It should have been one of those nights musicians live for. Frank Almond, the concertmaster of the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra for nearly two decades, had just closed a chamber concert in his own “Frankly Music”
series with Messiaen’s hushed, eerily intense “Quartet for the End of
Time.” Mr. Almond drew the graceful, ringing high notes of the finale
from his prized
1715 Stradivarius violin, producing a tone so intensely
focused that the audience in the Wisconsin Lutheran College’s 388-seat
auditorium sat in awed silence for 20 seconds before applauding.
But
the glow of the moment evaporated quickly, once Mr. Almond, 49, stepped
into the college art center’s parking lot at 10:20 p.m. Monday, his
violin carefully swaddled against the subzero temperatures and
minus-25-degree wind chill. And as he neared his car, a figure stepped
up to him and shot him with a stun gun. More at the NYTimes