“Why now? It’s not Accidental. Twenty years ago innovation was out of the question,” says Brooklyn violin maker Samuel Zygmuntowicz, speaking of the surge toward innovation in a trade long focused on replicating the past. “Things don’t happen in a vacuum. There’s a historical, sociological, musicological movement that is now creating this as the next thing.”

Zygmuntowicz leans forward in his chair, outlining the confluence of events that led to this moment in violin making, and the experimental violin he has whimsically named Gluey.

He’s talking fast: there’s a lot to say.

At 48, Zygmuntowicz is one of the most sought-after makers in the world with a clientele that reads like the classical-music section of your music store: Cho-Liang Lin, Maxim Vengerov, and Joshua Bell, as well as the entire Emerson String Quartet. The violins he made for Isaac Stern shattered the world record for a living maker when they sold at auction in 2003. Needless to say, the waiting list is long.

Concert artists and rising stars visiting his atelier are escorted around the mud puddles and up the clankey old freight elevator of an old factory building in a working-class Brooklyn neighborhood. Beyond the stacks of wood just inside the door, the atmosphere is warm and orderly. A grand piano, velvet curtains, and antique furniture, as well as a complete kitchen, belie the industrial location. Behind double doors, the shop where he works with two other makers is filled with northern light by a bank of tall north-facing windows.

“The story of the last 20 years was that new violins can enter the marketplace,” he begins. “If you can’t afford a Strad, why spend $100,000 on a beat-up Gagliano? The old ones are marketed on beauty and nobleness—soul. We can’t compete for nobleness.”

But Zygmuntowicz can compete for projection, dynamic range, and articulation, the requirements of a professional with a difficult job to do.

The story for Zygmuntowicz, and many other luthiers of his generation, began with the Violin Making School of America, founded by Bavarian-trained luthier Peter Prier. Prior to 1972 there was nothing comparable to the formal training available in Europe, thus the early graduates of the Salt Lake City school became the first generation of professionally-trained American makers.

This first generation honed their skills in the best shops before setting out on their own. Through violin shops such as Jacques Français and René Morel in New York, and Hans Weisshaar in the West, they had the opportunity to study, restore, and replicate great instruments. Consequently, Zygmuntowicz and his colleagues are less sentimental about the old makers than you might expect.

“What makes those violins work is more knowable now than it ever was,” he explains.

Shelves containing rubber casts of fine instruments, some so detailed you can see hairline cracks and wood grain, line one wall of his workshop. Printouts from an acoustical testing apparatus designed by Norm Pickering, a towering figure in violin acoustics, are tacked up on another wall.

Picking up one of the rubber casts, he twists it like Gumby, distorting the top. It’s more than a cartoonish gesture. The effects of distortion have interested Zygmuntowicz since he was a teenager. “How do things get to how they are?” he ponders. “And what does that reveal about how they work?”

Today’s top makers have also had access to the world’s great concert artists, who are uniquely able to give them feedback on violins, their own creations included. “Fine musicians are trained to be reliable,” Zygmuntowicz says.

Not all can articulate what they want in sound, he admits, but those who can are his most valuable customers. Some of those artists, such as Stern, helped open the minds of professional classical musicians to the idea of new instruments.

A parallel story of recent decades is the emergence of what Zygmuntowicz calls the New York School as the worldwide mainstream style for solo violinists. Zygmuntowicz describes its development as the product of “René Morel plus Dorothy DeLay’s teaching, godfathered by Isaac Stern.” Characterized by a forceful, percussive attack and intensely focused sound, the bowing style maximizes the high-frequency output of the violin in the range where the ear is most sensitive for a very projecting, penetrating sound. “People play to the ability of the instrument,” says Zygmuntowicz. Morel developed a set up—bridge, post, bass bar, and strings—that maximizes the high-frequency response, coloring the entire sound. This supercharged set up delivers a shimmering intensity, especially in the highest positions.

Yet a third developing story line has been the cooperative spirit among today’s luthiers. Workshops, conventions, and exhibitions bring makers together to study and share information and to learn from others outside their trade. The Violin Society of America’s Oberlin Acoustics Workshop adds thinkers from different disciplines to the mix: acoustical and mechanical engineers, physicists and computer modeling specialists, professional violin and bow makers, and the occasional talented amateur with the audacity to think outside the box.

Zygmuntowicz defines innovation as the confluence of activated knowledge. “Twenty years ago innovation was premature because people weren’t even working up to the standard of what’s been done,” he says.

That’s changed thanks to good training; access to the best instruments, players, and scientific analysis, and decades to master the form. “We’re in the arena now,” he says.

Zygmuntowicz and his colleagues have acquired a deep understanding of why instruments work, and possess the experience to put it all together. He likens this activated knowledge to having a topographical map that he can use to look for new ways to satisfy the demands of a very demanding clientele, rather than following the old marked path.

Last summer’s acoustics workshop provided Zygmuntowicz the much-needed impetus to put his ideas about this new path into action. “Violins are sophisticated, delicate, and complex,” he explains. “Until proven otherwise, you have to assume that every identifiable feature of the violin has an acoustic and a structural effect, and changing something will have a corresponding effect. The more you know the more you can tell about the effect of each feature.”

Zygmuntowicz has observed the changes resulting from interventions for decades, linking structural changes with tonal results. In order to speed up the process of change and observation, he came up with Gluey, an experimental violin that can be quickly altered by adding thickness to the outside of the instrument.

The technical differences between bad sound and great sound are miniscule, explains Zygmuntowicz, so the structural aspects of Gluey had to be close to normal for the results to be meaningful. Taking apart a cheap, unvarnished factory-made violin, he made the plates as thin as they ever would be in a normal violin, added a lightweight, but well-made, bass bar, put on a clear coat of varnish, and did a professional-quality setup. He then made and varnished thin strips of wood in various sizes that could be quickly glued on the surface and popped off.

“Think of the violin as a sound stage,” he says. “It’s moving all different ways at once.”

At the acoustics workshop, they tested traditional violin lore about graduations (the variable thicknesses of the wood) by adding veneers to thicken structurally meaningful areas, altering the vibrations. The results were evaluated by ears, and by an electronic tester that eliminated the human variable.

Faculty member Oliver Rogers, a mechanical engineer and violinist, came up with a new experiment. Certain frequencies are associated with particular areas on the top. A player would find and play a “hot” note. Feeling around the top with his fingers, Rogers would locate the precise area most activated by that pitch, then apply a bit of veneer. By creating these very specific, localized areas of stiffness, they were able to engineer sound in a microscopic way.

“The implications were terrifying,” says Zygmuntowicz. “The violin is so hyper-sensitive, where will you stop?” At first he had the feeling of stumbling around with no idea what they were doing, watching a strange new world unfold. Bit by bit, he started learning to see in this unfamiliar world. “Now what does it mean?” he ponders. Just because you can do it, would you? Would the client accept something so unconventional? Could you charge for it?

Will the musicians ever leave you alone?

Ironically, Gluey’s exterior has an interior corollary. The bits of veneer on Gluey’s surface look just like the traditional repair cleats and patches holding together most great old violins.