A talented violinist comes to the Museum of Monterey to give a rare performance.

When Eldar Hudiyev was a 4-year-old living in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, he asked his mother for a violin.

About twenty-three years later, in 2007, Hudiyev – then a master’s student at the Boston Conservatory – was invited to the house of famed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, who asked Hudiyev to play for him.

“He was an extremely nice man, very genuine, and the experience left one of the strongest positive memories of my life,” Hudiyev says.

After hearing Hudiyev play, Ma began playing with him, an episode that culminated with Ma writing Hudiyev a recommendation letter to obtain a green card for an “alien with extraordinary ability.”

“He called me a musical ambassador,” Hudiyev says, adding the letter was key in ultimately being granted the card. “It’s almost impossible to get that approval.”

Hudiyev went on to play in an orchestra with Ma six times in the following year, but his aspirations were cut short when his father died unexpectedly in 2008 at the age of 52.

“I was playing orchestras with all kinds of high-caliber of musicians and top violinists,” he says. “[My father’s death] changed everything.”

His father passed just as Hudiyev had returned to home to marry, after which he was planning to return to the U.S. Instead, he decided to stay with his mother and care for his grandparents.

Now 34, Hudiyev works as a translator and doesn’t perform often in his home country, and only plays once or twice in the U.S. when he makes annual visits.

That’s partly why locals are in for a treat this coming weekend, where Hudiyev will play at 1pm, 2pm and 3pm at the Museum of Monterey, an event organized by former Monterey City Councilmember Nancy Selfridge to help bring visitors to the struggling museum.

Selfridge came to know Eldar after meeting his brother Farkhad – now conductor at Youth Music Monterey County – at the Turkish Festival in 2011, and now considers the entire Hudiyev family her own: “It was just one of the those things that was meant to be.”

During his sets at MoM, visitors can expect Hudiyev to perform a wide range of classical pieces with an intensity and skill honed by a lifetime of training, and perhaps even a few modern numbers.

“I’m trained as a classical violinist, but now I’m experimenting a little bit, listening to beautiful world hits.”

Among them? “Hotel California.”

Eldar Hudiyev 1pm, 2pm, 3pm Dec. 6-7. Museum of Monterey, 5 Custom House Plaza, Monterey. Free (donations appreciated). 372-2608.