There don’t seem to be any voids in Mr Fain’s schedule. The lanky, violinist is in constant motion. The spring saw him playing with Philip Glass in Holland, Spain and Sweden; in August he played at the composer’s Nights and Days Festival at Big Sur, Calif. His appearances in films—as the sound of Richard Gere’s violin in “Bee Season”; opposite Natalie Portman in “Black Swan”—led to the kind of glamorous invitations not normally extended to classical musicians: a performance on a New York Fashion Week runway; full-color profiles in Vanity Fair and Vogue. When he’s not playing Mozart concertos with the Spokane Symphony (as he did this past weekend), he might be jamming with rock musicians.
As a result, Mr. Fain is as intimate with his iPhone as with his 18th-century Francesco Gobetti violin. Embracing the tension between the chattering, multitasking modern world and the continued human need for reflection and deeper connections led to his latest project, Portals. The evening of music, dance and film, in which Mr. Fain plays live in front of a screen featuring his artistic collaborators, is intended, according to the subtitle, as “a multi-media exploration of longing in a digital age.” He recently launched the show at New York’s Symphony Space; on Wednesday and Thursday it will stop at Kaneko (which helped fund it) in Omaha, Neb., before going on to the Broad Stage in Los Angeles this Sunday.
At times, it was easy to forget what was real and what was virtual in Portals. The images, Mr. Fain seems to say, are ultimately untrustworthy and whatever true human connection there is lies in the music.