You can start to get a sense of the wood already just by the sound that the plane makes going through it. It's very lively wood. You can even feel it just holding it in your hand. That's how easy it is to resonate. Zygmuntowicz patterns his instruments on classic old models, varying the thickness and curvature of the plates.
Small variations give each instrument a unique sound.
I started out as a kid training to be an artist, and that's still a big part of how I feel when I'm really working with wood, when I'm shaping things and carving things, just trying to create the forms and taking the personal pleasure of creating an object. Today she's a rising soloist with a brand-new Zygmuntowicz viola. That's what I felt like with this instrument. You know, it was alive. Both had been playing on fine older instruments on loan to them.