Violin school offers college alternative

Tucked in a dozen more rooms throughout the rambling structure at 3446 N. Albany, more advanced students are working on recognizable members of the violin family. One student is patching a riddle of cracks in a cello top. Another is pushing the "white" body of a viola along the steps to completion.

For some 30 students, this is school. They've bypassed the core curriculum of a typical college, the football games, the wide-open career possibilities to concentrate for 3 1/2 years on making and repairing violins.

The Chicago School of Violin Making is one of about 350 specialty schools in Illinois that provide students out of high school with training in a particular occupational skill. Commonly, specialty schools train students for jobs in computers or electronics. Uncommonly, they teach students such a narrow skill as violin making. There is a waiting list of violin shops large and small that want to hire the school's graduates.The Chicago School of Violin Making began with nine students in 1975. Founder Tschu Ho Lee, a master violin maker and graduate of the State School of Violin Making in Mitten-wald, West Germany, started the school because he deplored the quality of work he was seeing on violins coming in for repair at Kenneth Warren and Son Ltd. in Chicago, where he worked.

"Sometimes the violins were damaged by the repairs that had been done to them," said Lee.When fine violins are valued at upwards of $40,000, such damage is cause for action. What Lee did was open the school, originally an adjunct to Kenneth Warren and Son. Since then, the school has sent some 45 graduates into the world of violin repair - 45 people who, says Lee, "at least won't do damage to violins."

What they do, or at least have learned to do well enough to pass a rigorous series of exams, are skills ranging from crafting a violin body in the style of such classical masters as Stradi-vaari, Amati and Guarneri to making various necessary tools for their trade to being conversant with the basic principles of repair, violin-making theory and history.

Working from 8:45 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. weekdays through seven 18-week semesters, the students finish a minimum of six instruments. But after the initial work in a group, everybody works at his or her own pace. The emphasis is on high-quality work, rather than producing to a schedule.

"You must put your name on the label inside every instrument," said Lee. "What you can't say is that this instrument only took two weeks to make."

Students work at first only with hand tools. Power tools aren't introduced until midway through the program.

"That really helps us develop an eye and a feel for the wood and the tools," said second semester student Gerry Pare.

Lee doesn't expect the students who come to him will be anything but beginners in terms of violin making and repair. Many will have college credits behind them or even advanced degrees. Some will be right out of high school. The only requirement is that a student be at least 18 and have a will to learn.

"Sometimes it's better to be a beginner," he says. "It's like music. If you learn the wrong way, it's hard to adjust."

In fact, most students who come to the school are already string players, an asset, in Lee's view. "Then you know what the sound quality is supposed to be. You have more interest, more excitement in how the instrument is coming along," he says.

Musical instruction is provided at the school and students play in an ensemble at graduation as part of the course requirement. Many of his students moonlight in area orchestras and musical ensembles to help with living costs and the $275-a-month tuition charge.

The work can be exhaust ing, especially at the beginning. Pare recalls that during her first weeks at the school, she would go home after the day "completely wasted." Pare left a career as a high school orchestra teacher in Oregon to attend the school.

"It was something I really wanted to do," she says. "So I decided to go for it. Now I find it gives me a sense of worth and a sense of patience. It's very satisfying."

Chicago Times