Jean Luc Roché

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Jean Luc Roché (born December 22, 1947 in Sainte-Foy-lès-Lyon , Metropole Lyon , France , † September 13, 2017 in Buenos Aires ) was a French violin and bow maker .

Life

Jean Luc Roché comes from a working-class family. His father was a carpenter and coffin maker. His mother made a living doing embroidery and helping out in the house. Roché grew up very sheltered. He was a typical loner, a trait that he retained throughout his life. Even as a teenager he was very interested in all kinds of art; this is how the many visits to the playwright Marcel Achard are understood .

His parents were very careful to foster their child's sensitivity and interest in art, and this benefited Roché when he decided to enter the artistic craft of violin and bow maker. Even as a child he often visited a violin-making workshop in his vicinity and was very impressed by the smell of the workshop of glue and wood. The master of the workshop had learned from Gustav Stark (Rohrbach b./Brambach). Roché began his apprenticeship as a violin and lute maker in this workshop, but he became more and more interested in violin bow making, and so he switched to the well-known violin and bow maker Etienne Vatelot in Paris . Roché was enthusiastic about the training, but nevertheless convinced that in a few years he would be able to make even better bows than his master. After another two years working for various violin makers in Brussels, he decided to go to Brazil . He knew that the best woods for making bows could be found there. The decisive factor for his success and the high quality level that is possible in bow making was achieved in 1998 when he contacted G. Natali in Brazil. One day was enough for him to find out who the timber suppliers were. This is how he got the wood for making the ideal bow.

Roché lived in Brazil for a few months without a job, bought wood and left enough savings to open a workshop in Buenos Aires . Because of his inability to market himself, he could really make a living. Later a violin maker repaired string instruments by the hour in his workshop. But he continued to build only arches. Roché, who had been dependent on a wheelchair after a car accident since 2007, had to fire his employee and has only produced a few sheets a year since then. He worked secluded in a small apartment in the suburbs of Buenos Aires. From 2011, his bows were produced exclusively for Erika Ciesielski. She met Jean Luc Roché in Buenos Aires in 2005. She spoke to him because he had a catalog showing violin bows in hand. Erika Ciesielski immediately noticed that Roché is an excellent bow maker and so it was agreed to deliver a minimum amount of bows annually. Roché's accident in 2007 prompted Erika Ciesielski to help a disabled artist to secure a secure order book and income. In return, Jean Luc Roché offered her an exclusive contract.

On September 13, 2017, Jean Luc Roché died as a result of bypassed pneumonia.

Works

Roché further developed the bow models by Lamy Père and, like Eugène Sartory, reinforced the shaft, but he made sure (in contrast to Sartory) that there was no weight gain. Its standard model is made with a round rod and selected pernambuco wood. Since it was forbidden to use tortoiseshell and ivory for making bows or to export them, the bow frogs have been made from ebony . The silver and gold outfit still remains. On request, Jean Luc Roché has also been producing arches with a square rod since 2011. The arches are stamped with JL ROCHE .

literature

• Stefan Hersh: A Brief History of the Bow as a Playing Tool
• Balthasar Planta: Elements for choosing a violin bow. Das Musikinstrument (Volume 23 of the series of publications), Frankfurt am Main 1980, ISBN 3-920-112-05-9