One of the world's authorities on musical instruments, Stewart Pollens founded Violin Advisor, LLC in 2006 in order to meet the needs of musicians and institutions considering the purchase of  fine violins. Violin Advisor, LLC provides a wide range of services, including authentication, appraisal, condition reports, conservation, scientific dating, and analysis of materials. 

Trained as a violin and keyboard-instrument maker, Mr. Pollens served as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for thirty years (1976-2006).  His work there included the restoration and maintenance of the museum's encyclopedic collection of over 5000 instruments, as well as research, writing, and lecturing on the collection. Among his responsibilities was the vetting of all acquisitions made by the Department of Musical Instruments.  

Stewart Pollens has written extensively on stringed and early keyboard instruments, including The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari, The Early Pianoforte, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù, François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker, and The Cambridge Companion to the Guitar.  He is a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and writes on a regular basis for The Strad.  Mr. Pollens is frequently engaged as a guest lecturer on musical instruments. He recently gave a preconcert talk at Stanford University's "Lively Arts" series and delivered papers at the following conferences: Rencontres Internationales, 2008, Lausanne, Switzerland; Colloque International organized by the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, 2007, La Borie-en-Limousin, France; and the VIII Festival Internacional de Musica de Tecla Espanola "Diego Fernandez," 2007, Almeria, Spain. His presentation at the Philoctetes Center in New York on April 15, 2008 can be seen on YouTube.  

Stewart Pollens

Mr. Pollens' book The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari (London, 1992) has been hailed as "the standard work on the evolution of Stradivarius's designs" (Giles Whittell, The Times, October 27, 2000). This book contains life-size photographs of all of the extant wood forms and patterns used by Stradivari in the construction of his violins, violas, and cellos, and includes an analysis of their geometry. 

Stewart Pollens and Itzhak Perlman at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1993. Mr. Perlman is playing Jascha Heifetz's Guarnerius del Gesu violin, which was then on loan to the Museum.

In The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge, 1995), Stewart Pollens traces the history of the piano back to 1440, nearly three-hundred years before the work of Bartolomeo Cristofori, who is generally credited with having invented the piano in Florence around 1700.  In 1997, Mr. Pollens received the American Musical Instrument Society's Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize for this 1995 Cambridge University Press publication. In François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker (New York, 2001), Stewart Pollens and co-author Henryk Kaston provide a technical description of Tourte's working methods and reveal new biographical facts based upon previously unpublished documents discovered in French archives. 

Published in 1998, Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (London, 1998) features 200 life-size color photographs taken by Mr. Pollens and complete technical documentation of the twenty-five Guarneri violins that were exhibited in the “Masterpieces of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù” exhibition held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1994. Containing newly discovered biographical and historical information, this is the most thorough study to date of this great maker and his work.  Mr. Pollens contributed the chapter on the dendrochronological dating of the wood used in making these important instruments.

Mr. Pollens is currently writing The Workshop of Antonio Stradivari, scheduled for publication by Cambridge University Press in 2008. This book will include new biographical information on Stradivari and a detailed analysis of his violin, viola da gamba, lute, mandola, guitar, and harp patterns.

In 1999, Stewart Pollens challenged the authenticity of the world's most famous violin, the Ashmolean Museum's "Messiah," in a series of articles published in the Journal of the Violin Society of America. The controversy initiated by these articles and presentations at the Violin Society of America and the American Federation of Violin Makers was widely reported in major newspapers and magazines throughout the world, including The Wall Street Journal (March 11, 1999), The Times (London) (March 15, 1999; October 27, 2000; November 11, 2001; November 26, 2001), Le Figaro (December 7, 2000), La Stampa (March 28, 1999), The Strad (August, 2001), Attache (September, 1999), Money (June, 2002), Forbes.com (April 22, 2002), Metropulse.com (February 17, 2001). 

Profiles of Stewart Pollens have appeared in Sinfonica (March, 1999), City Journal (Spring, 1995), Continuo (April, 1989), and American Lutherie 20 (Winter, 1989). In 2002, Mr. Pollens was featured playing the world's oldest surviving piano, the Cristofori piano of 1720, on the WNET television arts program entitled Egg. 

Mr. Pollens is married to the concert violinist Stephanie Chase and resides in New York City.