THE STRAD
STICKS AND TONES
The roll call of musicians who use synthetic bows makes an impressive list: Christian Tetzlaff, Isabelle Faust, Gary Karr, Didier Lockwood, Jaime Laredo and Leonid Gorokhov, to name but a few. The Alexander Quartet, based in San Francisco, plays exclusively with carbon-fibre models. The popularity of synthetic bows is clearly on the increase. Dwindling supplies of pernambuco, the traditional wood preferred for bow making, has brought them into the spotlight, but it's the technological advances in performance of new generations of carbon-fibre bows that players are excited about.
by Catherine Nelson |
