What Skid Row Taught Acclaimed Violinist Vijay Gupta About Music

If Vivek heard his son pause when he should have been practicing, Vijay risked another beating. The violin became as much a shield against the blows as it was an instrument of music, and a refuge for Vijay. But his dad also came up with creative schemes to push young Vijay into the spotlight.

“When I was 7 or 8 years old, he was writing to famous people as me,” Gupta said. “He would write to Oprah, David Letterman, Sally Jessy Raphael and Zubin Mehta, and it was sort of like I was living in a world made of his dreams.”

When he was 9 years old, Gupta was among a group of young, Juilliard-trained violin protégées invited to accompany rapper Coolio onstage at the 1995 Billboard Awards. The quintet of violinists accompanied the rapper on “Gangsta’s Paradise,” a song featuring lyrics that would foreshadow Gupta’s life in his mid-20s.

“I’m 23 now, but will I see 24? / The way things are goin’, I don’t know / Tell me why we are so blind to see, that the ones we hurt are you and me.”

Ten years later, at age 19, after pursuing two university undergrad degrees — one in medicine, the other in music — Gupta won a seat on the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra. He did so after acing his very first audition, becoming the youngest violinist to ever join a major orchestra in the United States.

“I didn’t know what I signed up for at 19 years old. I just happened to get that gig,” Gupta said.

Suddenly, he was earning a six-figure salary but still didn’t know how to drive a car or do online banking. His father joined him on his cross-country trek from New York to Los Angeles, the two moving into a small apartment together. His mother managed his finances from New York, explaining to her son that his salary would also help support family in the U.S. and the Indian state of West Bengal. It’s a decision that would later lead to financial calamity.

“I was suddenly supporting my family, and I got tenure, and I don’t want to be there,” Gupta said.

“So, five years later, I’m eating my feelings and all I’m thinking about during L.A. Phil concerts is my post-concert In-N-Out order, and how many bottles of Russian River pinot I’m going to drink that night,” he said.

Five years into his stint with the L.A. Phil and deeply unhappy, Gupta began pursuing a second musical path. He said he wanted to take professional-level classical music out of “stuffy” concert halls and bring it into much different concert settings: jails, homeless shelters, prisons.

He headed to Skid Row, a part of downtown Los Angeles he discovered while on a driving lesson with his father. Just a little over a mile away from the footlights of Walt Disney Concert Hall, Skid Row is home to the largest concentration of homeless people in the United States. Gupta tapped a few other L.A. Phil musicians to form the Street Symphony. The nonprofit ensemble has since evolved into a sprawling collective of professional and amateur musicians spanning a host of genres.

One of the first people Gupta reached out to was Georgia Hawley, communications director at The Midnight Mission, Los Angeles’s longest-running homeless shelter offering meals, drug rehabilitation and other services.

“He called and said, ‘Hey, I have this group called Street Symphony, and I want to come and play. Do I need to audition? Should I send you a tape? What do you need?’” Hawley said. “And I said, ‘Well, our next opening is Thursday … are you available?’”

At the time, Hawley had just launched the Music with a Mission program, offering free, weekly concerts for shelter clients. She has since worked closely with Gupta on hundreds of music events in Skid Row.

“You know, he fought a lot with being this young person who was in this adult world and having to behave a certain way and act a certain way, and he was supporting his family,” Hawley said.

“I think just not having an outlet to talk to people about that and to say, ‘I’m hurt, I’m scared.’ And I think the more he tried to help others, the more he couldn’t ignore what was happening to him.”

Skid Row would end up becoming something of a mirror, a pathway for Gupta to finally reconcile his own demons.

“The real transformation started happening for me in Skid Row was when people said, ‘Hey Vijay, it’s good that you’re coming here to walk your steps, keep coming.’ What are you talking about? I’m here to bring you joy, I’m the healer! And they’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah. Keep coming,’” Gupta said.

“Walk your steps”, meaning the guiding principles of the 12-Step program used in rehab. People in Skid Row wanted to show Gupta something they could see, but that he couldn’t — or wouldn’t — see himself.

“I would not have admitted to anyone that I was as much an addict, not only to food and alcohol, but everybody else’s version of who I should be,” Gupta said.

In the meantime, Gupta kept up a frenetic performing schedule. In addition to his role at L.A. Phil, he began doing public speaking events where he’d take his violin and lecture about classical music and its connection to neuroscience, social activism and spirituality.

At a 2012 Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Miami, Gupta appeared on stage in a rumpled suit, his shirttails sticking out beneath his navy-blue blazer. He was much heavier then and still drinking a lot. But once the bow touched the strings, his playing was effortless, fluid and gorgeous.

“That guy had never been kissed. That guy had never been on a date, absolutely hated himself. Probably [weighed] around 315 pounds,” Gupta said, reflecting on the performance.

“And that guy was using the violin, that effortlessness, as a way of hiding in plain sight. If I was infallible, bulletproof, then people might forgive the fact that I was actually Quasimodo.”

In 2018, after winning a six-figure MacArthur Genius Grant, Gupta left the L.A. Phil. He threw himself into his work with Street Symphony and pursued solo and chamber work, collaborating widely with other artists on a range of projects. He’s currently developing a one-man show combining performance, documentary film and storytelling based in part on his new memoir.

On the way back to his home in Altadena from Skid Row, Gupta talked more about his parents. Though his dad is gone and he’s estranged from his mom, he still sees them in other people. Since seeking therapy, dealing with addiction and even taking up boxing, the bad memories don’t haunt or hurt as much. But they still resurface.

“I write about it in the book that my mom ambushed me backstage at Walt Disney Concert Hall,” Gupta said.

“She was there just to berate me in front of my colleagues. Sometimes I would walk into Skid Row and be like, ‘Oh, is that her, is that mom?’ I would just see her everywhere in Skid Row.”

For Gupta, the area is a crucible, calling it the largest recovery zone for people teetering on the edge.

“This is a place where people are undone, and it’s also a place where people are remade,” he said. “If someone wants to get clean, or they want a bed or want to start over, this is a place where people can begin again.”