Violins
Ken Dattmore is the Marketing Manager for Yamaha within the strings department, which has been his passion for his entire career. He started in the industry with the William Lewis & Son Company, which brought violins into the hands of thousands of young music students around the world. Ken...
Sharon Dunckle runs the music retail store her son, Mike, established when he was just 12 years old. Mike's Music is located in Eagle River, outside of Anchorage, Alaska. Mike saw the need to open a store as he bought old instruments to repair with his dad and then resold to his friends. His...
Michael Remenyi has been the proud third generation of the company his grandfather founded in Hungary in 1890 to build and repair violins and other string instruments. After World War II, the company was closed by the government and it was relocated to Canada. In Canada, Michael’s father and his...
Mike Remenyi represents the fourth generation of family members running the Remenyi House of Music located in Toronto, Canada. It was his great-grandfather Mihály who opened a small violin shop located in Budapest, Hungary in 1890. Sadly, the family lost the shop after World War II, but soon...
Giorgio Giannini proudly recalled the beginning of his family’s involvement in the music industry as part of his interview for the NAMM Oral History collection. Mr. Tranquillo Giannini was a well-respected luthier in Italy who had the vision to set up his work shop in South America. In 1900, he...
Paula Simmons wanted to create a shop where good quality instruments could be accessible to all those who came in the store. As a teacher, Paula was very interested in providing lessons for students of all ages. She tied both needs together when she and her partner, Kevin Smith,opened The Violin...
Gary Chen is the owner of Stein On Vine, the historic horn and string shop in Hollywood, California whose customer list reads like a who's who of jazz and film music. Gary was hired by the founder, Maury Stein, the brother of famed songwriter Julie Stein. Maury had developed a wonderful...
Skip Buss played trumpet for several big bands on the road and in local hotel ballrooms during the great Swing Era of the 1940s. He decided to leave the road when his son was born at which time he gigged at local clubs and ballrooms at night and worked for a small music retailer by day. He joined...
Hideo Kamimoto wrote the book on guitar repair! He built his first guitar in the late 1950s and soon discovered he had a true passion as a luthier. Within a decade he opened H. Kamimoto Instrument Repairs in Oakland, California. By this time Hideo was also repairing other string instruments...
Kate Riessland was born in England in the years following World War II and soon found she had an interest in learning all she could about the German culture. While in Germany, in 1969, she answered an ad for a job with the Götz Company. The company was looking for someone with perfect English and...