A Violin Returned: Eva Neubeck in Conversation with Ari King

More than a century ago, a German concertmaster and music school director named Siegmund Hess left behind a list of belongings—among them, two violins that would later vanish in the shadow of Nazi persecution. For decades, they were seemingly lost to time, until one of those instruments made its way home.

Join Eva Neubeck, Hess’s great-granddaughter, for an intimate afternoon of story, memory, and music as she shares the extraordinary journey of rediscovering and recovering her family’s violin—an heirloom displaced during the Holocaust era and returned generations later through a trail of documents, chance connections, and persistent hope.

Ms. Neubeck will be joined by Ari King, and together they’ll explore what it means to search for what was lost, to follow fragments of evidence across time and distance, and to listen for the human story held inside an object—one that asks what survives: the artifacts that carry history, the families who keep searching, and the way a single instrument can hold the weight of loss and the possibility of return.

Ms. Neubeck will share the recovered violin during the program, and it will be played by violinist Raycurt Lemuel, a musician with Brass Solidarity.