- By AUT Journalism Student Vivek Panchal
East Auckland musician Kay Shacklock has been unexpectedly reunited with her late grandmother’s violin after it had been gathering dust for the last 60 years.
An experienced musician herself, she’s organising a free concert featuring the violin on January 12 at All Saints Church in Howick.
Shacklock’s cousin Leigh Ashby found the violin while clearing closets in his house in Havelock North and asked her if she’d like to have it.
“I said ‘yes please’ because we’re the musicians in the family,” Shacklock says.
“So long story short, I decided the two things that were important were it would stay in the family – I’m not going to sell it or anything like that – but it has to be played, a violin has to be played. You can’t put it on a shelf.”
Doris Kuo, a Howick College alumnus who works as a musician in London, will play the restored violin while Shacklock and her son Tim will accompany her on piano and cello respectively.
“She’s coming for a month to visit family and usually brings her own violin over to play, and we put on a concert,” Shacklock says of Kuo.
Shacklock suggested Kuo use the restored violin, play it for a month, and use it in a concert before she leaves so people can hear how it sounds.
“This ‘Crabbed Age & Youth’ is a vague title I’ve given to an occasional series of concerts that I do, that highlights young people coming up through the ranks and puts them alongside more seasoned professionals so you just give them a taste,” Shacklock says.
“And so, you can say I’m the ‘Crabbed Age’ one because I’ll be playing for Doris, accompanying her, and she’s the Youth.
“I want to make it nice and mainstream, so just fiddle classics.
“Doris has yet to get back to me what she wants to play, but I’ve suggested we do things people have heard before so it’s a nice and easy concert for them to listen to.”
Cath Newhook at Auckland String Company restored the violin by replacing the strings, pegs and bridge. The work was minor considering how long the violin was stored.
Shacklock had one requirement during the restoration. She didn’t want the initials “EC” that were carved into the scroll removed.
“And I’ve told them, ‘don’t you dare get rid of the initials’. So, somebody’s carved EC into it, and that’s part of the story.”
There’s ambiguity about who carved the initials. It could be Shacklock’s grandmother Elizabeth Cullen or Cullen’s younger brother Edward Cullen, a Labour Cabinet minister in the 1930s.
Given Shacklock’s grandmother grew up in a poor family who ran a boarding house to make ends meet, it’s uncertain how she acquired the violin.
Her grandmother also had adult deafness, so for her to possess the violin makes it even more of a mystery.
Although the origins of the violin are unknown, there are some clues.
Shacklock knows it was built in 1901 in Hanover, Germany, by Emil Hoffmann.
“Hoffmann is a strong name in violin-making in Germany but this particular name, Emil Hoffmann, doesn’t figure in any of the lists of violin-makers so we don’t know who he was,” she says.
So how did a German violin end up in the small town of Havelock North?
“We don’t know,” Shacklock says.
She’s happy she found the violin as it makes her feel closer to her grandmother, someone she barely remembers as she passed away when Shacklock was young.
Shacklock feels recovering the violin will help her reconnect with her family as she and her cousin have lost touch over the years.
Members of Shacklock’s family will attend the concert, making it a family reunion of sorts.
The Crabbed Age & Youth Granny’s Violin concert is at All Saints Church in Howick at 5pm on Sunday, January 12. Entry is free.