Is making the different instruments essentially the same process, just with different sizing?
Yeah, essentially it is. Everything I do is based on what we understand as the classical Cremonese system of construction, proportion and design. What is Cremonese? Cremona is the town that harbored all the great violinmakers from Italy in the 17th, 18th centuries. They were all stuck in this northern Italian town, the most notable being Stradivari. Everybody knows what the name means — it’s synonymous with quality. Everything I do is informed by that long tradition. Modern violinmaking is just a continuation of that tradition. It’s changed very little. You look around here, there aren’t a whole lot of machines, there’s nothing computerized. It’s almost all handwork. How does one get started in the business? I got started by kind of a convoluted path. It wasn’t planned — I wasn’t a child longing to make violins. I sort of stumbled into it while I was in the Air Force. I had an interest in music — my instrument was the bass. As I transitioned from electric bass to upright bass, my inter
