Anecdata from Nuremberg, living in the vicinity of the "Nuremberg University of Music" (owned by the state of Bavaria): Here we have lots of Asian students (from the students I see carrying an instrument and walking to or from the school it even seems to be a majority, but I only get to see a tiny sample of those who happen to walk by). That's not meant to counter the blog posts "a field so notoriously white and male" statement, as I said, just an anecdote. I like that my local music school seems able to attract so many from so far away. I have no idea how their job prospects are, probably not that much better than described here. The number of places in that field is limited everywhere after all.

I started learning to play the violin pretty late in my forties, with private teachers, both teachers I had thus far women, both educated in Russia actually. I don't aspire to greatness, but sound basic technique already lets me get really wonderful sound from a €1000 violin (after two years of renting a learner's instrument from a violin maker; without bow; selected by myself by sound/feel only, without looking at the instruments I was given for testing). It does not have to be the most difficult pieces at all. There are plenty of simple to medium difficulty melodies that sound great. For the violin, even playing just a few simple notes can sound wonderful - IF you play them right. You don't have to go for concert-level difficulty to get an interesting satisfying result. But with the violin, your basic technique makes all the difference when playing just a single note. Forget about fast-paced changes and decorations, just master the very basics and even the most simple song will sound good with this instrument.

The exact same very basic melody sounds completely different between a beginner and a master. I think this instrument is on the extreme end as far as the importance of basic skills goes. On a piano or a recorder you vary individual notes much less, and frequency hardly or not at all. On a violin everything is a spectrum, frequency, how you hold the bow, pressure on the bow, speed of the bow, angle of the bow. On the other hand that means that you can get much out of simple melodies.

Something anyone can start on the side is learning to play the recorder. Soprano and alto-recorder. It's dirt-cheap - good instruments for $100, and those really are good enough (and I'm quite picky). There too are plenty of good pieces available even with skills on the low or medium end.

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By the way, another commenter mentioned he doesn't understand why that woman spent so much money on a violin:

> Also a violin doesn't have to be wildly expensive: Mine cost $600 and is plenty good enough. My understanding is that the violin makers have made amazing progress in recent decades and routinely make violins as good as the best ever.

Well... you are wrong. While my teacher too says that the €1000 violin I bought was good, and by now I know it really is and it will be enough for me for a long time to come, even with all the progress I'm making, I once got to play a €10,000 violin while visiting a violin maker. The difference wasn't so much the sound - I actually slightly preferred mine. The difference was that that violin was much more light-weight (the wood is made much thinner), and this instrument was significantly better on the edges of play. For example, very fast changes felt sooo much better even to me.

For "normal" songs maybe one won't notice much difference, but from my one-time high-end violin experience (as an advanced beginner only), on the high-end of difficulty the difference is huge.

Note that the bow also costs a lot. You easily spend another $1000 on a good bow (or even multiples of this) - which one you get is extremely individual. This again will be much more noticeable on the outer edges of skill and difficulty level.