50 | SME News Midlands Enterprise Awards 2023 Best Violin Design & Production Specialists 2023 Bridge Street Violins offers award winning bespoke instrument design and creation of violin, viola, da spalla, cello, and double bass. It also covers rentals, services, sales, repairs, appraisals, bows, and consignments of such. Its unique service creates instruments considering an individual player’s tonal desires and measurements, delivering an ideal sound by design. At Bridge Street Violins you can commission your own instrument to be specifically designed and crafted for you, based on 2,500 years of European cultural knowledge. The business has a mission to inspire its clients to live a life full of opportunities, and free from constraints, allowing them to meet their potential and inspire others. It does this by offering its unique service to design beautiful, original instruments, created with the player’s tonal desires and measurements in mind. This is done in support of players at all levels and ages, with optimally adjusted, pre-made instrument outfits inspiring them to progress and grow at their own speed until they are ready for their ‘forever’ instrument. Bridge Street Violins is confident of the need for, and difference that, a bespoke instrument can make. It is aware medical research shows up to 85% of professionals and enthusiastic amateurs can get injured over time as for most players their instrument isn’t ideally suited to them. The areas specifically at risk are muscles, joints, ligaments, and nerves of the neck, back, shoulders, arms, elbows, wrists, hands and fingers. The reason for this is that in the 16th century CE, when the violin family of instruments first emerged, they were made predominantly for male performers. Humans were surprisingly tall back then, quite similar to modern people, but it is still immediately apparent who will be at more risk of suffering for their art. Bridge Street Violins is working hard to address theses issues for musicians worldwide, both through the bespoke instruments it produces, and by sharing ideas with other luthiers open to the concept. As most modern makers follow the standardised antique models that were created for men in the 16th century, Bridge Street Violins think it’s high time instruments were made to fit today’s living and breathing musicians, in all of their diversity. Using an instrument that is the wrong size and tone for you means that you are likely to feel discomfort after playing it for any extended period of time. Whereas, playing an instrument specifically designed to be the correct height for the individual player can reverse the discomfort, and prevent future damage. Using a wrongly sized instrument can lead to many players simply giving up, which is understandable. Nobody enjoys doing something that causes them pain. Shorter players have to stretch further to achieve lower positions, and bend their arms further around the instrument to get to the higher positions. They might try going down to a three-quarter size, but this is not a good solution as everything is now proportionally smaller, meaning the instrument body doesn’t have the air volume to resonate. This restricts overtones, harmonics and depth of sound. Tall performers instead struggle with interval distances in the higher positions, where notes are proportionally closer together. There is nothing bigger than the standard full-size instrument, so a lack of comfort forces players to compensate to hit the right notes either way. The passionate instrument maker at Bridge Street Violins, Laurentius Huige, who once himself had the honour of playing in an orchestra at the St. Peter Basilica in the Vatican, begins projects by finding out what specific sound a client wants to achieve. Is it moody and dark, or bright and happy? Different requirements necessitate different choices of design. He combines this data with the ideal string length for his client’s anatomy to plan the instrument’s length, width, depth, and proportions accordingly. He then plans acoustics to create an instrument musically, rather than mathematically. From this point the whole instrument emerges naturally. Bridge Street Violins has now been chosen as the winner of Best Violin Design & Production Specialists 2023 in the Midlands Enterprise Awards. This fantastic company is to be truly commended. After all, the instruments it creates are just the start of a journey that is only fulfilled when put in the hands of the musician it was designed for. Web Address: www.bridgestreetviolins.com Contact Name: Laurentius Huige “Empowering our clients to live a life that is full of opportunity and free of constraints, so they can match their potential and inspire others to do the same.”
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