Sebastian Schwelm is living the dream in Greenwich, and he couldn’t be happier.
The junior luthier at Atelier Constantin Popescu always seems to be in high demand, expressing his love for playing the violin by repairing and restoring other musicians’ instruments with precision handiwork.
Ever since Schwelm started playing the violin as a seven-year-old living in California, its sound has been a constant in his life. After high school, he moved across the country and studied music at New York University.
During that time, Schwelm said that in addition to playing the violin, he did some work on the side, fixing problems that cropped up with his own instrument as well as those of his friends and orchestra mates.
“There was something that was just interesting to me that there could be such variation between instruments, and so many things that could go into creating the sound of the instrument.”
While in New York City, Schwelm took several jobs to earn some money, working in wholesale and also at an eyeglass company. One day, he woke up and realized that this was not the life he wanted to live.
“I wanted to do something with violins again,” Schwelm said. “This is really my dream job.”
While there are schools in Chicago and Salt Lake City, as well as some in Europe, where one can study instrument-making, Schwelm wanted to repair and restore violins.
“It’s really hard to make a living making instruments,” Schwelm said. “What we’re doing here is the restoration side, and you need to learn by apprenticeship. You start working at the very bottom, vacuuming and changing strings here and there, and slowing work your way up to higher levels of repairs.”
That’s where Greenwich-based Atelier Constantin Popescu comes into play. Schwelm began his apprenticeship with owner Constantin Popescu two years ago. On any given day, the shop has around 2,000 rental instruments out in the community, being played by anyone from third-graders to adults.
“There’s a lot of work to be done on those instruments,” Schwelm said. “Every time a rental instrument is returned, there’s a lot of work that goes into cleaning, refurbishing and repairing any cosmetic issues that need to be done. Through the volume of that practice, you improve, get faster and more knowledgeable on how to approach certain repairs.”
After about a year of bringing countless instruments back to pristine shape, Schwelm started working on extensive restorations of older instruments. It’s with those instruments that customers brought in that slowly built up his confidence when it came to repairs.
“Every day something new comes in, and that’s part of the excitement,” Schwelm said. “Every day I don’t know what’s going to walk in the door and what is needed to be done. It’s always a new challenge.”
Now Schwelm is a junior luthier at Atelier Constatin Popescu, in charge of repairs at the store’s Cos Cob location.
When it comes to building an instrument, Schwelm said the timeframe could be anywhere from five months to a year, because many steps in the process that require waiting.
“When it comes to the finishing stages, the varnishing of an instrument, each layer can take several days to dry,” Schwelm said. “The varnishing of an instrument could take a month or two because you have to wait between each step.”
Schwelm’s most satisfying restoration project took place eight months ago, when a violin came into the store in pretty bad shape.
As it happened, a girl who works at the shop on Saturdays and attends Greenwich High School was looking for an instrument. After trying around 30 different instruments, the girl almost found something that she liked, but it was sold to someone else. That’s where Schwelm saved the day.
“I took apart the instrument that came into the shop in bad shape and did a full restoration,” he said. “I took the top off, went inside and did some structural repair. I got it together after four months of work on the instrument and played a few notes on it. I said, ‘Oh my God. This is her instrument.’
“I strung it up, gave it to her to try, and three days later she came in and said that it was the instrument for her,” Schwelm said. “She’s actually considering going to college for a music degree, which is something she was on the fence about before finding this instrument that matched what she was doing. It was a magical thing to see.”
While at Atelier Constatin Popescu, Schwelm has been working constantly on his technical skills, his ability to work on higher level restorations and to bring interesting instruments back to life. It’s something that he plans on doing for the rest of his life.
However, there’s still much more that Schwelm wants to achieve here in Greenwich.
“I want to connect a little more with the community,” Schwelm said. “As a violinist myself, I feel like could talk to people a little bit more about the difficultly of playing the instrument, and things that I can do to the instrument to make it easier for themselves or their children to pick it up and learn. Anything that I can do as a player and a luthier to help along the process would be really satisfying.”
