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Who Can Afford a Fine Instrument? You probably know the scenario. One night at orchestra rehearsal, a section player turns up with a different instrument. It looks great, it sounds great, and it had to have cost good money—more than the player has, as far as you can tell. The whispers fly around the room: "How did she do it?" String players—some virtuoso "stars" aside—are not a notoriously rich bunch, and professional-quality instruments can cost staggering amounts of money. Fine contemporary instruments often run into five figures, and good antiques can be ten times as much. If you’re feeling stumped, wondering why you haven’t figured out a way to dash out and buy a glowing antique or a master-made contemporary instrument, take heart from the fact that you’re very far from alone. "Wealthy parents!" Dennie Mehocich, a professional violinist and teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, sums up one of the most popular means of buying. "You have to have parents who scrimp and save; a father who’s a rocket scientist and a mother who’s a physician. There’s no other way." Professional violin makers suggest that there’s some truth to Mehocich’s bold assessment. "In my experience, the parents pay," acknowledges James N. McKean, a prizewinning maker in New York City and a Strings corresponding editor. But in fact, Mehocich herself bought her own viola, made by contemporary California maker Thomas Oliver Croen, for about $10,000 in cash some eight years ago. "I saved up my money and I had a boyfriend whom I lived with, who didn’t make me pay expenses," Mehocich relates. "He just said, ‘Save your money.’ Generosity is what it takes—people have to be lucky or work hard or both." Such stories are surprisingly common, but they’re not much help to the person who doesn’t have a rich relative or a generous friend. Dawn Dover, a freelance violinist in the Bay Area, says she bought and sold her way through several instruments in order to get the Santo Serafin she currently uses. "I had to wait until certain things appraised at a higher level, then I sold them. But I didn’t make a lot of money that way. After about eight years I found the violin I have, and it was expensive and I didn’t think I could get a loan. Half the price came out of my own pocket, and then I had to rely on personal loans through people I know. I make monthly payments to them, with interest. I got the instrument two years ago and I’ll probably be on these payments for at least another five years, at $1,000 a month. After that I have another loan that will probably also last five years." Dover knows from experience that it’s not easy to finance an instrument with a bank loan. "Unless you have a home and take out a second mortgage," she says, "you can’t get a personal loan from a bank to buy an instrument. They see it as a work of art, a collectible, even though you use it for your career. Banks don’t understand—if they did, they’d all be buying instruments. The appreciation on these instruments has just skyrocketed over the years." But the situation is not quite so cut-and-dried for the banks, according to Paula M. Allen, assistant manager of the San Anselmo, California, branch of Wells Fargo. Even though many instruments do appreciate—some greatly—in value, "they’re in a narrower market than a house or car," she explains. "We can’t easily find someone who can afford to buy an $80,000 instrument [if you default on your loan]. Musicians are thinking, ‘Here’s a valuable instrument.’ But banks are thinking, ‘We don’t want that instrument.’ We’re not in the repo business. And who are we going to resell it to?" Allen readily acknowledges that the situation is hard for the average musician. "You can essentially get a personal loan from a bank for any reason," she says, "but an instrument is not something we can use as collateral." Taking out a second mortgage on a home, if you have one, can work but may be tough depending on the housing market in your area, because the bank won’t approve a loan if the borrower’s debt exceeds a certain percentage of his or her income (50% at Wells Fargo). To get around these problems, says luthier Sam Zygmuntowicz of Brooklyn, "some people arrange a sponsorship. I have someone who just commissioned an instrument from me, and they got a sponsor to arrange the down payment. It’s a rich person, of whom there are more than you might think. ‘Violin millionaires’ are often scientists who made their money doing, say, genetic engineering. They’ve worked for their money; they’re energetic people, and a lot of them love music—some of them even play fairly well—and they love being included in the world of professional musicians." Their way of being included is to sponsor an up-and-coming player. A number of well-known professional players (including Leila Josefowicz, Josh Bell, Vadim Repin, and Midori) have been the recipients of fine instruments loaned by such sponsors through the Stradivari Society, coordinated by Bein & Fushi, Inc., in Chicago. Players are selected based on the Society’s assessment of their artistic abilities. The Stradivari Society can be contacted by writing to 410 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 1028, Chicago, IL 60605; by faxing (312) 663-0477; or by e-mailing mail@stradivarisociety.com. Of course, this organization aside, you can’t just look up "violin millionaires" in the phone book. A few people have found ways around the dilemma, but it takes a lot of imagination as well as luck. One violist who plays in a top Midwestern orchestra (and prefers that her name not be used) recently bought an 1855 Vuillaume that was valued at $140,000. "It was always my dream to own a world-class instrument, partly for the quality of sound and partly for the investment," she says of her buying adventure. "Yet, as a musician, I thought that I could never possibly afford something like this. I’m not one of the lucky ones with a patron or a rich uncle or an oil well." She does, however, have an impressive amount of energy and initiative. Having paid off her student loans (she studied at Curtis and then got her master’s at Juilliard) and settled herself into her new job with her orchestra, she began looking at instruments, at the same time tightening her belt and stashing money in the bank at every opportunity, taking every outside job and giving up vacations, shopping, even trips to the coffee shop. She amassed some $8,000 and had a few mutual funds to sell but was not even close to a down payment on that Vuillaume she soon saw at Shar Fine Instruments & Bows in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "I fell in love with it," she admits. "It’s an incredible size: 16¼ inches. For a viola, that’s small, so I could foresee a lifetime of playing on this instrument without injury. And I thought it was incredibly gorgeous, and it was in mint condition." She preferred the instrument to others she tried that were more expensive, and she knew she would have to try to bargain down the price somewhat—but she still couldn’t imagine how she might afford it. "But I remembered reading about Ani Kavafian, who found an incredible Stradivari violin and walked into banks and played for managers to try to get a loan. I took the exact same approach. I dressed up, went to all the main banks downtown, asked for the manager, and pulled out the viola before they had a chance to say anything. I played some Bach and talked about myself, my role as a musician, how supporting me would be supporting the arts, why they could take a risk on me. I showed them how I’d paid off my student loan, how I had no debt, and I had my tax return in my hand. I gave them no reason to say no." But they did say no, because she owned no home and had no collateral. Undeterred, the violist continued talking to everyone she knew, and at last a friend referred her to a pal at one of the big downtown banks that was also a major supporter of her symphony. She phoned the banker, even though she’d already spoken to someone else at the same bank—and this contact turned out to be fruitful. As she now recalls, "He was so enthusiastic! He said he had private investors who love getting involved in things like this, and he said he couldn’t wait to be the one to help me make my dreams come true! He said, ‘Let me FedEx you an application for a loan.’" At the same time, she began to think about the loans offered by her symphony. "My symphony had a cap of $20,000 for musicians to buy equipment, if that much money were currently available. And at the time, the maximum they could loan me was actually only $9,000. It occurred to me that this was sub par for a major symphony orchestra that was trying to encourage young people to stay with them. What better way for an orchestra to get players to commit for a long time than to show their belief in these players and loan them money for an instrument? I decided that I had to do some talking to the powers that be." So she talked to—and played the Vuillaume for—the president and vice president of the symphony and the president of the board of trustees. "I had nothing to lose!" she laughs now. "I told them, ‘It would be to your advantage to help me. Is there any way we could make this a better loan program? I know there will be others who will follow in my footsteps if we can pave this path.’ And everybody got involved." After two months of using her best sales tactics, she succeeded in securing a hefty 15-year loan from the bank at eight percent (fixed rate), with monthly payments of $850. Meanwhile, the symphony agreed to cosign on the loan. "My job became my collateral," as she puts it. (And, indeed, her orchestra has changed and improved its loan program as a result of her input.) "It’s like a dream come true," she says now. "Here I am, a young person who graduated from school with a simple dream of owning a great instrument so I could be the best player I can be. I’m committed to eating peanut butter and jelly for 15 years to pay off this loan, but it’s worth it." The moral of the story is not that a highly expensive antique instrument should be the goal, but that any instrument you desire, be it antique or contemporary, may not be as far out of the reach of your budget as it seems. The key seems to be a creative outlook, a willingness to knock on many doors, and the ability to convince possible lenders of the importance of the arts in general and your role within them in particular. If you have stories about your purchasing experiences, or opinions about the instrument market in general, share them with other readers by writing to us at PO Box 767, San Anselmo, CA 94979, by faxing to (415) 485-0831, by e-mailing editors.st@stringletter.com, or by visiting our Web site’s new readers’ discussion forum at www.stringsmagazine.com. —Mary VanClay
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