Mandell Collection matches gifted musicians with vintage instruments

Peter Mandell, a professional bassoonist, had been comatose for nearly two months when he began to move his fingers.

His wife, Sarah, a stand-up bass player, said Peter started to “air bassoon” the Mozart bassoon concerto on her hand.

“It was a very subtle movement, and I said, ‘Doctor, he’s waking up!’ And the doctor said, ‘No, he’s not,’” recalls Sarah, five years later, sitting next to Peter inside the guesthouse of their sprawling Brentwood home. “It’s true you were non-responsive in the traditional ways, but it was this air bassooning that I knew from being your wife and sitting next to you.... I knew you were coming back.”

So she rallied the troops: a group of past and present Mandell Artists, talented young musicians to whom the Mandells had loaned costly, historic violins from their Mandell Collection of Southern California. The Mandells’ generosity had helped these musicians reach new artistic heights, and now they came to the hospital to play for Peter, hoping to wake him from the coma in which he had languished since a car rammed into his motorcycle on Pacific Coast Highway.

Since 1989, Peter and Sarah Mandell have made close to 50 instrument loans from their ever-evolving collection of more than a dozen historic violins, violas and cellos. They used to own a Cathédrale Stradivarius, which was worth millions of dollars, but they sold it to acquire less expensive violins that could help more students. Today, the average cost of a Mandell Collection instrument is around $300,000. Most are more than 200 years old.

The Mandells make their loans through the Colburn School of Music in downtown Los Angeles, where master teacher Robert Lipsett is responsible for deciding which students receive instruments based on criteria handed down by the couple. These instruments allow students to achieve a broader palette of sound and a deeper range of color than less expensive instruments.

Current and past Mandell Artists include Simone Porter, the 17-year-old virtuoso who just soloed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl (J.B. Guadagnini violin, circa 1745); Sheryl Staples, the principal associate concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic (“Kartman” Guarneri del Gesu, 1728); Tamaki Kawakubo, who won second place in the 2002 International Tchaikovsky Competition (Cathédrale Stradivarius, 1707); and Ben Jacobson of the Calder Quartet, who made his solo debut with the San Diego Symphony at age 13 (Joseph Rocca, 1837).

The kindness of those who played at his bedside strengthened the resolve with which he and Sarah administer the Mandell Collection. Twenty years after they first started loaning instruments, they added a caveat: To receive a Mandell instrument, a player has to be more than just a stellar musician.

“We want people that really have compassion as part of their makeup, who have gratitude and a desire to give back,” Sarah says. “They should be able to articulate emotions musically, but also verbally.”

Once Lipsett has identified the correct student for an instrument, the Mandells get to know the student through gatherings and private concerts in the couple’s home, and they keep a close eye on the student’s professional development.

“I always let them know if I’m performing somewhere, or if a performance went well,” says Mandell Artist Stephen Tavani, who has gone on to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia and won a co-concertmaster spot thanks to an audition with his Mandell violin. “They came to a lot of my concerts in L.A., and Mr. Mandell came to my senior recital.”

Under the Mandell Collection rules, students have to give instruments back when they leave the Colburn School and are no longer studying with Lipsett. But the Mandells say they can be softies, and in exceptional cases, such as with Tavani, they let students hold on to an instrument until they are successful in securing another one of equal caliber, or until they pass certain milestones in their careers.

Sometimes they will even acquire instruments with a specific student’s needs in mind, as was the case when they bought a violin that projected better for Porter’s performance at the Bowl.

“If you buy your first house, which is what many of these instruments cost, you need 30 years to pay it off,” Peter says. “So we try and say, ‘Listen, if you want to purchase the instrument and take 30 years, we can arrange it.’ Or they can take a lot of time to find another instrument for themselves.”

The New York Philharmonic purchased the Mandell violin that Staples plays. She was the inaugural Mandell Artist; Peter loaned her one of the first violins he bought when they attended USC together in 1989.

“I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without it,” Staples says of her violin. “It’s absolutely my voice. I’ve played countless solo performances, concertos and chamber music concerts. It’s been with me for my entire professional orchestral career. I got it at the right time, exactly when I needed it, and I’m so grateful. I can’t repay them enough for the gifts they’ve given me.”

As much as the Mandells would like to say that they can make these gifts possible thanks to their own musical careers (they have played on the scores of dozens of television shows and movies), the source of their wealth is inherited. Peter is a fifth-generation Californian. His great-great-grandfather landed in San Pedro Harbor from Bavaria in 1859. He and his brother worked together in their cousin’s dry goods store. That store was called Hellman Bros.

Growing up with privilege, Peter naturally gravitated toward music. He played in the orchestra at Crossroads high school in Santa Monica and continued to study music at USC, where he met Sarah, who was raised alongside two musical sisters. The couple know the importance of having access to high-quality instruments and how out-of-reach those instruments are for most students.

Getting such an instrument at a pivotal stage in a musicians’ development is key, Lipsett says. Talented students actually push up against the capabilities of lesser instruments, and if they don’t get a better instrument, they will continue to bang their head against a brick wall.

“If you put a great race-car driver in a VW bug, he’s not going to beat too many people,” Lipsett says. “It’s the same thing with violinists. You need a great violin to match your skill.”

Danielle Belen, a Mandell Artist who recently was appointed associate professor of violin at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, puts it another way.

“It’s a facilitator. It allowed me to develop aspects of my playing and sound that I would not have discovered,” Belen says. “Everything from my vibrato to the way I hear intonation and the quality of sound.... Even if a student only gets to play on the instrument for a finite period of time, it’s fascinating to see how it changes you as a violinist.”

Peter no longer plays the bassoon due to jaw injuries from his accident, so focusing on the Mandell Collection is more important than ever. He and Sarah are also putting energy into a free concert series called Hardly Strictly Classical, which takes place three times a year at the Ann and Jerry Moss Theater in the Herb Alpert Educational Village in Santa Monica.

“It’s not really about us,” Sarah says of the couple’s activities in music. “It’s about being quiet partners to the artists and the parents and the teachers.”

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