Ben Cohen    Wed, 12 Jan 2000 13:42:25 -0700
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Since everybody else is giving their short bio. . . .

I got started on lute while singing for the Oberlin Conservatory Collegium
Musicum.  The group's lute player graduated, and I had enough classical
guitar background to pick up the instrument.

I spent two years after graduating Oberlin (math major) as the Collegium's
assistant director.  Like Gail Gillispie, I learned much from the legendary
L. Dean Nuernberger, our director, and also got to learn how to get around
pretty much all other early instruments.  Now that was a job.

I also got on Larry K. Brown's waitlist in '87, enabling me to purchase a
fine 8 course Heiber for $460 (plus $50 for the case).  I only joined this
list a few months ago and was surprised to discover the sort of prices good
instruments command these days.  Not that the luthiers don't deserve every
cent.

After I started to get some strolling lute gigs at parties, etc. I yearned
for a louder instrument, but was dissuaded from purchasing a full size
archlute due to size and price.  Donna Curry put me in touch with luthier
James North, who gave me a great deal on lovely large 10 course he had built
and later converted into a baroque lute.  I have it set up as a
single-strung 11 course, in g tuning, with 7 strings over the fingerboard
(7=D).  The four short diapason strings are enough to make it functional and
convincing for ordinary continuo playing, and even much of the plucked Bach
repertiore.

I also enjoy building instruments.  I have built a few flat backed "lute"
kits which I agree are not proper lutes, but if well made are perfectly
serviceable instruments.  I keep one in my office as a practice instrument
(though I never have time to touch it).  For a person on a luthier's long
waiting list, I think one of these kit-built quasi-lutes is a definite step
up from capoing a classical guitar.  The new synapse connections just form
better when you're playing an instrument that is set up like a proper lute.
I've also had some success with saz-like instruments using old humidifier
tanks as resonators.  My current project is a large banjo-bass (3 strings,
using a 16" Remo drum head as the primary resonator).  

I'm 35, a lawyer by day.  My wife is a rabbi; we have a 2 year old.  Before
law school I taught high school math and physics, and developed a cool lab
based on the Pythagorean monochord (i.e. determining a streched string's
pitch as a function of its length, tension, diameter, material, etc. The
students loved it, and I wrote a litte note on it for The Physics Teacher
Magazine).  Also, Mel Bay will hopefully be publishing my J.S. Bach
transcriptions for the electric bass, which include the a minor sonata for
solo violin (more relevant to the Bach Plucked list).

Ben Cohen
Denver, Colorado
USA