#386: Gregg Alf (Luthier) (pt. 2 of 2)

Today we released part two of our interview with luthier Gregg Alf on June 29.  After training at the Cremona Violinmaking School, he founded Alf Studios, where his work has won highest honors at numerous international competitions and exhibitions.

Gregg has built instruments for some of the most distinguished violinists and violists of our time, and in 2013 one of his violins sold at auction for $132,000—then, a world record price for living violin makers.

Join us for this fascinating conversation as Gregg shares the artistry that goes into making world class instruments! https://www.alfstudios.com/

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Announcer 0:18

Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast, Making Art Work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion, and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent, or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts, Andy Heise and Nick Petrella.

Andy Heise 1:00

Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. My name is Andy Heise.

Nick Petrella 1:04

And I'm Nick Petrella. In this episode, we're speaking with Gregg Alf. He's a highly respected violin maker and founder of Alf Studios. Gregg has built instruments for some of the most distinguished violinists and violists of our time, including Roger El Ricci and Don McInnes. Gregg's work has won highest honors at numerous international competitions and exhibitions. In 2013, one of his violins sold at auction for $132,000, then a world record price for living violin makers. We'll link to Gregg's website in the show notes so you can read more about his work and see his beautiful instruments. We'd like to thank past guest Ada Vichik for helping to arrange this interview. Gregg, thanks for taking time to speak with us today.

Gregg Alf 1:48

Well, thank you, Nick, and thank you, Andy. Thank you for having me on your podcast.

Why Spruce And Maple Win

Nick Petrella 1:59

So you said you sourced the wood in the mountains. So I want to talk with you about that. And then have you tried experimented with other woods like a walnut, rosewood, purple heart? Have you experimented with other things, or have you just mainly stayed with uh maple and spruce? And why?

Gregg Alf 2:19

Well, um I should say violin making is very traditional. So I'm not just making violins out of maple or spruce. I'm making violins out of a very, very, very specific type of spruce and a very specific type of maple. I'm looking for densities, you know, and within uh, you know, one or two percent of each other. And so I could make a violin, and to be sure, cellos and some biolas are made of alternative woods like that. But just about anything you change um would change the sound. So could I do things that would make the sound 10% this or 10% faster? You could, but then you wouldn't be playing the violin anymore. You'd have the sound of a you know, of a different instrument. And we have a very clear target of what we're trying to do for better or worse. You know, stratavari and granary is an icon of sound, and we're trying to do that, we're trying to make that. If those gentlemen were alive today, they would probably be listening at our concert halls and the needs of our players today and saying, no, wait, we should be doing, you know. And there are artists today that are supporting that. I'm not doing replicas anymore, and my customers are supporting me to do to make Gregg to follow my vision.

Nick Petrella 3:37

So you're not using exotic exotic woods at all. Yeah, so you don't have to worry about Cetus or anything like that.

Gregg Alf 3:44

The CITES uh act is something I have to worry about. It would affect uh some of the pegs or some of the fittings like that. And violins don't sound very good without a bow, and the bows are registered, you know. So um, so it is something that infects violin makers for sure. And uh, but I wanted to share with you that early on in about four or five years into our work together with Joseph, we had the frustration of not being able to find the the wood we really wanted, and we thought, well, let's let's make it, let's get some spectra or carbon fiber and layers of foam and layer these together and bend them over. And you know, and we actually found that we could we can make uh wood that was you know artificial, you know, um composite materials that were um somewhat better, you know, in the numbers than than the raw materials. But um eventually we also realized that it was an art form to layer those up. It was just you know, and cellulose happens to be pretty darn good uh as a raw material as a as a fabric as in as a um fiber. So um in terms of the weight versus strength kind of thing. So uh we chose or to go particularly me, Joseph kept going with the ultralight product that he's had a lot of success with, but I felt like you know, working with carbon fiber and resins and the odors and the smells, and and it's like an expertise, you have to be do whatever you do for a long time to get the art of it. And I love wood, and I love the smell of wood, I love planing wood, I love sharpening it a plane to make it plain wood. So I just love that world, and you know, I didn't want to leave it just because um, you know, especially when when I did have a raw material that did work. In fact, then we developed some varnishing materi um methods that um that rather than uh trying to change material and like with the carbon fiber and resin, you you may know you you pour resin onto it, like a urethane resin, and the part of the making of like a surfboard means you put the fiberglass on it and then you pour the boat resin on top of it, or making a boat, for example, the same thing. So from that process, I learned some, I got some ideas of how I could actually treat the fibers in a violin in the same way to create what I call an acoustic membrane

Tonewood Sourcing And The Real Cost

Gregg Alf 6:12

on the outer surface of a violin. And so it wasn't for naught that I took that detour into synthetic materials, but I realized that actually spruce is one of the best materials there is for lightweight versus strong. And and maple is just really, really beautiful.

Nick Petrella 6:29

Yeah. And you do you source the wood, and it sounds like you literally pick trees. Now, do you dry it? Do you have everything in your shop? You do everything in the process.

Gregg Alf 6:40

Yeah, it would be, you know, it would be an a stretch to say that every tree I I go up into the forest and pick the tree. You're more likely it's going to be um from woodyards when they've been harvested. They'll they'll be commercial timbers, will find a special log, amongst other things they're looking, they'll pull them aside, they'll show up. You know, I'll get a phone call if the guy remembers me, you know. Uh, and you'll win, you'll go out there right away to find this log. So we'll oftentimes see it in the log shape like that. Um, and then from the logs, they they will get quartered and brought back further down, you know, where they get resan. The further away you get from the forest, then the less, you know, because there's other guys like me that will go up in the forest. So I mean, you don't really have a chance if you're going to Mondo Musica or a trade fair to buy wood. And the best pieces will have been seen by the experts that really will are willing to dedicate that extra time, you know. And people say, well, what does a piece of wood cost? You know, and uh, or thank you for the let me reimburse you for the price. You know, it's like, well, no, it's not what I paid for, it's it's also two weeks of tromping around in the forest and in the hotels and the thing, and and the fact that it's also what I do to to walk in forests, and it's that's why I'm I take it back to with me when I then I sit inside all winter long, you know, as part of what I do. I mean, I love I love the I love nature, I love wood.

Andy Heise 8:08

Yeah, yeah. Do you do you give do you get a a blank uh a piece of wood? You're like, I know who this could be for, or I know who would sound great with this piece of wood.

Gregg Alf 8:19

Yeah, I do, and and um, you know, I just recently uh was able to acquire like a mother load of 150-year-old Hopsburg maple. I've been looking for it for decades, wow, and getting close and hearing, and I've heard about it, but I never had a chance to buy one. So then uh just out of just out of the blue, this stuff came up. Horrifically expensive, but you don't you don't ask questions, you know. We're talking close to six figures for you know, for uh a whole pile of cello backs, but they were pulled aside over a hundred years ago for making cellos. The wood is from 1880 period, and they were undersized for making cellos, so they this got left in the side, otherwise they wouldn't. And um I I think I just added 10 years to my working life because I have to work that wood, I have to know what it sounds like. Wow, and I'll have to learn how to work it as well because um I do uh I do have a wood treatment process with Joseph and I. We developed a word treatment process, which is um, you know, it's again, I don't have big secrets. The idea is to sort of bring some of the sap, you know, like maple, maple, maple, maple syrup, right? That lives in maple maple trees. Now we don't use maple tree type that type of for our violin making, but there's the same kind of goo in the tree. And if you make a violin with that goo in there, it is like putting sand in the tube of your racing bicycle, and um, and it takes decades for it to dry, and it's sort of slowly moving and the stability of the wood and all that. And so if you have a way to just remove that, and you have to do it with fresh wood, you can't do it with old wood. So if you can just remove that, the wood is lighter and more stable. And with dendrochronology, you know, with science, we can see that there are like stretovari violence, but not only, that where it has a label of 17 and 16, and the wood was living three or four years earlier, so they didn't use seasoned wood either. Many of them were 10 or 20 years, but there's there wasn't uh um you know this myth of going to 150-year-old wood. I don't know. I'll I can tell you later if that was a good idea, but I'm intrigued by it right now, and I can tell you also that the string players are really excited by it.

Andy Heise 10:42

I bet, yeah.

Gregg Alf 10:44

They they love wood, and and I have they'll come and

Old Maple And Wood Treatment

Gregg Alf 10:48

want to sign their name on the piece, you know, just lay this aside for me.

Andy Heise 10:51

And yeah. Wow, it's incredible, it's awesome. So you founded the Amiata Summit specifically to encourage openness amongst your colleagues, like we've been we've been talking about here. Uh, what made you want to do that? And um what did you have to give up in order for to make that happen, right? If you're if you're fine, if you're doing this, you're not doing something else. So that was a conscious decision you had to make to do.

Gregg Alf 11:16

Well, yeah, I mean, here's the thing. If we were poets, if you were a poet and you were commissioned to write a poem for someone, and you decide to copy some sonnets from Shakespeare from another poet and uh change a few words so no one would notice, and you got found out, you would be shamed, you would be shunned, you'd be humiliated. And yet that is what we are asked to do as violin makers, as artists, so-called artists, right? This is what we're we're we're penalized for not doing. And it's a shame. And what happened with the Amiata Summit was I I was in um in uh in Italy and in Genoa with Ruggero Ricci. He was recording his epic album about um 12 uh 16 new instruments, playing comparison to them. And uh someone showed up there with what turned out later to be a guineri, but it was um they they weren't sure about it. And was it was not certified at that point, it was not attributed, you know, it was just attributed. And we looked at this: is this a copy or is it a replica, a really good copy, or is it an original instrument? And I thought, you know, whoever made this violin is a genius, is a really very fine maker. And yet the instrument is causing heartache, it's causing hardship, you know, to a lot of people, and the maker is getting no credit. So with the impetus of that, um, and the string player that owned that instrument um got together with me. We knew um there was a villa in Tuscany. We had a palace, a castle, and for two weeks I invited a dozen uh, well, there were eight violin makers, eight concert violinists, and a and a creative team of eight people. And I hosted them all with government funding. Later, you know, my my partner and I, we got most of it back. But we hosted them all for a two-week period where each maker was actually supposed to answer to this challenge. What is the future of violin making? You know, what are they gonna do not to be irrelevant in the future? And you know, it was hard for me because I I was doing replica work at that time, so I was sort of cutting off the own limb that I was sitting on, you know. But um, I believed it was the thing of the of the of the future to to to look at it that way and to support colleagues in looking at it that way, so I wouldn't be going down the path alone, you know.

Andy Heise 13:38

Yeah, actually.

Gregg Alf 13:40

And um, and you know, I can say today the the there are some extremely talented makers that are doing really good replica work. I think there's better replica work than Joseph and I were doing, or of the same level for sure.

The Amiata Summit And Authenticity

Gregg Alf 13:54

And if you think about it, if you're doing a replica of a violin and you're really good, so you can't even tell the difference, and there's now ten makers that can do that, that kind of skill, well, you can't tell the difference between the other ten makers either.

Andy Heise 14:07

Right.

Gregg Alf 14:08

So you have this whole class of makers whose work is anonymous. And I don't believe that that is economically viable or historically viable. That is not what, that is not why we love Stratabar and Granary. That's not why they became icons, because they were anonymous expressions of the 18th century. You know, that's not that's not the thing. I wanted to support the most talented makers, and and I also chose makers that were influential because I wanted them to go back and and set a you know spark for their colleagues as well, um, about being authentic in our work and um you know taking the risk, because it is a risk. If you do that replica, your poem is probably gonna come out okay, you know. And by the way, AI is right in there now. You know, with a who I won't even go to that topic, but um um so if you do your original work, you might not, you know, you might not be so as successful. But if Beethoven had said that about his the Ninth Symphony, you know, yeah, like that. And so some of us will do something relevant and and it will be much more valuable because of it.

Nick Petrella 15:19

Yeah, yeah. And and this kind of segues into the next question. If there are listeners interested in becoming a luthier, what are barriers to entry that they may face and what are possible revenue streams they could create for themselves?

Gregg Alf 15:35

Yeah, well, you've identified it, the revenue stream, you know, is is a thing. It's it's uh the the biggest barrier is time. It takes years before your hands know it what your eyes want. And um financially it can be difficult early on because the learning curve is is quite long. And um, so you there there are revenue streams. Um uh, you know, you can do setup work, you can do restoration, you can do bowy hairs, you can do workshops, and um, but I would say to prepare yourself for a simple way of life where you don't have a high burn rate, you know, where you can really dedicate to your work, um, and to definitely to play the violin, um, you know, to love what you're doing. And um you need craftsmanship today, but you also need entrepreneurial ability and entrepreneurial adoptability. Because you have you you have to you have to find your niche, you have to find your way. We are following a lot of different rules, some of them we can't change, the the acoustics, uh um, you know, marketing and the money and all that. But we also have to um stick to stick to it. Um stick to a lean take a line and then stick to it, you know, be faithful to our vision.

Andy Heise 16:58

Yeah. How do you know when a violin is is done? It's finished.

Gregg Alf 17:08

That's a very good question. Um you don't fully and truly know, you just you just feel it. You know what when I start to make a violin, my experience of beginning a violin is very kind of male and very I I guess that's with the younger generation, we're not supposed to think of it that way, right? But I mean, it's very I'm imposing my will upon um a piece of wood. Now that could be not necessarily male, but I'm male. I experience it that way. So I impose my so it's very, you know, masculine kind of thing. And then as I begin building it, the violin gets a life of its own, and I become very I sort of a maternal feeling start coming up, you know. So um, so I've got this uh this new creature that's starting to have a work of life, uh a life of its own, and I'm just bringing it along, and towards the end, it's sort of like raising a child. When you you know, how do you know when your son or your daughter is ready to go on their own? You don't, you just uh propel them and let go of them, let them fly. And the instrument, as it gets a life of it on, it tells me, it really does. It tells me what it needs and the colors and the shapes of it coming about, the sound. And see, I may be working for a customer that's commissioned it, and they may say, I want it red, and I want the sound to be ABC, and I listen to this violin, it's really a gold violin, and the sound is this and that, you know, and whose loyalty do I fit to I work towards? And it's actually always the instrument. And the players love that. Players respond to that. They don't really, they didn't really know. They may have thought they knew gold or red or something like that, but what they really want is something that's alive, and that's something that was authentic, and that they respond to.

Nick Petrella 18:57

Yeah, here's here's a story kind of to follow up on what Annie was asking. Do instruments change over the over over the years, over time from having been played? String instruments?

Gregg Alf 19:07

Absolutely, they do, yeah. That that was the map analogy I gave you. You know, a great player playing on a violin will develop their sound into the instrument. It's like

Becoming A Luthier And Getting Paid

Gregg Alf 19:19

if you have two polo ponies or two ponies that were twin ponies, and one gets, you know, used in uh by a great jockey riding it, and the other's in a circus, driving in a circle, you know, riding in a circle like that. They learn how they were ridden, and violins can learn how they were played. The wood has a memory. There, there is a um an explanation for the ability to of a piece of wood to remember the way it was being bent, just like um, you know, like a CD hasn't built-in mechanism for digital um um intelligence. Wood hasn't a built-in intelligence uh that allows the way it's being played to be retained.

Nick Petrella 19:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's fascinating. I didn't know it. Yeah. I mean in percussion, because uh I had uh help create some designs that uh orchestras have used, and ten years later they send us recordings and we compare them. And it's easy with percussion because I mean you're basically I know it's not necessarily musical, but you're slamming two pieces of metal together, it's going to change. Right? But I didn't know if it had the same impact as uh as strings.

Andy Heise 20:27

Yeah. I hear people describe it as the the wood opens up or it over time it it it the the sound opens up or something. You know, it it's it's almost as if like it's you know the creation of the instrument is maybe a little bit of a shock to it, and then over time it sort of relaxes and to your sense to your point kind of learns the way that the musicians using it or playing it.

Gregg Alf 20:50

Right. Um you know, imagine a baseball glove. When you first get it, it's all stiff, and then as you use it, it sort of loosens up in a certain way. Only with a with a violin, it learns to loosen up exactly in the way that it needs when it's bending, when it sounds good. And when it's not sound bending in that way, it's still stiff. Because wood gets brittle, wood gets stiffer as it ages, so it even gets stiffer in the air is a way it's not the bad sounding ways it's not vibrating, and the wolf it's been kept vibrating by a great artist, which is self-fulfilling prophecy in a way, because if I put my my new violins into the hands of great players, of course they're gonna be made to sound better. I have violins now that were played by uh granary owners, and they absolutely sound like a great old Italian instrument. Credit to me a little bit for making an instrument they could have started off with, but a credit a lot to the artist. And you know, the the record sale one, the hundred and thirty thousand dollar sale one. Well, that was Ruggero Ricci playing that violin for for many years. The violin was worth it because whoever bought that thing. Didn't need to buy a Galliano for 250,000. Or honestly, they didn't need to buy a Guineri for 5 million.

Andy Heise 22:07

Right.

Gregg Alf 22:07

And the artists do that when they play an instrument. They can, they, they, they develop the sound in that way.

Nick Petrella 22:13

Yeah, that's amazing. So before Andy kicks off the final three questions, got a business question to ask. Where do you prefer to market your services? And has that changed over the years?

Gregg Alf 22:27

In the beginning, I would market, you know, to competitions and uh exhibitions. I would go backstage to hear concert artists and um or teachers and

When A Violin Tells You

Gregg Alf 22:40

like that. But uh that has changed over the year. Um, today I would say relationships matter more. Um, so I sell to musicians to to collectors, word of mouth around the world. That's the strongest currency in in my field. Um, social media has expanded visibility, of course, but trust in violin making is still mostly built person to person, like that. Yeah. And when I listen to my customers, I realize that they're not really coming to me simply for pretty wood or craftsmanship. They're they assume that they're coming, like I said, to make me help help help me make them look better and feel feel stronger. So um that allows me to work in the field. I I don't, you know, that's that's why I'm in a little village in the in the Radope Mountains right now. Or I could you know go to Venice, Italy. Venice was not the center of commerce, you know, it wasn't New York or London. Yeah, it allows me to work on locations and um and uh and the customers come to me. That's right.

Andy Heise 23:46

Well, Gregg, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions. And the first question is what advice would you give to others wanting to become an arts entrepreneur? Hmm.

Gregg Alf 24:01

Well, I'd say to build real skill first, um, as opposed to like you know, branding. Yeah, branding can amplify quality, but it you cannot really replace it. So it's you in the beginning, just um that's why I said earlier, um, try to find yourself um uh an economic base where you can afford to you don't need to have a big burn rate where you can afford to really dedicate yourself to your art and bit to building your skills like that. Yeah, in the arts, reputation travels slower than hype, but it lasts longer. And you've got to build a reputation by deserving it. It just doesn't give it, you have to deserve it. And so work on the skills first, and if any any way you can. Like I'd say that would be my first advice. Yeah, beautiful.

Nick Petrella 24:57

What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?

How Playing Changes The Sound

Gregg Alf 25:07

I think that everybody has a sense of beauty in them. And um, although I'm a violin maker, I I feel like my product is a violin, but it's like music is what inspires me. Um the saying where words fail, music speaks. This is so relevant to so much of what's going on today. And the fact that um, you know, a composer can have a feeling uh 300 years before, and then um, and then through you know fancy writing on paper, you know, through the skill they learn can convey it to someone three centuries later, and we can create feelings and recreate those feelings. We can we have a language that is um um universal. So um, how do we reach the widest possible audience? I think don't limit yourself to just um you know to just string players or think of it that way. Of course, it'll be string players that buy my instrument, right? But I want to be become involved in a circle of um of a beauty of what I'm doing that goes beyond just the spring players. When you can speak in those in those languages, in that language, you can relate to people in that way, then um you you just create good good good vibes, I guess. I mean, it's um you know um we we need to make make the arts more accessible to a wide larger audience by not limiting what it means, what the what what our product means. If we just limit ourselves to what has been and not seeing the real beauty of music, um then we we are we don't do ourselves a service. Look in the days of COVID, how music came up and how healing it was for our whole nation, yeah, for for nations everywhere like that. And music is universal. So it's it's a fundamental part. If we see that and then see our role in it and feel feel blessed for the chance to serve in that way, then we see our relevance in a much bigger way.

Andy Heise 27:20

Lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?

Gregg Alf 27:28

That I've been given. Well, I would say to protect our work. Um, I mean, I one time I had a chance to spend an afternoon with um in in Venice with an art critic whose whose job, you know, like the art critics that pick the Beatles or pick the Jackson Pollock or something like that. So I had a chance to spend uh an afternoon with him. Uh and I asked him, you know, how

Marketing Through Trust And Relationships

Gregg Alf 27:57

give me advice about you know how to you know to protect my work, how to how to um how to be successful as a maker. How how what would I have to do for you to pick me? So he said, we were at the Guggenheim Museum. He showed me around, he pointed to the museum, to the to the garden. He said, look there, there's a Henry Moore, there's a Jaccomenti, you know. Um, if you were looking at a Picasso or a Jackson Park, you could tell them all apart. How can you know? So, you know, they're because they're different, they're unique. So have an identity. You have to work hard, you know, you have to be industrious and produce, because if you don't produce, none of it matters. So work hard, be industrious and produce, but also find yourself and be authentic to it, find your direction and be authentic to it and develop your your personality, develop your humanity, your your your personal hygiene, you know, your emotional hygiene, your healthy hygiene. Live like an athlete, like an Olympic athlete that's going to the Olympics is going to eat a certain diet. You know, have a creative diet of going to concerts, looking at art, be creative, you know, very fertile, uh creative fertility, and then um, and then with that um

Advice On Skill Reputation And Access

Gregg Alf 29:12

pick it pick a line and be faithful to it and stick to it, work hard. That's the kind of direction that uh that I really I I recommend to all of the students when when I'm working with them. Not just to be hardworking, but to be an industrious, to be, but to be art relevant artistically, because we are communicating. If we're artists, we're communicating. And so who we are comes out. It matters.

Nick Petrella 29:37

That's great. That's a great way to end. Gregg, it's it's been wonderful speaking with you, and it's heartening to hear that you're keeping the tradition of violin making alive and uh just how you're blending artistry and craftsmanship. Thanks for coming out.

Gregg Alf 29:52

Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Andy. Yeah, thanks for being here. Likewise, thank you. Bye bye.

Closing And How To Support

Announcer 30:01

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