A Dream Relized
About a month ago I was working in the repair area at the store. I looked up only to see one of my Luthier mentor’s Elon Howe and family. It had been about a year since I saw him last. He’s 95 years old now, and looking great. He has built over a hundred violins now, and while I tease him about now building fiddles instead, they still sound amazing! Violins are his passion, and his research on the topic is vast. I personally am proud to be the owner of #45 “Miss Ida” .
While they were in the store the topic of his enormous stash of wood came up. and I was asked if I was interested in purchasing any of it. It had been a dream of mine to get my hands on a few pieces of his maple at the very least. So of course I said yes, but I would need some time to decide what funds I had available to spend on it. With some help from my dad Brian, and my wife Becki I was able to come up with some funds, and today me and my son Sean went down and sorted through the stacks for 4 hrs and found lots of beautiful pieces of wood. It’s a dream relized!
This all comes in a very timely way. Myself and my apprentice Maddy have just been awarded a grant through Michigan State University called the MTAAP (Michigan traditional arts apprenticeship program). They are funding myself and my apprentice to build two Violins this summer. Maddy and I have worked together off and on for the last year. I have been teaching her repair, setups, and recarving. Her work is incredibly good, matching her drive and passion for the craft of Lutherie. I am very excited to teach her more skills and watch her put them to use. She is really going to be a fantastic Luthier.
While I teach her how to build from scratch I will be building a tricky Norwegian fiddle called.a “Hardanger”. This is a fiddle with 4 bowed strings and then a series of (in my case) 4 so called sympathetic strings. The sympathetic strings are tuned to various notes and run through the middle of the bridge adding a greater resonance to the instrument. My daughter Lauren is a great artist and is working on designing a dragon head that I will carve at the end of the peg box. Some of you may not know that you have heard a Hardanger fiddle before. In the Lord of the Rings movie’s it is the sound of the fiddle that plays the theme for the knights of Rohan.
As always, thank you for all you support. Life at Quinn’s Music Store is great. and I look forward to seeing many of you soon.
-Budd Greenman
