ABOUT ALAN

I have been fascinated with musical instruments all my life. I studied sarod briefly with the greatest master of that instrument, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, when I was 14 and at 18 travelled to Madras in South India where I learned the Saraswathi Veena. At age 20 I lived in Senegal and studied kora. During all these pursuits I realized I loved making the instruments themselves as much as playing them and have pursued instrument building, repair and restoration avidly for over 50 years. Everywhere I’ve lived and worked I’ve been generously instructed in the often arcane and always compelling arts and processes of building stringed instruments.

“Ethno-organology”- or “ethno-lutherie”- has been a main focus of mine. I have built sitars, rudra veenas and ouds. I have also restored and repaired tars, surbahars, sarangis, sarods, kanuns, tamburas, koras, and numerous other ethnographic instruments. For many decades now I have concentrated on building the plucked stringed instruments of Renaissance Europe, specializing in 6 and 7 course lutes, the Renaissance vihuela and the 4 course Renaissance guitar.

I graduated from Washington University in St. Louis in 1982 with a B.A. cum honorem in anthropology. I’ve lived and travelled in Morocco, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Mauretania, Gambia, Indonesia, Syria, Mongolia, Yemen, Nepal, India, Japan and Italy. I was fortunate to experience many of these countries decades ago when the world was a much friendlier place. I was a trader and dealer in ethnographic art, jewelry and antiques since my first overseas travel but have always been involved in musical instruments as my most abiding passion.

Creating instruments that enable musicians to play something beautifully is a matter of the hand and heart for me. It is the most deeply satisfying thing I do. My hope is that my instruments will still be playing something beautiful long into the future.