Ann Arbor violin makers celebrate new era begun by record price paid for one of their pieces

By Dave Wilkins

Ann Arbor News, November 1993

In a naturally lit room in a modern house of wood and window a few blocks south of the University of Michigan campus, Gregg Alf is hunched over a chiseled piece of maple that will become the back of a meticulously handcrafted violin. Alf’s tools are scattered about the workbench – chisels, files, a compass, a template, a glue-pot, a wad of steel wool. Wood shavings are underfoot. Late morning light tiptoes in from the south and east. The work – painstaking, solitary, meditative – requires an engineer’s precision and an artist’s touch. Alf and his partner Joseph Curtin, each make roughly one violin per month. They typically work on commission for soloists and orchestral musicians. Their instruments start at $15,000. Earlier this month at Sotheby’s auction house in London, a Curtin & Alf instrument rocked the music world, bringing the highest price ever paid for a violin crafted by a living maker. Maltese violinist Carmine Laurine paid a total of $33,000 to acquire a Curtin & Alf replica of a 1716 Stadivarius. The instrument’s previous owner, soloist Elmar Oliveria, put it up for for auction after he bought a Curtin & Alf replica of a violin made by Guarneri del Gesu in 1726. Joseph Curtin and Gregg Alf moved to Ann Arbor from Cremona, Italy, eight years ago. The world-record sale at Sotheby’s bolstered their international reputation as makers of top-end instruments. It also has Curtin and Alf’s colleagues and competitors celebrating, the pair says, because the sale signifies a new respect and appreciation for contemporary violins. “We are heroes among our fellow violin makers,” Alf says. “It’s opened the door for a new era in violin making.”

Two roads, one destiny
Alf, who is 36, was born in Encino, Califo., one of three sons of a social worker and an educational psychologist. “There was a love of music in my family,’ he says.” I heard music all the time.” Alf’s grandfathers both played the violin and each left him their instrument, which he sold to support himself while studying in Cremona, Italy – home of the great masters including Stradivari and Guarneri. Curtin was born 40 years ago in Toronto, one of six children of a visual artist and a photographer. Both men studied the violin, but ultimately gave up their dreams of the concert stage and found their destiny at the workbench. Both had mentors – Alf in Washington, D.C., Curtin in his native Toronto – who inspired them to become violin makers. “Growing up, I tried to make everything I was interested in – from a tape recorder to a ventriloquist’s dummy,’ Curtin says. “I had millions of unfinished projects. I never finished anything until I finished a violin.” He set up his first shop in a Toronto apartment and waited tables to raise money for tools. Curtin and Alf met at an international competition sponsored by the Violin Society of America. The sublime sound of Alf’s instruments earned him gold medals in three such competitions in his early years, giving him a reputation that helped his fledging shop in Cremona prosper. Curtin joined him there in mid-1980s, but they soon moved to the United States to have better access to a good market and great violins for study. With prodding and encouragement from University of Michigan music professors Robert Culver and Ruggiero Ricci, they set up shop in Ann Arbor. “We liked it because it was a small town – comfortable and quaint in some ways – but it was a very cultured town,” Alf says. They brought with them a supply of Italian maple and spruce harvested from the same groves that supplied Stradivari.

An apprenticeship
In the spring and summer of 1990, Curtin and Alf were able to study a 1716 Stradivari. They made plaster casts, photographed the details, took precise measurements – and built the replica sold at Sotheby’s this month with the original on hand as a guide. Seven times they have built a replica that way – while having extensive access to some of the rarest violins in the world, including instruments by Stradivari, Guarneri and Gasparo da Salo. These are the only projects Curtin and Alf tackle together. Otherwise, each works on his own instruments – making antiqued copies of the models they have closely studied. “It’s not just slavishly copying,” Curtin says. “We’re intensely trying to understand (the masters’) thoughts and feelings and what they couldn’t know about mechanics and acoustics.” “We want to take things a step ahead,” he says. “Our goal certainly is to develop our own distinct model. Matisse spent 10 years in the Louvre copying paintings…Stradivari’s golden period was in his 60s.” “This is an apprenticeship.”

Sharing and trust
Sharon Que, one of three assistants who work for Curtin and Alf, says the two men complement each other. “It’s totally like a marriage,” Que says. “There’s one person who’s really good at one thing and one who’s really good at something else - and so it’s a better whole.” Curtin, for example, brings a talent for design and aesthetics including an impressive touch with varnishes. Alf has a gift for getting exquisite sound quality from the wood. Curtin keeps the shop running smoothly; Alf handles the marketing. “Together, it’s an impressive arsenal,” Curtin says. “It’s a balance, and it’s often been a difficult one. I resist other people’s input.” Despite that, they have developed a sense of sharing and trust, he says: “It’s wonderful having an ally in eh business.”

A new era?
The sale at Sotheby’s marks a change in the way musicians acquire violins, Curtin and Alf say. Classic antique violins are increasingly out-of-reach, so musicians are beginning to bypass dealers in fine old instruments and explore top-end contemporary violins with concert sound. “The musicians have spoken,” Alf says of the sale. “A statement was made.” If that’s true, then Curtin and Alf are in the forefront of the new era- with violins built upon their combined talents, musical training, early years in Cremona, and opportunities to pore over some of the world’s greatest violins. They are instruments that likely will be played for generations, that may outlive their makers. “There is something a little awe-inspiring about it,” Curtin says.

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