Music Makers

The sweet sound of students making music is coming from Palmer High School, but you have to walk past the music department to find it.

The music is coming from the wood shop -- yes, the wood shop of all places -- as nine students are building custom violins as part of an Artist in Residency grant. It is the first violin-building program in a high school in the country.

Dave Norman, who fixes guitars and plays in the band Coho for a living, got the program up and running.

Using grant money, he purchased 10 violin kits and lined up several speakers and field trips for the Palmer High Extended Learning Program (ELP) students.

The students each had to come up with $30, a small price to pay for what they get out of it.

"For 30 bucks, these kids are going to end up with a violin easily worth $600 and come away with a lot more than that in knowledge," Norman said. "And man, are they ever excited about it."

Freshman Bradley Johnson has worked with wood before, but building the violin is a much different process, he said.

"You obviously have to be a lot more precise," Johnson said. "There's a lot more to it than other woodworking projects. You have to be more delicate."

Many of the students were interested in learning to play the violin before, but never had a chance to buy one. This program changed that for them.

"I play the guitar, and I thought about buying a violin but they are pretty expensive," senior Jason Walbaun said. "When I heard about this program, I was on it like ugly on an orangutan."

Claudette Lampley plays the B-flat clarinet, keyboard and sings. She said she's wanted to play the violin since she was a 5-year-old, and this program gave her the chance to do it.

"As soon as I heard about it, I got excited," Lampley said. "Building it is a little easier than I thought. The kits make it easy."

Speakers such as Hank Hartman of Matanuska Music will be talking to the students about their violins during the project, and yesterday, the students were scheduled to go to The Violin Shop in Anchorage for even more expert instruction.

"Everybody is really behind the project," Norman said. "I tried to get it done last year, but it was such a last minute thing that it didn't work out. I got more organized this year, and when we heard we were accepted for the grant, we got everything together."

Hopefully, this won't be the only violin-building program at the school, he said.

"After a couple days of working with these kids, I can say that I really want to do it again next year," Norman said. "These kids are great."

In the construction phase, students had to assemble every part of the violins, including the proper placement of the bass board, which controls the sound qualities of each violin.. They could customize the appearance if they wanted to, or they could simply build the standard violin.

"I wasn't even planning on doing it, but somebody backed out and I got to do it, and now I'm really glad I did," said 10th-grader Joel Carrick. "This is a great project."

Once the violins are done, the students will start playing them -- or learn to play. Palmer music teacher Stan Harris said the music department doesn't currently offer violin classes, but arrangements can be made for independent study.

"Just because we don't have a class doesn't mean we can't get them the materials to learn," Harris said. "Each one of these kids has been talking about the project and excited about it."