Violin Shop MeToo

I recently returned from this year's Violin Society of America convention in Cleveland.  I had a great time, and am looking forward to writing a post about my experiences soon, but first I wanted to share my part of a panel discussion I was privileged to be a part of.

We got to talking at last year's convention during the women's luncheon (which is a nice place for women in the industry to connect since there are so few of us) about what we experience in terms of discrimination.  The esteemed Marilyn Wallin gave a brave speech about some of the things she's endured, including a man tearing up a check for an instrument of hers after he discovered a woman had built it and then declared the idea too disgusting to contemplate, to the fact that women in the early days of the violin making schools were not allowed to build cellos.  (She had to hire one of the male students to teach her.  Marilyn currently makes some of the best damn cellos on the planet.)  

It sparked quite a conversation as everyone began to share their own stories.  Everyone has them, which is very much what the MeToo movement has been about.  As we talked over lunch and beyond, I started to ask why we weren't sharing these stories with men.  We know all these problems are ubiquitous.  It's men who do not.

So we decided to put together a panel discussion for the next convention, and we collected stories that women were too uncomfortable to attach their names to and edited them enough to provide anonymity.  I wrote the intro, my friend Robyn read the stories, and Marilyn contributed a new piece before I read a closing, and then we turned the discussion over to the audience.  The only real stumbling block we had was that various people in charge of organizing the talks at the convention kept trying to change our panel into one about general diversity, at one point promoting it as "How to Bring Diversity to Your Shop!" which struck me as a terrible bait and switch that would understandably upset people. I tried to address the diversity issue a bit (which is incredibly important, just not what we were doing), but was relieved when the wording was changed in the program before it went to print, and finally read "Panel Discussion: Experiences of Discrimination in the Workplace."

For anyone who is interested but couldn't attend the VSA convention this year, here is my talk:

Looking Back on the 2016 VSA Convention

Before the past year slips too far from memory I want to take a moment to reflect upon the VSA convention I attended back in November.  It was quite an experience and I'm very glad I got to go.

2016 was a competition year.  The Violin Society of America (VSA) has an annual convention that moves around the country, and every other year they hold a competition for violin making with awards for workmanship and tone.  This year I entered my latest commissioned violin.

Renaissance Hotel, Cleveland

The convention was in Cleveland again.  I drove myself out there, and shared the drive back with my friend Robyn.  I loved having a few days alone in a hotel room where the bed magically got made every day and new towels just appeared.  (There are few things I envy the rich for, but maid service is one of them.)  I also enjoyed Robyn's company the last few days of the convention and sharing a room with someone who didn't need me for anything other than occasional grown-up conversations.

All the Birthdays

Birthday season is done!  During the two minutes I have between that and trying to assemble everything for Christmas, here is an overstuffed recap:

The first birthday of the season is Quinn's just before Thanksgiving.  I was in Cleveland that week, but I did get to talk to him for a bit on the phone.  We played twenty questions where he had to guess what I was looking at outside my hotel window.  It was giant plastic birds, so it took a while.

It's Not Just a Rental Instrument

I'm in Cleveland this week for a VSA (Violin Society of America) convention.  It's a competition year, so I brought my latest violin for judging, and it's always nice to spend time with others in the same business.  I've gotten to catch up with people I don't see often, and even made a few new friends and contacts.  I'm enjoying myself a great deal.


This year I also had the opportunity to give a talk!  It went well, although it was on the first day of the convention before some of the people I knew had arrived, and there are talks happening concurrently this year, so some people had to miss mine who wanted to go.


But it was a good talk and I got many good questions afterward.  The best part was to discover other people with shops like my own in different parts of the country; smaller shops where they care more about relationships and music than they do about profit and growth.  I was approached several times in the following days by people who liked what I had to say, and told me they run their businesses with the same philosophy.  They were pleased not to feel alone.


So here, if you are interested, is a slightly edited version of my talk.  The original had more than 60 slides and some graphs and I can't include most of them here, but trust me, they were awesome.  My regular readers may be bored by the more nuts and bolts descriptions of our business, but I wanted to include them for my colleagues who missed the talk.  (There are some things of more general interest if you skim past the contract stuff.)




IT'S NOT JUST A RENTAL INSTRUMENT



Korinthia A. Klein
Korinthian Violins, Milwaukee WI
VSA Nov 2016



My name is Korinthia Klein and I run a small violin shop in Milwaukee WI.



I come at this business from many angles: as a player, a teacher, a parent, and a luthier.

I began playing violin in public school in Michigan, switched to viola in high school and majored in that instrument at the Ohio State University, and I still play today with a group called Festival City Symphony.  

I got my diploma in lutherie from the New World School of Violin Making in the year 2000 and then worked for several years doing repair work at Classical Strings in downtown Milwaukee where I learned repair and setup.



The Real America

View from my hotel room

Cleveland is a nice city.  I wish I had the opportunity while I'm here to get out and see more of it during this convention, but for the most part I'm in a hotel near the lakefront.  It took me a day and one overpriced bowl of oatmeal in the hotel restaurant to realize the hotel is attached to a mall (and casino, and transit hub).  That's where I've been going for lunch by myself.

My fellow violin makers are very nice, but I'm having a hard time connecting with people on this trip.  There is a lot to absorb, I'm uneasy spending so much money at once (but the opportunity to select nice wood and supplies for the store is rare so it's a justifiable expense), and of course I miss my family.  I don't mind being alone, but I find here that I'm lonely.  I miss the dog being ecstatic to see me.  I miss hugs of all heights.  I guess I like alone time better on different terms.

But the interesting part about going out in public alone is getting a chance to quietly look around.  My mind processes things differently when I'm not engaged in conversation.  Without a specific person or people to focus on I can take in much more.  And I've been seeing things through a post-election lens, and this is what I see:

A Different City by a Lake

I'm off to Cleveland!  Which I find somewhat funny because if you do a Google Earth search for my violin store (Korinthian Violins 2900 S. Delaware Ave Milwaukee WI) and zoom in, you will see that the building kitty corner from us--in the flight path of people arriving at the nearby airport--has the words "Welcome to Cleveland" on the roof.  (Just to mess with people who may panic that they are about to land in the wrong industrial Midwestern city by another Great Lake.)

The Violin Society of America holds a convention every fall, and every other year the convention includes an instrument and bow making competition.  This year I'm entering a violin:

(This picture kind of cracks me up because for some reason with this rug as the background my violin looks like it's about two inches long.  It's the same instrument I'm holding in my profile photo, so you can see it's not.  Unless you think I'm only a foot tall, in which case I've got no way to help you for scale.)

The convention itself should be fun.  The last one I attended was four years ago in Portland, Oregon, and I got to bring the whole family along.  This time I'm going alone.  I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that.