В Портленде скончался легендарный мастер-лирагон Джонатан Купер, создававший инструменты для мировых звезд

Jonathan Cooper, a Portland musician and master violin maker who built instruments for some of the world’s best players, died Monday at 76. He’s being remembered by his family, fellow musicians, and customers as a kind and charismatic craftsman, whose skill and encouraging nature inspired countless others to take up an instrument or to make their own. “Music and community was his life,” Cooper’s wife, Liz Bieber, said Tuesday. “He was a really kind, loving, old-school, musician’s musician.” Since posting about his death on social media, Bieber said she’s been overwhelmed reading the messages and texts from those who knew him or his work. Whether it was through a violin, a jam session or a quick word of advice, several people said he changed their lives. “Please know that your husband allowed me to speak my truth through his violin,” Bieber said, reading a text. Bieber said Cooper had been dealing with health challenges over the last couple years, but faced an unexpected decline over the past week. On social media, Bieber said Cooper focused until the very end on “what made him sing: his three sons, whom he adored, his sister and brother, dinner gatherings, music jams, violin making, and, of course, fishing.” Cooper was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1950, and grew up in New Jersey. After high school he attended college for a year, but eventually made his way to New England and played in several bands, including the Con Fullam Band, which opened the first-ever show at the famous CBGB’s in New York City in 1973. His brother, Matthew Cooper, said Jon was “fearless and adventurous.” As a kid, Cooper was a skateboarder before it was cool, and had a motorcycle. At 16, he hitchhiked to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer to work and surf. Later in life, his love of being on the ocean continued. He was an avid boater and fisherman. “He didn’t have a lot of fear about life,” Matthew Cooper said. “He was infectiously likable.” He was a guitarist first, and told Strings Magazine that it was only on a whim that he picked up — and was eventually consumed by — the fiddle. While in Italy on a European tour with a band in 1979, Cooper took a day trip to Cremona, an epicenter of violin making. Later that year, he quit the band, and took a three-year apprenticeship there. “It was an unlikely course, but he really caught the bug,” Matthew Cooper said. He went on to make more than 500 violins, including for some of the world’s foremost players across orchestras and bluegrass bands. Portland became home for his workshop, but the city also benefited from Cooper’s connections. His shop, Acoustic Artisans, became an underground arts hub of Portland. While he hand made about one violin per month in a small section of the Hay Building at the corner of Congress and Free streets, the rest of the space hosted intimate concerts, piano lessons, swing dancing and more. In about 2018, Cooper moved the shop to the State Theatre building across the street. Bieber said she met Cooper at a Portland house concert when he was playing in a band called Chicken Wire. They quickly found a mutual love of photography. They hosted or went to music jams once a month, with guests sitting in a circle and sharing songs. Bieber said Cooper never boasted about the seemingly never-ending number of musicians he knew — some known globally — or other young prodigies that he influenced at fiddle camps with Grammy-winner Mark O’Connor. When Alison Krauss and Robert Plant came to town, Bieber bought tickets, but she didn’t need to. Cooper had toured with Krauss when she was just a teenager, and had later done some repair work for her. “I could write a whole essay about his impact on my musical life and I suspect we all could,” said Maine musician Jenny Van West in response to Bieber’s post. “In the deal of the century, Jon made me a fiddle, accepting for payment a 1951 Chevy pickup. That was Jon. That fiddle now rests in the hands of my youngest, who just graduated from (Berklee College of Music.)” More stories and odes to Cooper followed. Lesley Hoey said the first time she met Cooper he was playing in a Western swing band at One Longfellow Square (where he served on the board) and she happened to be standing nearby tapping her feet. “During an instrumental break Jon leapt down from the stage, spun me around the dance floor once, climbed back up on stage and kept playing,” she said. Bieber said Cooper was a history buff, and could look at a violin and tell you what year it was made and where. A friend told Bieber a story of Cooper holding up a friend’s violin and guessing the year. Cooper estimated 1765. It was made in 1768. His instruments were said to have a tone that allowed players to express themselves creatively. Michael Doucet, a New Orleans musician best known as the founder of the Cajun band BeauSoleil, said before he met Cooper, he had a couple custom-made fiddles, but didn’t really like them. After Cooper made one for him, he played it exclusively, and the pair remained good friends. “It was even — not too high, not too low, and it just rang out,” he said, referring to Cooper’s violins. “He just had the magic touch.” More recently, Doucet’s son learned from Cooper and has since made 20 violins of his own. “There’s nothing that Jon couldn’t do,” Doucet said. “He could eat more than you, fish more than you and he could make violins better than you.” Cooper is survived by Bieber; his three sons, Amos, Seth and Wyatt; his first wife Leanne Daniels Cooper; his brother Matthew Cooper; sister Ellen Cooper; and extended family and countless friends. There will be a funeral service for Cooper at 10 a.m. Thursday at Jones, Rich & Barnes Funeral Home at 199 Woodford St. in Portland.