Founder and teacher
Andrea Zanrè took up violin making at the age of 18, driven by his passion for classical music and the sound of instruments, particularly stringed instruments.
He attended the School of Violin Making in Parma from 1994 to 1998, retiring before he had obtained his
diploma, and at the same time graduated with honors in philosophy from the University of Parma. Even in the following period, Andrea always remains in intimate contact with his teacher, Renato Scrollavezza, who continues to exert a profound influence on him in many aspects related to thoughtart and work.
In 2002 Andrea Zanrè began teaching violin making alongside Renato and Elisa, with whom a year earlier he had founded Associazione Liuteria Parmense, also in the same year Elisa and Andrea decided to establish the violin making studio Scrollavezza & Zanrè.
Beginning in 2003, Andrea began assiduously attending master classes in violin making, acoustics, mounting and restoration in the United States, at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts with Hans J. Nebel, and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where she had the opportunity to engage with leading U.S. and European violin makers
Later Elisa and Andrea decided to import the same model of improvement to the Parma School, holding annual master classes with renowned teachers, such as Hans Nebel himself, Gregg Alf, Guy Rabut, Samuel Zygmuntowicz and many others.
In the mid-two-thousands, Andrea Zanrè began to combine his violin-making and restoration activities with the construction of replicas of classical instruments, which would be fundamental to the stylistic and acoustic maturation of his work. In 2006, Scrollavezza & Zanrè opened a new workshop in the center of Parma (initially located on Strada Farini), which quickly established itself as one of the most important on the national scene. Specializing in making copies of Giovanni Battista Guadagnini, Elisa and Andrea took up an idea initially launched in 2008 by Boston dealer and expert Christopher Reuning to organize an exhibition dedicated to that luthier on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of his birth. The exhibition opened in September 2011 at the National Gallery in Parma, and Andrea Zanrè became its co-curator along with art historian Davide Gasparotto. The scientific committee of the exhibition, which is remembered as one of the major exhibition events in the field of violin making of that period, includes, addition to Scrollavezza & Zanrè and Christopher Reuning himself, experts of the caliber of James Warren, Duane Rosengard, Eric Blot, Simon Morris of J & A Beare, Philip J. Kass.
Alongside the exhibition catalog, Scrollavezza & Zanrè decided to edit an important monograph on Giovanni Battista Guadagnini (published in 2012), which enthusiastically received by critics and began the intense publishing activity of the following years, continued thanks to support and friendship of Philip Kass and photographer Jan Röhrmann. Together with Kass, and his friend Paolo Parmiggiani, in 2013 Andrea devoted himself a documentary
on the masters of contemporary and twentieth-century violin making (Violin Makers, The Renaissance of Italian Lutherie) whose protagonists are, in addition to Renato Scrollavezza, Francesco Bissolotti, Gian Carlo Guicciardi, and Gio Batta Morassi.
In 2014, together with Jan Röhrmann, Andrea laid the groundwork for a new series of monographs entitled “Treasures of Italian Violin Making” focusing on classic examples of Italian violin making in exceptional state of preservation, a series that garnered great acclaim in the years to come. At the same time Andrea devoted himself to extensive research on the makers of the Mantuan school, again together with Röhrmann and Kass, learning from the latter the rudiments of archival research and deepening his own historical and stylistic expertise.
Also, since 2014, Elisa and Andrea have been devoting new studies to Parma School founder Gaetano Sgarabotto, research that will culminate in the publication of a monograph dedicated to him (“I Segreti di Sgarabotto,” 2019).
Alongside his editorial activity (with several dozen articles published in recent years), Andrea assiduously devotes himself to his passions: historical and scientific research, the refinement of his taste and knowledge historical violin making through study and imitation of classical instruments, and above all the construction new instruments in the wake of the Emilian and Lombard traditions of the 20th century.
Awarded prizes in a number of competitions, and in turn called upon to serve as a juror on similar occasions, Andrea nonetheless strives to advocate an idea of violin making that is highly personal and anchored in the peculiarities of different historical and geographical traditions, and that does not conform to the standardization drives that even his master Renato Scrollavezza has always opposed.
After the latter’s passing in 2019, Elisa and Andrea alternate their time between the Parma studio on Viale Toschi (opened in 2009) and the country house was Renato’s home