(lively music) - We feel like the shop has our personality.

The warmth of the shop, and just the family atmosphere.

And we'll often say that whenever a customer comes in and buys something from us or they'll rent something, we'll say, "Well, welcome to the family."

David is awesome.

We always call him the Tom Hanks of the violin world.

Just his demeanor, and he's just real gentle, real easygoing.

He definitely takes care of the accounts and the bookends.

(classical string music) - Glen Alexander is my business partner and who co-owns the shop with me, he's an amazing musician and his level of his creativity and talent, there's not many around that can touch that.

What the shop does, it's retail sales of string instruments and accessories.

Rentals, we rent violin, viola, and cello.

And then the repair and restoration.

(classical string music) We've had such an age range of customers all through the years, and we'll get people who are just retiring and saying they want to take up an instrument, and you know, we can connect them with a teacher, and they take off and run with it.

(classical string music) - It challenges me and enriches me, and I so appreciate how difficult it is to learn a string instrument.

And it is not a instant gratification.

You really have to put in a lot of patience and time and praise yourself for all the little progress that you make, so to not give up.

- Do that again, that's it.

It's very rare that you find a place that so many different types of people wanna come to, but we all have one common interest, and that's music in some way, shape or form.

- With the schools now not teaching orchestra and band instruments, so when you need somewhere to go, this is very valuable.

- I have students now growing into much more expensive violins, and one of the first places without fail that I send them to look, as they're exploring more and more expensive violins and expanding their own growth as violinists, I send them to the violin shop.

- I'm just gonna make sure that this works for you.

Put your neck there.

We love just being a part of the community, and, you know, serving in whatever capacities we can.

A number of summers, we've loaned instruments to the summer Suzuki violin camps, and we're 15 or 20 tiny little violins for a bunch of pre-twinklers, as they call the early, early Suzuki players.

- We also cater to Charlotte Mecklenburg school system where we'll do a lot of their repair work.

(lively string music) - The Folk Society, they use our studio room in the back, they have an old time jam.

1, 2, 3, 4.

But we've had little workshops here.

We did a banjo workshop one time.

We've had people that have done songwriting workshops here, theory workshops, so it's a great hub for that.

- There are not too many music shops like this that I'm aware of in the city of Charlotte.

These are the kinds of things that enrichen the fabric of everybody's lives.

You know, we as a city need musicians, we need artists, we need people who create.

That's what they do here.

(lively string music) - We're just super, super grateful every day.

Glen and I say, man, I don't ever take this for granted because it's like, it's just a huge blessing.

It's fun to come to work.

So we're just really thankful for the opportunity to serve the strings community.

And you know, make purchasing these instruments not an intimidating thing, but make it just a fun experience.

(lively string outro music)