Untitled - Mariposa Folk Festival

METROPOLITAN VIBRATIONS
The Musical Instrument Makers Of Toronto
by Willam Laskin,'luthier'
FOR MY LIVELIHOOD, I BUILD
guitars. lfls my job to take pieces of
trees and fashion them into a
complex object with the capacity to
move you to tears or make You
unable to restrain Yourself from
dancing.
Following years of patient waiting
for exotic rosewoods from Eastern
lndia or ebonies from Gabon, Africa
to dry and stabilize, succeeded bY
weeks or months of concentrated
effort cutting, shaPing and thicknessing
to minute Portions of a
millimetre, I produce a musical
instrument. lt is an instrument
capable of responding to a musician's
need for a heart-melting sweet
tone or a biting harshness in addition
to the ability to reach Your ears,
unamplified, in the back row of the
concert hall. lt's little wonder that
when a good musician, aware of a
maker's achievements, finds an
instrument that meets all her needs,
she values it almost as one of her
family. lt is common for such a
musician to buy a second seat, when
flying, for Ms Cello or Mr. Guitar as I
did in the opening scenario.
"You numerous guitar makers. The world
made this?"
"Uh-huh."
renowned flutist, James Galway, has
"God, stated that his Toronto made
it's beautiful. You play it Goosman flute is the finest hand
too?"
"Sure made flute he's played.
do."
"You
know I can't let you take it on
How is it that a city in supposedly
as cabin baggage."
"Yes.
I know. but that's not a
conservative, non-arts supporting
problem."
Canada can elicit such admiring
"OKthen.
Let mesee... justthetwo comments from within musicians'
of you travelling today?"
and instrument makers' circles?
"Yup."
After all, we aren't like Cremona, ltaly
"Do
you know if Mr. A. Guitar
with its centuries old violin making
would prefer smoking or non-
traditions. We're not kin to Paris, a
city with a true claim to being the
smoking?"
"Non,
please. And we'd like to sit
world's first guitarmaking centre
together."
over one hundred years before
"Fine."
Spain. Barcelona, the Spanish city
that is still a major classical guitar
What they and most people in this
centre we certainly are unlike. Yet,
city do not realize is that Metro
with only sporadic instrument
Toronto, over the past fifteen years
making events in our city's history,
has emerged as the centre
less even than in Montreal or Quebec
of
handmade musical instruments not
City
just for this country but for the whole
continent. There are pockets of
instrument makers scattered across
Canada and the U.S., but no other
single metropolitan area has both the
variety and quantity of instruments
being produced professionally, to
world class standards, as do we.
Without travelling more than half
an hour in any direction from
downtown, one can find makers of
classical, flamenco and steel string
acoustic guitars, electric guitars and
basses, the entire violin family and
their bows, mandolins, bouzoukis,
banjos, appalachian dulcimers,
lutes, violas da gamba, harpsichords,
virginals, classical silver, gold and
platinum flutes, steel drums and, if
that weren't enough, the most
innovative electric violins in the
world are built not 5 minutes drive
from my own shop in the heart of the
city.
- violin making centres during
the first half of this century -
Toronto has become home to
instrument makers old and young,
Canadian born and landed immigrant.
And, outside of a portion of the
music community, few seem aware
of these artisans.
Masa Inokuchi, a violin maker,
emigrated f rom his native Japan after
a decade of frustration over the costs
of importing the curly maPle and
spruce he needed. He simPlY chose
to live nearer one of the sources of
these materials, Canada.
Matthew Redsell, a self taught
harpsichord and virginal builder who
came into prominence after eight
years of full time work at his craft,
was first a piano and comPosition
student at the University of Toronto.
However, as he stated it, "a
J
J
uJ
Y
d
z
cc
o
;
m
conscious evaluation of my abilities
turned me to making, (rather than
playing) the instruments."
Were we to choose a person at
random and ask them where they
thought such high quality musical
instruments were produced, would
they answer ltaly? lf we prodded
them for their guess as to the source
of these painstakingly handbuilt
things, the original locale of
instruments capable of inspring such
devotion from their owners that
regularly paying for a second airfare
is done unhesitatingly, would they
suggest Spain? Maybe. Possibly.
The name Stradivari might even arise
but that would, pretty much, be that.
A mandolin maker from Virginia
once jealously admitted to me that
Toronto was known, down his way,
as "a real maker's town". A former
student at Chicago's school of violin
making confessed that while there
he'd often heard Toronto labelled
"guitar
town" because of its
Linda Manzer, a native Torontonian,
is a maker ol arch-loP iazz
guitars. She is one of the small
number of people in the world who
take the time to Produce these less
common instruments as well as
making regular steel string guitars.