In the Spotlight: The Sitka Violin 2024

By Marcel LaPerriere

In September 2023, Sitkans Marcel and Connie LaPerriere commissioned Daniel Graham, a luthier and art professor at Georgetown College in Georgetown, Kentucky, to make a violin out of wood from Sitka, Alaska, for the Sitka Music Festival.

LaPerriere’s son Zach, known for his woodworking and wood artistry, had a mixture of wood gathered over several years from around Sitka. An assortment of wood that gave Graham options and met his specifications was shipped to his Kentucky studio. As Graham started acclimatizing the wood, LaPerriere’s friends and fellow supporters of the Sitka Music Festival, Dr. Don Lehmann and his wife, Penny, decided to chip in on the commission.

One goal of Graham and the LaPerrieres was not to hide the beauty of the wood under coats of dark stain. Thus, the violin was finished with a clear finish and then French polished to a high gloss to further highlight the woodgrain’s splendor.

The top of the violin is made from 114-year-old Sitka spruce 2X4s salvaged during the renovation of Stevenson Hall, the home of the Sitka Music Festival. The fingerboard and tailpiece are made from ironbark that Zach LaPerriere salvaged from an old piledriver that sank in the 1980s in Leesoffskaia Bay, close to Sitka. The neck and chin rest were made from mountain ash that grew on Lincoln St. The tailpiece has a Sitka rose etched into a piece of Alaska yellow cedar.

The back is made from mountain ash salvaged from a tree that blew down on Whale Island, about three miles from downtown Sitka.

The inlay on the back of the violin is based on the stained-glass window at Saint Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church. The church window is an icon of Sitka with a unique history. The story goes that in November 1899, a cold wintery wind blew into the church, and the wrong window arrived in Sitka. The church leaders decided to install the window, saying it was acceptable to keep that window because it harkened to the Old Testament of the Bible. By coincidence, the window resembles the rosette that is carved into the top and under the fingerboard of Sitka Music Festival’s Artistic Director Zuill Bailey’s Matteo Goffriller Cello, made in 1693.

The neck of the violin is mountain ash that came from a tree that was cut down near Saint Peter’s by the Sea Episcopal Church.

The upper and lower bouts are yellow cedar from a dead tree that grew in Eastern Channel adjacent to the south end of Sitka. The C bouts are crabapple from a tree that grew on Peisar Island about 25 miles south of Sitka.

If the Sitka Violin weren’t special enough, Graham used his printing skills on the inside of the violin. He printed a poem by his teenage daughter Olive and a photo of Paul Rosenthal, the founder of the Sitka Music Festival.