Gregg Alf

This post originally appeared on the ‘fiddlefish.com’ blog. It’s here for archival purposes only.

One of the saving graces for a violinist these days is the renaissance of fine instrument making. I am not sure if modern technology sparked it or it came about via more earthly means, but new violins with hall-filling sound offer great alternatives to the old Italian/French ones. Simply put, it would be remiss for me to not include great modern makers among the masters of hundreds of years ago. I will probably go more into this in a later post, but I wanted to briefly share some exciting news that the great American maker, Gregg Alf, has just leant me one of his Del Gesu copies for a few weeks as I participate in this year’s Tibor Varga competition in Switzerland. His generosity is enormous and I cannot wait to play on something so special. I want to do well at the competition for my sake, obviously, but it would be nice to say: “I sound great — thanks to this Alf violin.” I will post some pictures of it when it arrives tomorrow. Thanks Gregg!