part of a push to improve the quality of arts education outside of Canada's big cities.
Ehnes remembers listening to classical music from an early age, often sitting on the warmest place in the family home: the radiator.
He saw the great Itzhak Perlman play the violin on Sesame Street. He asked his folks if he could have one.
And as his obvious talent blossomed, he didn't have to go far to find a good teacher. Francis Chaplin, one of the great Canadian pedagogues, taught at the Brandon University School of Music.
Ehnes is speaking with Crump from RNZ Concert's Auckland studio. Outside, the temperature is in the mid-20s. He's only been in the country four hours. Crump wants to know how he keeps himself grounded, having just travelled around the world from London and the Northern Hemisphere winter.
The Canadian says for him it's often best to just get stuck into preparing for his next concert - giving himself a day off to recover from travelling often seems to just delay the recovery.
Ehnes loves New Zealand. He was last in the country a couple of years ago. For this visit, he's just performing in Auckland, playing the Brahms Violin Concerto and Bartok's First Violin Concerto, both with the Auckland Philharmonia, as well as giving a masterclass.
Crump asks the violinist if his folks are still in Brandon. Ehnes replies that his father has passed on, while his mother now lives in Florida "like a lot of retired Canadians".
Still, he has fond memories of his home on the prairie and goes back from time to time - just don't ask him to visit in the dead of winter.
