My vote for person of the year.

Dear Time magazine,

Got it!

Here are your criteria for Person of the Year 2006:
TIME's Person of the Year is the person or persons who most affected the news and our lives, for good or for ill, and embodied what was important about the year.

And here she is, a kickin' violist right up in your faces:


Jennifer Stumm is the first solo violist in the fifty-five plus year history of the Concert Artists Guild Competition to win the jury’s unanimous vote. Unanimous! And she won every other important competition last year. And she studied with a teacher of mine!

And I love this head shot because that shirt rocks, and she's got the "i'm better than everybody but it's okay because i make lovely music"-face without looking completely bitchy. And she does play beautifully, which is not always the case with competition winners.

I don't even like those pieces on that link (or I didn't until now) but she's lilty and singing and chocolatey toned. Yay!

If you live in NYC you should go to her Carnegie recital on December 6th. If you're independantly wealthy you should fly me in, too. Mwah! (BTW, I can get you $10 tickets in return if you like.)

Ooh, look at her hair. You see why I want to grow mine?