FLAT RIVER, PEI, Canada – A master at crafting and restoring violins, Richard LePage, the proprietor of LePage Fine String Instruments, has lived and worked on the Fiddle Farm near Wood Islands in eastern Prince Edward Island.

There, he planted seeds for a sweeter-sounding and stronger music scene in Atlantic Canada. The region’s fiddlers excel partly because Richard provides quality instruments.

“Richard’s amazing,” said Courtney Hogan, a young musician who owns two LePage violins. “His instruments are unbelievable – so sweet and powerful.”

Playing a LePage instrument motivates musicians and gives them confidence. PEI’s Nathan Condon proudly owns such a violin. “I’ve never played or heard another that came close to it,” he said.

“I make violins as much with my heart as with my ears and eyes,” Richard said. “I put a lot of soul into them. They’re like my children. I hope to continue making instruments until I die.”

After nearly a decade on PEI, Richard, age 60, and wife Mary began to consider returning to their native New Zealand. They’ve also lived in Papua New Guinea, Brisbane (Australia) and Calgary (Canada).

“Previously, fiddlers in Atlantic Canada tended to play on $100 instruments, what I’d call junk fiddles with harsh, tinny, thin sounds,” Richard said. “That’s what they had and were used to so they hesitated to try my instruments.”

Nova Scotia’s Natalie MacMaster, Richard’s first Atlantic Canadian customer, has gained a national reputation.

Richard sells to Celtic-style fiddlers or to classical violinists. “My instruments have gone as far away as to Tel Aviv, Israel,” he said. “One customer, a young Chinese woman, plays in an orchestra in Switzerland.”

Crafting an instrument takes time (two or three months) and precision. “You need a lot of patience,” Richard said. “Usually, I’ll work on one for only two hours at a time because it takes so much concentration. Plus there’s varnish and glue to dry, and some sides that you shape need to sit.”

Trained eyes and ears are essential. “You need to know what a really good violin looks and sounds like. Otherwise, how do you arrive at it? To me, a 250-year-old Italian violin is usually lovely, just gorgeous.

“Many people may think that all fiddles sound the same, but they don’t. It helps to befriend someone who owns lots or has a fiddle shop so you can learn to distinguish.

“I started by restoring. In Calgary, I worked for a man named Al Gough, who had about 350 instruments in his shop, and more than 250 needed restoring. He’d buy fine, old instruments that no one else wanted, and I’d restore them so you’d never notice they’d been broken.

“That gave me a chance to meticulously study varnish, corners, thicknesses, sounds and everything about hundreds of great, old violins. It may sound ridiculous, but I’d spend hours just studying the corner shapes. So I had a tremendous education unavailable to most people.

“When I started to make instruments, I wanted them to look and sound like the lovely examples I’d worked on for years. I knew exactly.”

Much earlier, Richard worked in Papua New Guinea for a Chinese company dealing in hardware and groceries, “everything from food to axes and spades”. There, he met two missionaries who made violins as a hobby.

“That stirred my interest,” he said. Later, he studied at Oberlin College in Ohio with Vahakn Y. Nigogosian, a master maker-restorer.

On the six-acre Fiddle Farm, Richard and Mary have had their home, the attached violin workshop and a three-room bed-and-breakfast business. Mary has kept a small herd of cashmere and angora goats. “She brushes the cashmeres, and I shear the angoras for her,” Richard said. A horse, a dog and three cats also shared the premises.

Mature sugar trees stand outside the house. Inside, Richard takes visitors to his spacious, acoustically sublime music room/library.

Touring the workshop, where Richard also has created violas and cellos, led to a meeting with Ginger, a big, yellow cat who enjoys lingering on the workbench.

“Violins are made of spruce for the top, and the remaining wood’s maple,” Richard said. “I source it mostly from a man on Vancouver Island, who goes out, selects trees, has them milled and stores the wood in his barn. It needs to be quarter-sawed and then air-dried for about 10 years.”

Sometimes Richard secures wood from Europe. “That’s more expensive, but softer. North American wood is harder and tougher on your tools, but the result’s more attractive, and I think it gives a better sound.”

Richard prices his violins at three levels: Cdn $5,000, $10,000 and $15,000. Since the early 1990s, he has sold scores of instruments, winning praise for their “projection, fit and ease of playing”. If a repeat customer wants to upgrade, Richard buys back the original at full price as part of the deal for a better model.

In June 2005, six prominent owners of LePage instruments gathered for a Fiddle Summit on PEI. Cape Breton’s J.P. Cormier participated, as did Hogan, Condon and fellow PEI musicians Richard Wood, Ward MacDonald and Roy Johnstone.

MacDonald had resisted trying LePage violins until his own needed repairs. Then he borrowed one Richard had made. “I never got it back,” Richard said. “He bought it after realizing that a better violin gave him a better sound.”

Hogan tells how she couldn’t resist Richard’s creations. “At first, I had a violin that had belonged to my great-grandfather,” she said. “Then I went to see Richard, planning to look at his violins and see what he thought of mine. I tried one and loved it, so I asked him to make me one, which he did.

“Later, he invited me to play at a Fiddle Summit. He’d made a brand new fiddle for the event. I tried it, loved that one too and bought it.”

When not making instruments, Richard does repairs. “Someone always needs a new bridge or a seam re-glued,” he said.

But how well does Richard fiddle? “I love to play, mostly waltzes or hymns, but I’m very shy about it,” he said. “I’m not a fast fiddler. As a teenager, I played the violin a little, but I didn’t play fiddle tunes, as such, until I arrived on PEI. Maybe I could practise more, but my motivation isn’t there. I prefer listening to other people.”

Richard takes pride in hearing talented musicians play his instruments. “That’s the reward,” he said. “Then I’m covered in goose bumps. The hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

“My art as a violin-maker enables others to perform their art on what I’ve created. That’s special.

“This isn’t just my work. It’s my passion too.”

For more information: www.rlepageviolins.com

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