Master Maker of Violins Is a Pied Piper to Students

On one side of the room, Julie Katana, with two sets of eyeglasses perched on her nose, bends over the top half of a viola, planing the surface into sheer smoothness with tiny, meticulous strokes.

On the other, Harold Hirsch brushes hot glue on the maple frame of a cello, while Jim Viele sits patiently next to two slabs of pale wood just beginning to resemble parts of a violin, waiting for directions on what to do next.

These three are among a class of 10 students learning a rare skill: the centuries-old art of violin making in the Italian tradition.

They came to California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks from such far-flung places as Brazil and Hawaii to study with Karl Roy, a master violin maker from Germany who has been building stringed instruments for more than 40 years.

Building just one instrument under the tutelage of Roy can take as long as three years, but the students are eager to learn from him.

“He’s one of the very best in the world,” said Katana, a secretary from Stockton who began studying with Roy in 1991. “He holds nothing back.”

His students range from professionals such as Brazilian Rafael Sando, who can turn out an entire violin in about two weeks, to novices such as Mike Krawtz, who is in his fourth year of classes with Roy and is nowhere near finishing his first violin.

In a classroom that has been converted into a workshop, a band saw stands near a window and tools needed to create the curves and edges of a fine violin are littered around the room.

“What this class really is is how to use tools,” said Katana. “That we end up with a violin in the end is almost incidental.”

She watched Roy as he tapped on the edges of a violin frame to see if they were even. He cocked his head and listened for the slightly off sound indicating something was not quite right. Hearing it, he pointed it out to student Charles Pracha and began to smooth the edges with a plane.

“He makes it look so easy,” Katana said enviously.

Wherever Roy goes in the classroom he draws a crowd. When he shows Viele how to gouge out the top piece of his violin and form its gentle arching shape, all the students come over to observe, even though all have already passed that stage.

In Europe the training of a violin master still follows the course it has for centuries. After three years of basic training at a school such as the Bavarian State School of Violin Making, where Roy used to teach, young craftspeople are sent out for a five-year apprenticeship. After that, they take an exam. Those who pass become masters.

But in the United States, no such programs exist. The closest things are the training sessions at Cal Lutheran and a similar program at the University of New Hampshire.

Viele started building violins in his San Diego garage several years ago. He made five, he said, using such untraditional materials as plywood and lumber scraps, things Roy wouldn’t allow in his classroom.

Nonetheless, Viele is proud of his garage creations, pulling a Polaroid photograph from a pocket and handing it around as if it were a picture of his firstborn.

He checked out several library books on violin construction before enrolling in Roy’s class. The idea of how-to books brought a grimace of disgust to the teacher’s face.

“This art has never been written down or published,” Roy said. “You have to study it on the bench. That is the only way it can be taught.”

That said, he darts around the room, checking on the progress of his students, complaining about the quality of the makeshift equipment at Cal Lutheran and maintaining a firm but friendly teaching relationship with his admiring students.

Although the students welcome any encouraging word from the master, the class is not a competitive one. Because it is open to professionals and amateurs, people such as Krawtz are perfectly welcome.

Krawtz, who is from the island of Maui in Hawaii, has traveled to New Hampshire three times and Cal Lutheran once. He is far behind students such as Sando, still concentrating hard on gouging out the inside of the instrument’s top half.

For him, the work itself is pleasure.

“I don’t really plan to finish at the rate I’m going,” he said. “But if I do, I think I’ll hang it on the wall and just look at it.”