Epilogue

Summer 2022

I recently re-read the first entry of this blog, from last September:

A few weeks ago, I was running a physics institute. Today, I’m a violin making student. How did that happen??…. I decided to leave the job of a lifetime and move to Calgary… It was a massive change and I can’t pretend it wasn’t scary and intimidating. What if I hated it? Or even worse, what if I was terrible at it?…So here I am, discovering if a 62 year old can become an instrument maker.

I don’t know if I have discovered yet whether a 62 (now 63) year old can become an instrument maker. I’ve made one violin. But I did find out that a huge change can be a great thing, that I love learning this craft, and that with a lot of guidance, I managed to make a pretty decent first violin. Here’s Chris giving it a whirl.

School wrapped up on the May long weekend. It was an amazing nine months. There were many ups and some pretty tough, humbling downs. All in all, a fantastic experience. I feel very fortunate to have had this opportunity. I’ll be continuing next fall. I’ll finish violin number two, then likely make another violin (I already know all the things I want to do better on the next one) or perhaps make a viola. One day, a cello.

This was my output for year-one: More or less, a violin and a half.

After the end of the school year, I spent a few weeks back in Ontario. With my background in music, I was lucky to be able to ask a number of violinists (friends, family and colleagues) if they would play my violin and provide feedback. They were all very generous with their time and comments. Many thanks to all of them! (click underscored names to link to a few videos)

Sarah Duschenes, Teacher’s College, Brock University

Raymond Laflamme, Institute for Quantum Computing, University of Waterloo

Julie Baumgartel, freelance violinist, Kitchener-Waterloo, Toronto and beyond

Jerzy Kaplanek, Penderecki String Quartet

Jeremy Bell, Penderecki String Quartet

Etsuko Ekimura, Virginia Chen Wells and Wendy Rose, Toronto Symphony Orchestra

Monica Duschenes, Orchestre Métropolitain

So that’s it! The instrument making continues in September but the blog is done!

Thank you to the hundreds of people (where did you all come from??) for reading the blog and for all the nice comments. It’s been fun to capture this first year through words and photos. It’s a nice record for me to keep.

Thank you to Logan and Drew for being great classmates.

And most of all, thank you to Chris for leading the journey.

Michael Duschenes is a student at the Canadian Violin Making Institute.