I am a professionally trained luthier, located in downtown Toronto, Canada. I build violins worthy of successful, professional violinists in my workshop on Bay Street - within sight of the Faculty of Music (Edward Johnson) building of the University of Toronto, and a short walk to the Royal Conservatory of Music.
After graduating from the Violin Making School of America in Salt Lake City, I apprenticed with Ken Meyer and Di Cao of Cao Meyer Violins in Newton, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.
In addition to having received professional training as a luthier, I had earned a B.A.Sc. degree in Systems Design Engineering from the University of Waterloo (Canada). I see the successful making of violins as a marriage of technical understanding (and its application - for example, acoustics, materials science, statics, dynamics, chemistry) and aesthetics.
My violin patterns include various Stradivari, Guarneri del Gesù, and Amati models. I have actively sought out access to rare instruments by these and other great makers, and it is hence through many generous people and institutions across North America that I have built up a collection of photographs, tracings, measurements, and plaster casts of such instruments. As a violinist who has had extensive training, I have also had the joy of playing many of these instruments in the course of studying them. It is my goal to emulate their sound.
The varnish I use is my mother’s recipe - the one she developed for me. She has a Ph.D. in Chemistry and has no emotional ties to violin varnish lore. While there are no claims as to it being “the lost Cremonese formula”, the composition is entirely of historical ingredients - and I think it is beautiful.
Unlike most luthiers, I make all of my own fittings - the pegs, tailpiece, end button, and chinrest. They are of either European boxwood, or African blackwood.
If you are interested in my work, please contact me to arrange for an appointment - by phone at (416) 964-6846 or click below on my business card to send me an e-mail.
