Hutchins in New Hampshire, 2002. Photo credit: Dennis Connors.
Once referred to as a "female Stradivari," Carleen Hutchins was arguably the most innovative and ground-breaking violinmaker of the 20th century. In fact, in 1998, the Acoustical Society of America awarded its highest honor, the Honorary Fellowship, to Hutchins, the only woman of fourteen recipients to receive the award since it began in 1929 with the first recipient--Thomas Alva Edison.
Hutchins measuring a carved violin plate, 1960. Photo Credit: Newark News.
Over the last half century, Hutchins made nearly 450 stringed instruments, wrote more than 100 technical papers including two benchmark
Scientific American articles and created an international forum devoted to violin acoustics in the Catgut Acoustical Society. For more than thirty years, Hutchins published the CAS journal aimed at bridging the gap between physicist and luthier, essentially merging the worlds of acoustical physics with violinmaking.
The tonal range of the Violin Octet.
Hutchins also created a new palette of sound in her Violin Octet--a family of eight finely-matched violins extending tonally across the range of a piano.
First Violin Octet, 1967. Photo credit: Arthur Montzka.
The Violin Octet includes a treble, soprano, mezzo, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, and contrabass violins ranging in size from the 11" treble violin to the seven-foot double bass.
YoYo Ma, "The New York Album."
In 1995, YoYo Ma won a Grammy for his performance of Bartok’s
Viola Concerto performed on a Hutchins alto violin that he played as a vertical viola.
The Hutchins Consort.
On the contemporary stage, the exciting legacy of Carleen Hutchins lives on vividly through performances by the Hutchins Consort, the only professional ensemble in the world named for a luthier.
Founded in 2000 with its debut performance at the Barclay Theater in Irvine, California, the
Hutchins Consort performs more than thirty concerts a year on two octets made by Hutchins.
The Hutchins Consort will be embarking on its DEBUT EAST COAST TOUR in May, 2011, in honor of the 100th Anniversary of the birth of Hutchins. For more information or if you would like to host a concert, please contact bassist and artistic director Joe McNalley at
www.hutchinsconsort.org.
Hutchins calibrating a violin plate, 1955. Photo credit: Newark News.
The Violinmaker's Crescendo is the story of a woman who agreed to be "the luthier crazy enough" to make fiddles that would be destroyed. When she became enamoured of chamber music, Hutchins, trained as a trumpet player and a biologist, suddenly jumped both disciplines. She traded her trumpet for a viola and then taught herself acoustical physics by making violins!
Hutchins vibrating a suspended violin plate, 1960. Photo credit: Newark News.
In pursuit of unraveling the acoustical secrets of the violin, Hutchins and her mentor Harvard physicist Frederick Saunders performed more than 100 experiments on instruments made by Hutchins.
Hutchins carving on her cabin porch, 1998. Photo credit: Boston Globe, May 31, 1998.
From there, the story moves to a chamber music camp in London; a medieval bakery in Stockholm; the halls of the St. Petersburg Philharmonic; the catacombs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; a physicist's lab in North Carolina; a composer's studio in Denver; a NASA lecture hall; a world premiere concert in California, returning "home" to a cabin in the New Hampshire woods.
Hutchins and kithchen craft, 1960's.
The Violinmaker's Crescendo is the story of one courageous woman--the "New Jersey housewife violinmaker"--who dared to bring science into the workshop and ask the unpopular questions of the outsider. By daring to compare the acoustics of contemporary instruments with those made by the "Old Masters," Hutchins stirred up the diverse perspectives of physicist, violinmaker, musician, teacher, dealer, curator and composer and managed to fundamentally change a paradigm she initially barely understood.
Stilllife with fiddles, 2000. Photo credit: Dennis Connors.
What is the Hutchins legacy?
Is it that she invited science into the workshop?
Is it that she challenged assumptions by crafting new questions?
Is it that she created a global forum in violin acoustics?
Is it that her research and published papers continue to teach luthiers?
Is it that her violas may soar in value now that she is gone?
Is it that she made a more resonant violin?
Is it that she built a violin octet?
Or is it far more remarkable that one luthier did all of these things?
Carleen Maley Hutchins died August 7, 2009.
Two days after her death at the age of 98,
The New York Times profiled Carleen Hutchins.
