This instrument is part of our 2023 annual Contemporary American Makers Exhibition.

Steve Rossow is a violin maker from Saint Paul Minnesota and a member of the American Federation of Violin and Bow Makers.  He serves on the faculty of the violin-making and repair program at Minnesota State College Southeast in Red Wing, Minnesota.  In addition, Rossow, in collaboration with fellow luthier John Waddle and radiologist Steven Sirr, has invented a process to re-create renowned historic violins using the data from CT scans.  This process has received national and international media attention and was the focus of the 2011-2012 Oberlin violin-makers workshop, where a copy of the 1704 Betts Stradivarius and the 1730 Kreisler Del Gesu were constructed as a group project.  The Oberlin Betts copy was ultimately purchased and donated to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.   A Rossow/Waddle Betts replica was also included in the highly publicized “Strad vs. Modern Violin” double-blind listening test in New York City in 2013, which compared three Stradivari to 11 modern-maker violins.  The Rossow/Waddle violin placed third for tone - over all three Stradivari violins. 

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