Dedicated to the preservation of vintage, experimental, odd, outmoded, or passé instruments threatened by history; instruments that would otherwise be too costly or cumbersome to restore & maintain
Each instrument deserves to make music, and it takes two components for that to happen – musicians and songsmiths ready to make melodies, and also accessible instruments in ready to sing conditions that facilitate, not inhibit, the music making journey. Many instruments from the last century are falling into states of disrepair, disuse, and abandonment. Not for lack of quality or musicality, but rather the cost of parts and labor to restore their voice outpaces the dollar value that could be applied to a fully restored instrument. There are many factors that influence this outcome, but nonetheless the implied judgment is that these instrument are not worth the work; they are trashed, totaled, kaput. I have long felt this assessment was lacking. The value these instruments hold stretches beyond the strict dollar value. Instruments from eras past are a window into the time and place, their landscape of tastes & musicality, their construction techniques and innovation, how all of these things are married into a musical instrument. Under this consideration the choice then becomes—do we work to maintain and preserve these historical instruments as living voices in our modern musical conversation? Or do we let their quirky human uniqueness die for lack of dollar value?
So how can we push back on watching instruments age into relics, and simultaneously provide readily available access to musical instruments? I have spent much of my career repairing and tending to musical instruments; from harpsichords to pianos, from concertinas to accordions; they all have a story of their design, creation, & the melodies they’ve sung, and those yet to be played. I reject the assumption that musical instruments’ value is predicated purely on economics. These antiquated anachronisms /do/ have a place in the future, and deserve to be equally accessible to any and all music makers; and to awaken the sonic landscapes within us all.
Lending Archive
The archive can be broken down into two wings:
The Anthropic Wing—Instruments whose shape, form, and function largely exist in new or continued production today, but whose repair, restoration, or reconditioning cannot justified by economic factors; instruments like accordions, concertinas, & beyond.
The Extinct Wing—Instruments whose orientation or organization has been supplanted or deemed not worth continuing a musical life; instruments like the flutina, experimental free reed configurations, odd key arrangements, & beyond.
How You Can Get Involved
We are currently in the process of building the archive—finding & rebuilding instruments that might otherwise be left to languish. In our assembling of instruments we are currently targeting squeezeboxes (bellows driven free reed aerophones) as they are widely susceptible to falling to this conundrum. We are working on methods and processes that will facilitate getting these instruments in the hands of the music playing public, as well as ways to support the archive. Please check back!