PARIS at the end of winter. The beautiful Avenue Charles de Gaulle had just awakened from sleep when a middle-aged woman rushed to open the door. “Monsieur Salim is on the sixth floor,” she said pointing upward. An old rusty lift big enough for only two people creaked up sounding like a grinding machine and took me upstairs.

All the gray-painted doors on the upper floors were closed. Where was Salim, the 100-year old maestro I was looking f