South Kingstown Stradivari

Italian bragging rights extend well beyond St. Joseph's Day and zeppoles. Italy is, after all, the ancestral home of history's great violin makers -  Nicolo Amati and his protégés, Antonio Stradivari and Andrea Guarneri. Fast forward some 400 years, and the heritage of those artisans from Cremona resonates in our town today.

Not only is South Kingstown home to one of Rhode Island’s very few full-service violin family shops - Beekman Violin, 1058 Kingstown Road, Peace Dale - but music teachers in the South Kingstown schools introduce more than 100 new students each year to the beauty and discipline of the violin, viola, cello, and upright bass.

Orchestra Rocks

“What’s amazing to me,” exclaimed string instrument specialist Stephen A. Beekman, “is the strong value in string playing in the public schools in South Kingstown.”

When we visited Beekman’s workshop this week, he gave a figurative standing-o to three local educators: Rozanne Fuller, who directs our town’s elementary school orchestra; Laurette Vitello, who leads the sixth grade orchestra at Curtis Corner Middle School; and Dr. Don ‘Doc’ Smith, director of the South Kingstown High School orchestra.

Beekman also offered a sincere "bravissimo" to South Kingstown parents for the vital role they play in supporting school music programs. When parents appreciate classical music, “you’ll find kids who love classical music, too,” he said.

Parents and teachers alike, he explained, realize that learning to play a musical instrument is the most cost-effective way to help students excel. “It’s like a separate language,” Beekman said. “It’s reading...and rhythm.”  This page from the Broad Rock Middle School web site explains how music is also science, math, history, and even physical education!

Tender Loving Customer Care

In contrast to band instruments - think trombones and clarinets - string instruments grow with your child. When you rent a violin, viola, cello, or upright bass through Beekman’s shop, you usually start small. Literally. Each passing year, the growing musician progresses to the next-size instrument, not unlike shoes and clothing.

A violin rental at Beekman Violin runs about $21 monthly, and also includes the cost of maintenance and insurance. What’s more, a portion of the rental fee is allocated toward an earned discount that you can apply to the purchase of a full-size instrument when your child is ready.

The list of local private teachers at Beekman’s shop boasts some 50 instructors, among them Patricia Petersen from North Kingstown and Emily Anthony from Jamestown.

While most private instructors teach out of their homes, Emily Chen (violin) and Morgan Santos (cello) of La Bella Musica recently opened a string instrument teaching and rehearsal studio at 382B Main Street in Wakefield. Beekman also refers students t0 Musica Dolce in Westerly, More Than Music in North Kingstown, and the Rhode Island Philharmonic Music School in East Providence.

Repair and Restoration

In addition to maintaining all of the instruments in his shop’s rental program, Beekman provides repair services for amateur and professional string players. Performers in the Newport Music Festival, Kingston Chamber Music Festival, and Rhythm and Roots Festival have used his services as have members of the Rhode Island Philharmonic Orchestra.

When we visited Beekman Violin this week, he was repairing a cello played by Bob Chapman, owner of Critter Hut, the local pet store in Narragansett. "We're all interconnected here," Beekman said with good-natured humor.

As you might expect, Beekman has worked on some extremely valuable instruments. "I don’t even want to know their true value,” Beekman added with a smile. Then, turning serious, he said, “The truth is that to the player, their instrument is priceless, no matter the value. Every repair has to be handled as if it were a Strad," he quipped, referring to the string player's affectionate term for violins built by master maker Antonio Stradivari.

“I have held and examined both a Strad and a Guarneri (violins) as well as a beautifully preserved Amati viola, all by simply asking the players (for permission to do so) after performances. I didn't have the chutzpah to ask if I could play them,” Beekman added.

Welding? You Can't Be Serious.

In college, Beekman, who admits to having no formal music education, studied engineering. Perhaps not surprisingly, he exhibits the scientist's penchant for focused precision, a skill honed also by his 20 years as a welder of critical piping systems on Electric Boat submarines. “The work was subject to great scrutiny,” Beekman said modestly as he described how the quality of his work was actually evaluated by x-ray.

“I had no clue that playing violin as a kid would be such an important part of my life,” Beekman reminisced.

During our visit to Beekman's workshop he shared some nifty facts about string instruments:

• Violin bows are made from pernambuco, an endangered species of wood from Brazil.
• The best horse hair for bows comes from stallions living in Mongolia and Argentina. The cold climate in those locations causes horses' tails to grow nearly three feet long.
• Most children start taking violin lessons between the ages of 8 and 10 but some begin as early as 3 years of age.
• The most challenging string instrument to repair is the upright bass “because of the sheer size of the beast,” said Beekman.
• There are many “violin shaped objects” purchased online that cost more to repair than they are worth, Beekman said.

Work = Play

Each summer, along with Emily Chen, Morgan Santos, and other local professional string players, Beekman organizes a summer strings orchestra program at the Neighborhood Guild. The program attracts some 150 musicians of all ages and abilities who come together to form the South Kingstown Summer Strings. “We rehearse for seven or eight weeks,” explained Beekman, "and then perform each August at Broad Rock Middle School."

Beekman also plays violin in the South County Chamber Orchestra as well as the South Kingstown Strings, a spinoff of his summer chamber orchestra.

Even after 30 years as a violin family specialist - including 15 summers learning violin repair and restoration and bow making and repair at the University of New Hampshire Violin Craftsmanship Institute - Stephen Beekman almost has to pinch himself to make sure he's not dreaming.

“I have always thought the greatest satisfaction from the trade is the pure pleasure I derive from working at my bench day in and day out. But as time has passed, I have come to get another great satisfaction from my work - that of watching a young child start on an instrument and grow into an outstanding musician and person,” he said.

Beekman Violin, 1058 Kingstown Road, Peace Dale, Rhode Island, is open Tuesday through Friday, 12 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Contact the shop at 401-284-0265 or email Stephen A. Beekman at sabeek@cox.net.

Download the movie