(18 Jul 2025)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Selangor, Malaysia – 2 July 2025
1. Various of luthier Tan Chin Seng inspecting violin
2. Various of Tan using tuning fork to adjust violin strings
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Tan Chin Seng, luthier:
“At first, it was just that I find it really interesting, why not just make one violin? It’s just that after completing the first violin, I knew this craft is for me, yeah, everything about the process, you know, there is woodworking, carpentry, artistic thing, there is chemistry, acoustics, physics, everything about violin-making I like it. Also turning wood into musical instruments is just amazing.”
4. Various of Tan carving violin in workshop
5. Close up of Tan’s hand working on violin
6. Close up of of Tan polishing violin
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Tan Chin Seng, luthier:
“Wow, this takes forever, because it is never complete, just like your car, you can polish everyday.”
8. Various of student luthier in workshop, working on violin bow (not Chan Song Jie)
25. SOUNDBITE (English) Tan Chin Seng, luthier:
“We are all crazy, all the luthiers in this workshop are all crazy, we just love our work too much.”
9. Medium Tan in his workshop
10. Medium Tan holding violin
11. Close of "Tan Chin Seng" visible inside violin
STORYLINE:
Hunched over his workbench, Tan Chin Seng shaves the wooden top plate of a violin, removing thin layers with slow, deliberate strokes. The work is meditative, out of the public eye. For Tan, transforming raw wood into a violin is a labour of artistry and love.
The 45-year-old is Malaysia’s first professional violin maker. Over the past decade, he has earned international accolades. Now, he mentors a new generation of makers in a field still little-known here in Southeast Asia.
Traditionally, luthiers – makers of string instruments like violins and cellos – are associated with Europe, where masters like Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri shaped the modern violin. The craft has spread globally, with thriving communities now in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.
Tan’s path to violin-making was unconventional. A computer science graduate who doesn’t play the violin, he was helping in his family’s food business and co-owned a music school. In 2010, a trip to China to restore an aging violin sparked a deeper fascination with the instrument’s construction.
Curiosity led him to apprentice with Chinese luthier Han Zhao Sheng, and he built his first violin.
“At first, it was just that I find it really interesting, why not just make one violin? It’s just that after completing the first violin, I knew this craft is for me, and I like it a lot," says Tan.
“Everything about the process, you know, there is woodworking, carpentry, artistic thing, there is chemistry, acoustics, physics, everything about violin-making I like it. Also turning wood into musical instruments is just amazing.”
What followed was, in Tan’s words, a “crazy” devotion. He flew back and forth to Beijing for more training, then travelled to Italy to study under other luthiers.
In the early days, he would spend up to 16 hours a day hunched over wood, perfecting every curve and contour. In 2015, he committed to violin-making full time.
The process is painstaking, often taking hundreds of hours to create a single violin and requiring intense focus. His studio, Deciso, located in a suburb near Kuala Lumpur, is cluttered with chunks of aged wood, chisels and jars of hand-mixed varnishes.
"This takes forever, because it is never complete, just like your car, you can polish everyday," says Tan, as he polishes one of his most recent creations.
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