With Gencic's death, Djokovic has now lost two touchstones in a hurry.
"Most recovering addicts," he writes, "insist that two touchstones of a successful recovery are daily routines and rigorous accountability".
But judging by his first of two sets, Mr. McBride will be leaning more on the precedent of Ms. McPartland, in her celebrated public radio show, "Piano Jazz," than on either of the other two touchstones.
They were, by all reports, in fine fettle for the first concert, on Wednesday, and they delivered highly charged performances of two touchstones of the 20th-century repertory over the weekend: Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony on Friday and Prokofiev's ballet score "Romeo and Juliet" on Sunday.
Just as his Batman trilogy was far more philosophical and knottily plotted than the average superhero movie, Interstellar is sufficiently grand and challenging to bear comparison with those two touchstones of mind-bending epic sci-fi: Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Tarkovsky's Solaris.
The three touchstone dishes at Portuguese open charcoal grill restaurants are usually roast suckling pig, barbecued chicken and codfish.
That's partly because he made only 16 films over three decades, dividing his time between Hollywood and Broadway, where he directed the original productions of three touchstone musicals: "Porgy and Bess," "Oklahoma!" and "Carousel".
Bach was one touchstone: his chorale "Es ist genug" quoted in the poised woodwind refrain of the second movement of Berg's concerto as a cooling hand to a fevered brow; the Sarabande from his Partita in D minor offered as a tender postscript by Kavakos.
It doesn't know that I love the Black Crowes, the Chemical Brothers, the Charlatans, Primal Scream or the Super Furry Animals – my five touchstone bands but, it turns out, all artists I mainly play on CDs in the car nowadays, rather than through Spotify in other contexts.
