Makers

Violin and bow-makers scheduled to appear at our 2025 West Cork Chamber Music Festival

Click on a maker’s image to see their full biography.

Violin Makers

Baerbel Bellinghausen

Violin Makers

Baerbel Bellinghausen is devoted to sound: string instruments have been part of her life ever since her youth. She is...

Youenn Bothorel

Violin Makers

His sensitivity to music and its instruments led him at 19 years old to Newark School of Violin Making, England,...

Jose Catoira

Violin Makers

Jose is from A Coruña, Galicia. He started playing the Galician bagpipes at a young age and became immersed in...

Niall Flemming

Violin Makers

Niall is an award winning bowmaker based in Brussels, who’s bows are sought after internationally. In 2022 Niall won 2...

Bertrand Galen

Violin Makers

Bertrand Galen is a French violinmaker and cellist based in Cork, Ireland. Trained at the renowned violin-making school in Mirecourt,...

Eero Haahti

Bow Makers, Violin Makers

Eero Haahti (*16.12.1961) - started studying cello playing at the age of five with Arto Noras - 1977 made his...

Michiel de Hoog

Bow Makers, Violin Makers

Michiel (Mick) de Hoog 1956 Michiel de Hoog has been making violins for over forty years. Born in Holland into an...

Ian Knepper

Violin Makers

Originally from the united states, Ian has been living in Ireland since 2007. Ian started out in the violin trade...

Jeremie Legrand

Violin Makers

Jeremie Legrand specialises in the making of violins, violas, and cellos. He currently works in Cork. He started playing the...

Conor Russell

Violin Makers

Conor Russell was born in Dublin, Ireland. He played the violin, and began making instruments at Cork School of Music....

Noémie Viaud

Violin Makers

Noémie Viaud is an award winning luthier based in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has been passionately making violins, violas and cellos...

Bow Makers

Victor Bernard

Bow Makers

Victor Bernard was born in 1985 near Paris, France. After being graduated from the Newark School of Violin Making in...

Doriane Bodart

Bow Makers

Born into a family of violin makers, Doriane started her apprenticeship in 1994 in Mirecourt with Gilles Duhaut, in Brussels...

Noel Burke

Bow Makers

Noel Burke began his bow making career in 1989 as apprentice to Charles Espey in Seattle Washington and later to...

Emmanuel Carlier

Bow Makers

Emmanuel Carlier began his bow-making apprenticeship in 2005. Two years later, he joined Pierre Guillaume in Brussels with whom he developed his...

Charles Espey

Bow Makers

The son of an American ship’s captain Charles Espey was raised in Singapore and Djakarta. During his twenties he pursued...

Klaus Grünke

Bow Makers

Klaus Grünke learned the craft of bow making from his father Richard Grünke, in Bubenreuth. In the years 1980- 1982...

Eero Haahti

Bow Makers, Violin Makers

Eero Haahti (*16.12.1961) - started studying cello playing at the age of five with Arto Noras - 1977 made his...

Michiel de Hoog

Bow Makers, Violin Makers

Michiel (Mick) de Hoog 1956 Michiel de Hoog has been making violins for over forty years. Born in Holland into an...

Pierre Nehr

Bow Makers

In September 1995, at the age of sixteen, I began my apprenticeship with my brother Jean-Pascal in Marseille, where I...

Stéphane Thomachot

Bow Makers

Stéphane Thomachot was born in 1959 in Bourg-la-Reine, France, and studied bow making at Mirecourt under Bernard Ouchard from 1975...