YORK, Pa. (AP) - As the halls of William Penn Senior High emptied, a quiet began to fall over the building.
Chris Kurz stood in one of his old classrooms on a recent afternoon, returning to his music home after a decade away.
He handed one newly crafted violin, then another, to his former teacher.
Violins he made in Italy.
Soon, mundane tuning and scales transformed into melodies as longtime mentor Don Carn warmed up. Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik” flowed into Bach’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring,” the sounds reverberating deeper as he played, horsehair flying faster across the strings.
Kurz, 27, described it as a full-circle moment. The former high school valedictorian is in the midst of completing a most striking conversion from preparing to play violins for a living to making them.
His instructors cannot boast of another who has traveled his path. Not in Carn’s 24 years working in the York City School District and not in Kathleen Yeater’s more than 40 years teaching strings throughout York County.
Once an over-zealous performance major, Kurz changed directions after a college study-abroad trip to Italy. He was overwhelmed by history and possibility in legendary Cremona, the small city that commands some of the finest violin craftsmanship in the world.
Kurz immediately gave up his Penn State studies to learn this ancient trade while living by the sea, biking in the mountains and becoming a man of the world.
“As people would say to me, ’I wish I had your life.’ That’s happened to me so many times,” Kurz said quietly, a smile beginning to form.
But where exactly does he go from here?
There is no blueprint for becoming a profitable or even sustainable violin maker, or luthier, because there are so few who do it. For example, there is only one publicized string instrument maker in York County.
Many professional players in the area venture to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia for maintenance work on their instruments.
Kurz just returned to Italy but isn’t sure where he’ll be working or living. His official schooling complete, he figures to continue learning and earn a meager living as a workshop apprentice.
And with no extended visa, he must leave the country in April.
He still is unsure exactly how his dreams will support him.
…
He jokes that money made it easy to shift his career focus.
Studying violin making in the sleepy birthplace of Antonio Stradivari, the man by which all stringed instruments have been judged, cost only about $175 a year.
“I thought I didn’t understand when they told me,” Kurz said. “You could add two zeros to that number and you could still say that’s not that expensive.”
Even more, he was intoxicated by the mixing of two musical worlds, art and science combining to not only create a beautiful instrument but also one that sings like a renowned soprano.
Plus, there is the adventure of it all, of learning an elite craft in a medieval city with new countries and cultures only a bike ride away. His violin-making roommates were from Mexico and South Korea.
“He’s a Renaissance man,” Carn said. “He’s learning languages and traveling around the world and doing something he loves.
“This is an exotic career. Making violins in Italy? C’mon …”
His goal is to run his own shop one day. He knows more steady money is in small parts and repair - making bridges and sound posts, re-hairing bows and replacing strings - but he prefers to carve instruments out of blocks of maple, pine and willow.
He’s attempting to sell his second violin for about $4,000. Renowned Italian and German makers can earn $25,000 to $50,000 and even more per piece.
For now, he’s caught between boldly pursuing a career abroad, or finding stability closer to home. Should he trade living by the Mediterranean Sea and biking into France and Germany for greater financial possibilities in the States?
He is resolute to push on and decide as he goes. He said he is driven each day to create.
“There is something romantic about it,” he said. “You’re making something that makes music.”
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Information from: York Daily Record, https://www.ydr.com
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