Hutchins Consort to Play at Wake Forest University

Winston-Salem, NC, October 16, 2011 --(PR.com)-- The famed violinmaker Carleen Maley Hutchins (May 24, 1911-August 7, 2009) was called the “female Stradivari” by her mentor Harvard physicist Frederick A. Saunders. Her contribution stems from her efforts to harvest technology to improve on the centuries old string instruments and her invention of a new “family” of musical instruments to give new expression to music both ancient and modern.

The Hutchins Consort is the only ensemble named for an American luthier and the only ensemble in the world that performs on a Hutchins Violin Octet. The Hutchins Consort will embark on its Debut East Coast Tour in October, 2011, in honor of the 100th Anniversary of Hutchins’ birth and will be honoring Dr. Hutchins’ memory throughout their 2011-2012 season.

This unique musical experience will be performed 7:00 PM, Sunday, October 23 at Wake Forest University’s Kulynych Auditorium, Byrum Welcome Center. Tickets for this unique musical experience are $20 for adults, $10 for WFU students and will be available at the door the evening of the concert. D. Quincy Whitney, a Wake Forest alumna and former Boston Globe arts journalist, will tour with the Hutchins Consort because she is writing the biography of Hutchins, sponsored primarily by two Research Fellowships from the Musical Instruments Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art where a violin octet resides in the collection, donated by Hutchins in 1989. Whitney will give a short pre-concert talk about how she met Hutchins and came to write her biography.

Hutchins was a most unlikely pioneer - a biologist and trumpet player who taught herself acoustical physics by making violins. Hutchins and Saunders performed more than 100 acoustical experiments on violas and violins made by Hutchins. Hutchins eventually created a louder, more resonant violin via plate tuning and modal analysis. In addition, Hutchins created a forum for an international community devoted to violin acoustics through the Catgut Acoustical Society and its scientific journal that she published for more than thirty years.

Despite the fact that she was a lone female in two male-dominated fields of acoustical physics and violinmaking, Hutchins was the only woman to be awarded the Honorary Fellowship of the Acoustical Society of America – whose very short list of recipients includes Thomas Edison. Hutchins was also the recipient of four honorary doctorates, a Guggenheim Fellowship and was considered the foremost authority on violin acoustics. From 2002 to 2003, Mrs. Hutchins’s octet was the subject of an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Titled “The New Violin Family: Augmenting the String Section.”

But the most exciting Hutchins legacy is the Violin Octet and the Hutchins Consort with a dynamic range and palette of sounds never heard before from a string ensemble. The Hutchins Consort performs a wide repertoire ranging from Medieval, Baroque and Renaissance to jazz, blues and modern, including new works written specifically for these instruments. The Consort is used to performing for audiences of all ages and tastes, and also shines in their concerts for young audiences, as they are very familiar with performing in educational settings.

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