16-Year-Old Violinist Performs Saturday

Thu., Aug. 13, 1998

Travis Rivers Staff writer

Dozens of young violin prodigies roam the classical concert circuit. Each seems to play faster and more brilliantly than the last.

Jason Moody is different.

“Jason plays with real feeling,” says Kelly Farris, Spokane Symphony concertmaster and Jason’s teacher for the past four years. “People feel the communication of that expressiveness when he performs.”

Moody will communicate that expressiveness in Ernest Chausson’s “Poeme,” the work he will perform with the Spokane Symphony in Saturday’s concert at The Festival at Sandpoint. The 16-year-old Sandpoint High School honors student has been honing his violin skills since he began studying at age 5.

Earlier this summer, Moody won a national competition to appear on the inaugural program of National Public Radio’s “From the Top,” a show featuring young artists from around the country. The young violinist cut short his study at the prestigious Interlochen Academy in Michigan to return to perform the Chausson work in Sandpoint.

Moody comes from a musical family - his mother teaches piano, his father sings and his sister is also a musician - but he is not a slave to the violin. In addition to playing in the Spokane Youth Symphony, he is a member of the school cross-country team, he enjoys a variety of outdoor activities including fly fishing and mountain biking, and he owns a dog and two cats.

All that and he’s “an extraordinary violinist,” in the words of Young Symphony conductor Verne Windham.

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