On a hot morning last week in Manhattan's Municipal ("poor man's") Court, the slight, grey-haired judge listened to many and varied complaints. (Sample: an indignant woman, exhibiting her ill-fitting false teeth, demanded a refund from her dentist.) The day's weary business done, the judge climbed from the bench and went uptown to his avocation: conducting 100 amateur musicians. Judge Leopold Prince was rehearsing his City Amateur Symphony Orchestra for the season's first summer concert.
On the Central Park Mall on Saturday night, the 65-year-old magistrate led his orchestra of elevator operators, lawyers and middle-aged housewives in an all-Russian program. Part of the...