Sebastiano Ferrari - Violin Maker

Informazioni Generali

Biography
Sebastiano Ferrari started violin making in 2009 at the age of nineteen, he began his studies at the Violin Making School of the City of Milan. He graduated with honors under the guidance of Paola Vecchio, Gabriele Negri, Lorenzo Rossi and Professor Claudio Canevari. During the last year of school he did an internship in Elena Bardella’s workshop, with whom he still works in the making of his own instruments.
Thanks to Professor Claudio Canevari he had the opportunity to collaborate on several projects, conducted by the Arvedi Laboratory in the University of Pavia and Violin Museum of Cremona.
In 2014 he won a scholarship, awarded by the Cologni Foundation for Art and Crafts, for a collaborative project with the teacher Elena Bardella and the Scientific Laboratories of the Violin Museum of Cremona.

Workshops and projects

Workshop
Acoustic measurement in workshop; measurement of violin sound spectrum; fingerboard, tailpiece and bridge intonation; diagnosis problems and instrument characterization through rigidity and weight.
Relator: George Stoppani.
(Cremona 2013)

Workshop
The strings influence in bow instruments.
Relator: Franz Klanner (Thomastik-Infeld technician)
(Cremona 2013)

Workshop
Varnish studies in historical Italian bow instruments; macro and microscopic analysis on wood samples at different stages of varnishing.
Relator: Brigitte Brandmair, curator of “Stradivari Varnish” book.
(Cremona 2013).

Workshop
“Knowledge for conservation”. International science workshop on bow musical instruments.
Relators:
•Marco Malagodi: University of Pavia, Arvedi Research Laboratory, scientific consultant.
•Claudio Canevari: University of Pavia, Arvedi Research Laboratory, scientific consultant, Violin Making school of Milan.
•Augusto Sarti: teacher of electronics and information department of Polytechnic University of Milan.
•Gianni Ferretti: Vice rector of Polo territoriale di Cremona, Polytechnic University of Milan.
•Mats Tinnsten: Mid-Sweden University.
•Enrico Ravina: University of Genoa.
•Jean Philippe Echad: Researcher in the restoration laboratory of Museum of Music in Paris
•Jayson Dobney: musical Instruments curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
•Frank P. Bar: Director of instrument collection in the Nuremberg Musical Instrument Museum.
•Arian Sheets: Curator of stringed instruments collection in the National Museum of Music (University of South Dakota)
(Cremona 2013)

Projects
Collaboration on the project, conducted by the Arvedi Research Laboratory hosted by University of Pavia, for materials classification used in linings and filling of Neapolitan mandolins from half of eighteenth century. Photos of analysis and samples withdrawals for subsequent analysis with electron microscopy and spectroscopy (SEM-EDS), micro-fluorescence (Microft-IR) and stratigraphy.
(Pavia 2013)

Projects
Collaboration on the project, conducted by Polytechnic University of Milan, hosted in Violin Museum of Cremona: investigation and ontologies studies for classification of sound.
(Cremona 2014)

Projects
Collaboration on the project, conducted by Polytechnic University of Milan and Arvedi Research Laboratory, hosted in Violin Museum of Cremona: looking for correlations between the structural elements of the violin with the timbre and acoustic of the instrument.
(Cremona 2014)