Good morning. It’s Tuesday. We’ll find out about an instrument maker whose violins, violas and cellos are in the hands of famous performers — and who will be the honoree at a gala tonight. We’ll also get details on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan to put a city-owned grocery store in the Hunts Point neighborhood in the Bronx.
Sam Zygmuntowicz thought the email was a hoax. The subject line was “Let us honor you.” But it was real — an invitation to be the honoree at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center’s gala, which is to take place tonight. As honorees go, Zygmuntowicz was an unusual choice: Galas, those rituals of the donor class, are “not part of my usual world,” said Zygmuntowicz, who describes himself as a craftsman. He is an instrument maker from Brooklyn who makes the violins, violas and cellos that many of the Chamber Music Society’s performers play. “I’m more aligned with labor than management, if you want to call it that,” he said. But the management of the Chamber Music Society has planned an all-Zygmuntowicz program to recognize the man who introduced “the second golden period of violin making,” as one of the society’s co-artistic directors, David Finckel, put it. Wu Han, the other co-artistic director (and Finckel’s spouse), recalled what an auctioneer who deals in rare instruments said: “There is the Strad,” referring to instruments from Antonio Stradivari, “and there’s the Brooklyn Strad.” All but two of the performers on the program tonight will play Zygs, as some performers call Zygmuntowicz’s instruments. The two — Wu and Orion Weiss — are pianists who will accompany different combinations of string players. Finckel, a cellist, has owned a Zyg for more than 30 years and just took delivery on another. He also owns a Zygmuntowicz violin that he thought was a Stradivarius the first time he heard it. ‘A woodworker, an engineer …’Zygmuntowicz (pronounced zig-mun-TOE-vitch) — who has made violins for performers like Isaac Stern and Maxim Vengerov — began as a violin restorer but switched to full-time luthier in the mid-1980s. He is “at once a woodworker, an engineer, an historian, a mechanic and a shaman,” as the writer John Marchese explained in a book about Zygmuntowicz and a violin that Zygmuntowicz made 20 years ago for Eugene Drucker of the Emerson String Quartet. (Joshua Bell now has that violin.) Zygmuntowicz’s customers are willing to wait: Wu said that Finckel waited six years for one of the cellos because it took Zygmuntowicz two and a half years “just to find the right kind of wood.” “There’s this idea — it’s like, there’ll never be another Mozart, there’ll never be another Beethoven, there’ll never be another Brahms,” he said. “We have same thing in violins — there’ll never been another Stradivari because he had some kind of secret of some sort. But the more you know about something, the more you’re involved in a nuts-and-bolts kind of way, the less mystical it is and the more it’s just like a puzzle. It’s our job to figure it out.” When copying Mstislav Rostropovich’s cello, Rostropovich “spent all afternoon and all night, till 4 in the morning with us for Sam to study the cello, to take pictures, to take measurements,” Wu said. Zygmuntowicz even copied a scratch that dated to when Rostropovich’s cello was much younger — but still not brand-new — and Napoleon commandeered it for a moment after a concert, nicking it with one of his spurs. Big moneyStrads now command staggering prices in the collector’s market. Last year a Strad that once belonged to the 19th-century virtuoso Joseph Joachim sold for $11.25 million at Sotheby’s. But Zygs have also become more valuable. The website of the instrument dealer Tarisio says the auction record for a Zyg was $180,000, set in 2024. There have been private sales for more than $200,000. “By all measures, buying a Strad — it’s basically no longer possible for a working musician to do that,” Zygmuntowicz said. He added that it was “sort of ironic that new violins, which were meant to be seen as an alternative to old violins, are also getting expensive.” “Anyone who bought one of my violins before the present time is very happy every time they get an insurance appraisal,” he said. “Why shouldn’t they own an asset that has value? I mean, they could have borrowed a Strad for their whole career, and have nothing.” WEATHER Expect a hot and sunny day as temperatures soar into the 90s. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 76. A heat advisory is in effect. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Friday (Shavuot). QUOTE OF THE DAY “We’re not sitting back waiting for a miracle, we’re actively working on finding solutions.” — Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, who is struggling to guide the Met through a financial crisis. The latest New York news
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In December 2024, Zohran Mamdani — then a state assemblyman running a long-shot campaign for mayor — promised on Instagram to set up “a major new proposal to tackle price gouging and bring down costs: city-owned grocery stores.” On Monday, Mamdani announced plans for a store in the South Bronx. It will be in the Peninsula, an affordable housing development in the Hunts Point neighborhood. Mamdani said the 20,000-square-foot store would open next year. He has already announced plans for a store in East Harlem in Manhattan. Some merchants have pushed back, saying that city-owned stores could hurt small supermarkets. The manager of a market near the East Harlem site asked Mamdani at a forum last month why the mayor was locating his market there when there were other stores nearby. “My vision is not that there isn’t room for multiple grocery stores,” the mayor said. “My vision is that there is a grocery store within New Yorkers’ reach where they know that they can afford certain things.” City Hall is still scouting for locations for stores in Brooklyn and Queens and on Staten Island. The City Council would have to approve funding for the five markets, including $70 million that Mamdani wants to spend building them. Julie Menin, the Council speaker, has expressed concerns about how the plan would affect bodegas. METROPOLITAN DIARY Slice of life
Dear Diary: I was walking back to my hotel from the Flatiron district at about 1 a.m. after a celebratory evening of slightly too much champagne and wine in December 2024. I desperately wanted a slice of pizza. Having grown up in New Jersey but now living on a small island in the Pacific Northwest, it was a craving that, once sparked, did not let go until satisfied. Arriving at my hotel, at 50th and Madison, I could only find a truck serving hot pretzels. There was nary a pizza place in sight, and I knew I was most likely out of luck. Just then I spotted two men walking east carrying a pizza box. I stopped them, explained my quest and asked where they had found their treasure. They said it was from a place about six blocks away but warned that it was about to close. One of them clearly noticed my crestfallen look. Without hesitation, he opened the pizza box. “Here,” he said, “take a slice.” I paused, but he insisted in the offhand way one might at 1 o’clock in the morning. Moments later, he and his companion walked off as my “thank you” echoed in the cold night air. I stood there, smiling, stunned and holding a still-hot slice of pepperoni and black olive pizza that was, for many reasons, the best slice I’ve ever had in New York City. — Samuel C. Blackman Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
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