Making music
- Noel handcrafts bows for violins, viola and cello
- He was an apprentice to Charles Espey and Stéphane Thomachot
- He uses beautiful materials for his bows
After leaving school in 1983, Noel Burke trained as a clarinet maker in Newark, England, but after a chance meeting in Paris he began making bows. At a wedding he met Charles Espey and Stéphane Thomachot, two of the leading bow makers in the world. A seed was planted and two years later he approached Espey, now living in Seattle, and became his apprentice. After a year studying bow making, he moved to Paris to apprentice with Thomachot. He worked with Thomachot for two years and then stayed on in Paris, working from his apartment, making copies and restoring old French bows. He said, “I was truly honoured to learn this centuries-old craft from two of the leading makers in the world”.
INTERVIEW
I use mammoth tusk, ebony, silver, gold, awabi shell and Moroccan calfskin in my bows. The heart of a bow is the stick, made of Pernambuco wood which only grows on the east coast of Brazil.
For 18 years, I had apprentices but now I work alone. There is no school for French bow making so a traditional apprenticeship is the only way to learn. Relatively few bow makers work in the French tradition so I felt an obligation to pass on what I had learned.
To see a bow that I have made in the hands of a great player. A great player has an incredibly close relationship with their bow. It is very special. They breathe life into a bow.
Seeing the great violinist Alina Ibragimova play my bow for the complete Bach Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin, over two Saturday night concerts at The Proms, in a packed Royal Albert Hall in London in 2015.