On his way back to the office one day, a haunting melody stopped former Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Steve Lopez in his tracks: a melody coaxed out of a battered, two-stringed violin by a homeless man. Nathaniel Ayers, once a promising classical bassist at Julliard, had landed destitute on the streets, suffering from schizophrenia. What started as a way to fill a few paragraphs becomes a consuming mission for Lopez as he finds it impossible to walk away from a man whose musical genius had been buried under years of untreated mental illness. Soon to be a film starring Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey, Jr., Mark Bowden calls The Soloist an intimate portrait of mental illness, of atrocious social neglect, and the struggle to resurrect a fallen prodigy.

Larry Platt, editor-in-chief of Philadelphia magazine, will interview Mr. Lopez