Sparrow Violins

19/05/2025

Posted as Frog on a Bike Ceilidh Band first as we have more followers than this page, but please help save the NSVM.

🎻 Help Save the Newark School of Musical Instrument Crafts 🎻

As many of you may know, our band manager and fiddle player, Tim, is also a trained violin maker & repairer. Tim spent his formative years at the world renowned Newark School of Violin Making, graduating in 2012.

We, along with much of the musical world, are deeply saddened by the recent news that the Newark School of Musical Instrument Crafts (which encompasses violin family, guitar & woodwind making & repair plus piano tuning & maintenance) is under threat closure with no new students being accepted onto any program for at least the next two academic years.

As the only full time professional instrument making & repair training school left in the UK, the loss of Newark would not only have a profound and devastating effect on the uk instrument industry, but with it’s international intake, it’s loss would affect the global arts & music community as a whole, both amateur and professional.

Quite simply, if there are no instrument makers and restorers, there are no instruments to make music with!

You can help lend your support to save this vitality important place of learning by signing the petition: https://www.change.org/p/save-the-newark-school-of-musical-instrument-crafts?fbclid=IwQ0xDSwKX9x5leHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHnv3LO_kojgP_5cHPekXou3-bN3JP2uNTMoSo1Ks0dmmhWkCdRbnolj7cccM_aem_g4Jgn5cuBW01QBhm9-xlQw

Thank you!

15/04/2021

Thursday evening peg fitting. All new set for this 1977 John L. Ingram viola.

20/12/2020

Another custom decoration Hardanger fiddle all ready to ship out tomorrow.

This one is off to Ireland and is for John McEvoy, fiddle player the band Gatehouse.

01/11/2020

Second coat of colour varnish done on another custom decoration Hardanger this afternoon. This one's off to Ireland.

17/07/2020

Just handed over this custom Hardanger to my customer Ellie Wilson this afternoon.

These Hardangers come into the workshop in the white, are rosed (decorated) and varnished to the customers own specifications, then set up.

A very affordable way to enter the world of hardanger fiddle playing.

03/06/2016

One of the most important and influential musicians of the last 50 years. Legendary fiddle player and former stalwart of Fairport Convention, Dave Swarbrick, dies at 75 after a loosing the battle with emphysema.

R.I.P Swarb!

Virtuoso fiddler who found fame as a member of Fairport Convention has died after struggle with emphysema

09/04/2014

So here you have it folks, old violins are not necessarily better than new ones!

A modern instrument was the clear winner and a Stradivarius the loser in a double-blind test of old Italian and new violins, conducted at the Auditorium Coeur de Ville in Vincennes, Paris. In a follow-up to the controversial experiment conducted in Indianapolis...

22/02/2014

Do have a listen to Chris Leslie's fab new album. Especially, for all you fellow Newarkers, to the track 'The New Fiddle', the public debut of which was performed at Lutherie 2013.

When Paul Johnson and Darren Beech of Folking interviewed Chris Leslie at the 2008 Cropredy festival, Fairport Convention’s main songwriter and multi-instrumentalist joked that the festival site Oxfordshire is the center of the universe.

22/02/2014

Nice to be doing some making again this week.

Lots of repairs at set-ups recently, but at least that's nice and lucrative.

20/12/2013

Newark School of Violin Making on the Beeb again!

11/10/2013

This is sad news. No more Spiers and Boden!

04/10/2013

One centre joint down this week, two to go. Well on the way now! In the mean time, more set-ups to be getting on with.