About Hermann
Some people find their craft.
Hermann Janzen was born into his.
He grew up in Brazil, the son of a luthier who spent his entire life building stringed instruments. The workshop was not a place Hermann visited. It was the world he came up in, where the smell of fresh-cut wood and the quiet patience of handwork were simply part of childhood. So it surprised no one when, at nine years old, he picked up a carving knife and a few tools and started his first violin.
He finished it two years later. By the age of fourteen, he had built three violins and a cello.
"I've always been a very passionate person, but violin making struck a chord in my heart."
Once a knife was in his hand and wood was in front of him, he could not stop. The craft was already deeply ingrained. And when an instrument was finished, when he heard a great player draw real sound and music from something he had shaped with his own hands, that was the icing on the cake.
A Craft Interrupted, and Reclaimed
Life took Hermann in another direction for a time. He built a career in construction, and it served him well until the age of thirty-five, when a severe electrical accident burned both of his hands badly enough to end that line of work for good.
It would have been the end of many men's working lives. For Hermann, it became a return. Violin making was the profession he came back to, almost by default, and the hands that could no longer pour concrete could still coax music out of spruce and maple.
The Pursuit of the Perfect Instrument
Building a fine instrument is a discipline of countless small decisions. Form, proportion, materials, every element plays its part, and a luthier has to observe all of them at once to get it right.
Hermann has had moments of real fortune along the way. In the mountains of British Columbia, he found a large log of Sitka spruce, and from that single piece of wood he built some of the best sounding instruments of his career. Like all serious violin makers, Hermann signs his work the traditional way. His instruments carry a label bearing his name, Hermann Janzen, a maker's word that the work meets his standard.
A Quiet Place to Build
When Hermann and his family committed to this new chapter, they went looking for the right setting for it. They found Mission, British Columbia. It sits next to the monastery, with lakes scattered through the mountains to the north and a steady current of clean, fresh air. It is one of the quietest places he knows, and quiet is exactly what the work demands.
Mission turned out to be more than a workshop location. It is a town full of artists, a hidden secret that not enough people know about. Hermann recently joined the Mission Arts Council after seeing how active and proactive its members were at Heritage Park and other venues throughout the summer. For him, the choice was simple. Why not be a part of it and join forces.
That instinct, to build something good and to do it among people who care, has guided Hermann Janzen for his entire life. It still does, in every instrument that leaves his hands.
