Origins of the School

The Violin Making School at the J.C.Arriaga Bilbao Music Conservatory was founded in 1986 by Jesús Alonso Moral (d. 2006), after finishing his PhD thesis “Acoustics of the violin. Function and quality” in Sweden at the KTH ( Royal Institute of Technology  in Stockholm) on the Acoustics of the violin, function and tonal quality.

After completing this thesis, where he developed the new acustical measuring methods with Erik Jansson (Director of the thesis),  Jesús Alonso spent year and a half working on violin making in New York with Carleen Hutchins (luthier and researcher on violin acoutics).

With the knowledge acquired the Bilbao Violin Making School was founded with the aim of applying the new techniques developed in acoustic and modal analysis to hand crafted violin making.

Our school was made possible thanks to the help of the Education Department of the Basque Government.

Measuring methods Jesús Alonso developed and used have been updated and simplified, but we must also point out that technological advances have verified  and expanded the research conducted at the time.

Many days have gone since those early years. With the gained experience and the updating on education and technology, the school has now a new Project and Curriculum aimed to train professional violin makers able to work at the presen times.