Robby Steinhardt once blamed being a member of Kansas for encouraging bad habits in his violin playing. “It wasn’t the band’s fault,” he insisted in 1981. “But I naturally tended to hold my violin onstage so I could hear what the rest of the boys were doing. That meant I was touching the instrument in a way that meant I couldn’t be anywhere near my best.”
Steinhardt was a virtuoso musician. Born in Chicago on May 25, 1950, he was classically trained and began violin lessons when he was eight.
“I was lucky that my adopted dad, Milton, was a significant musical figure at the University Of Kansas [he was the head of the music history department]. And he encouraged me to play with the best musicians around, including orchestras.”
In 1972, Steinhardt joined a fledgling band in the city of Topeka called White Clover, who a year later became Kansas. He shared vocals with keyboard player Steve Walsh. But it was his violin playing which helped to establish them as one of the most dynamic progressively inclined acts in the States at the time.