In the 1990’s, Robert Brewer Young was a violin maker’s apprentice in the studios above Carnegie Hall. He offered free bow rehairs and instrument repairs to blind musicians playing on the streets and subways of New York. Aware of the importance of music for community life, he expanded his assistance to various music programs around the city, breathing new life into their broken instruments. When a flood in East Harlem damaged instruments in Robert Gasparri’s music program, he helped to recover and restore them. Gasparri’s students would later perform on those instruments in Carnegie Hall with Isaac Stern.

By organising international donations of instruments, strings, and fittings for players performing in impoverished conditions, Robert realised that simple gestures like collecting strings from violin shops and sending boxes of supplies to those in need (may it be in New York, The Blind School in Calcutta or musicians in war-torn Sarajevo) had an impact which was transformative for communities across the globe.

In 2014, The Open String, Inc. was established in New York as a US 501(c)3 non-profit organisation. The Open String, Inc. then went on to support the Orchestra Ludueña in Argentina, where over 150 children from underprivileged neighbourhoods make music together. The charity also supported three thriving music programs for the children of recent immigrants of Central and South America in San Francisco. A further project was established in the Philippines, where donations of supplies and instruments were combined with an instrument repair course to better people’s lives through music.

Now, with our development of cutting-edge technologies, The Open String is focused on the creation and distributed manufacturing of fine instruments to a greater number of people in need. We directly involve the community in the on-site production of violins, violas and cellos, providing greater autonomy, scalability, and sustainability for our project.