Who are we ?

John-Eric TRAELNES

Born in the United States, where his Swiss mother and Norwegian father stayed for some years, he grew up in Switzerland where he developed an early passion for both music and wood. Three years after building his first string instrument at the age of fifteen, he entered the Chicago School of Violin Making where he obtained his diploma in 1984 after four years of study and work at the bench. Returning to the Old Continent, he spent the five following years in the workshop of Peter Benedek, a master violin maker in Munich. During this period he could further hone the skills needed to repair highly valuable instruments while participating in the day to day activities of a major workshop. He ended his stay in Germany after passing the Master Violin Maker’s examinations in Mittenwald, a highly reputed school in Bavaria, and returned to Switzerland.

There he opened his first workshop in the Rue Neuve 11 in Lausanne in 1989. Working alone at first, the need for co-workers soon became evident due to a growing number of clients. After seven years the small workshop under the roof of an old building became too small. All the tools, instruments and staff were transferred to number 9 in the same street, where a much larger and more luminous space had become available. The new workshop has become a meeting place for string players in Lausanne and the surrounding area.

This new location has enabled the organization of more than 50 concerts and for a few years the workshop has even become a small official auditorium for the “Fête de la Musique de Lausanne”.

He has been active for many years in the ASLA (Association Suisse des Luthiers et Archetiers), as a member of the committee and also as president.

Currently he is the Swiss delegate of the EILA (Entente Internationale des Maîtres Luthiers et Archetiers d’art) and also a founding member of Strings Attached, a group of luthiers who seek to promote contemporary lutherie in Switzerland by organizing instrument exhibitions with debates, concerts and exchanges with musicians.

For more than three years, he has been co-founder of Néo-Ebène Sàrl, a Swiss start-up already well known outside Switzerland, which produces violin, viola and cello fingerboards made of an eco-composite material without ebony. Their approach is to no longer use this wood, which is becoming alarmingly scarce, and to offer an alternative of equivalent quality, if not superior to ebony.

Matthieu LEMEUR

Matthieu Lemeur leaves his native Loire-Atlantique after a busy artistic life, both in musical (guitar, violin, drums, singing, clarinet) and theatrical practice combined with a frantic "jazzist-classical" listening.
With his Baccalaureat’s degree in his back pocket and enthusiastic dreams, he joined the National School of Violin Making in Mirecourt in the French Vosges, where he successfully completed his training in 2016. His passion is developed and enriched through encounters, numerous internships with French violin and bow makers (such as Michel Jamonneau, Claire Mollimard, Gilles Orin, etc.), and instrumental practice. 
On the recommendation of Christian Charlemagne, he was chosen to do a one-year replacement in the John-Eric Traelnes workshop in Lausanne. 
Then, upon his return to Lyon, he joined the workshop of Christian Charlemagne himself, where he learned and perfected the restoration of antique instruments and double basses for two and a half years.
In love with the capital of the canton of Vaud, its fondue and working atmosphere, Matthieu seized the opportunity of a job opening to reintegrate the Lausanne workshop in May 2020.

Mathias WALZ

Mathias Walz has been playing the cello since he was 7 years old. During his musical education, in addition to his classes at the Conservatoire de l’Ouest Vaudois, he has the occasion to play in several orchestras, both chamber orchestras and symphony orchestras, as well in various ensembles (in duo, trio, or quartet, and in bands playing other genres than classical music, too). A keen cellist and a lover of music in general, he is only 13 years old when he decides that he wants to become a stringed-instrument maker.

He chooses music as a specialisation in high school at the Gymnase de Nyon and benefits from a first experience in stringed-instrument making by doing an internship in Steven Roberts’s workshop specialised in guitar making in Avully (GE). Eager to first study wood-crafting, he embarks on an apprenticeship as cabinetmaker at the Ecole Technique des Métiers de Lausanne (ETML) and receives his CFC in 2013. He then successfully takes the exams to enter the stringed-instrument making school in Brienz, and completes his 4 years of studies there, receiving his stringed-instrument maker’s diploma in July 2017

Within this formation, he is given a two-months-and-a-half internship in John-Éric Traelnes’s workshop, and then he returns to work there every time he is on holiday. It is in October 2017 that he is officially hired to be part of the team working in the workshop situated in the Rue Neuve.

Agathe GUILLOT

Originally from Lyon, France, Agathe Guillot studied flute at the Conservatory in Lyon in the class of José-Daniel Castellon and followed university studies in parallel leading to a degree in musicology. At the Haute Ecole de Musique de Lausanne, in the class of Verena Bosshart, she perfected her skills and obtained two masters of interpretation and pedagogy in 2007.

Active musician in the Lausanne area, she performs with numerous and varied ensembles. She was an Assistant in the master of musical pedagogy HEM of Lausanne and Geneva, and currently teaches flute at the Ribaupierre Institute, the Lausanne music school EMVL and at the Ouest Vaudois Conservatory.

She has always maintained a complementary administrative activity in relation to music and joined the workshop’s team in 2015.

Camille STOLL

Camille Stoll commence l’étude du violon au Conservatoire de Lausanne (sa ville natale) auprès de Margarita Karafilova.

Après son diplôme d’enseignement dans la classe de Christine Soerensen, mené en parallèle à des études de biologie à l’UNIL, elle poursuit sa formation avec A. Bauer-Loerkens au Conservatoire de Neuchâtel jusqu’à sa virtuosité en 1996. Puis, elle se perfectionne auprès de K. Turpie, G. Beal et L. Prunaru, ainsi qu’à l’Orchesterschule W. Hock à Gernsbach (D).

Camille Stoll exerce une double activité musicale, orchestrale et pédagogique : elle joue régulièrement à l’OSR et à l’OCL, prend part à de nombreuses réalisations musicales avec notamment Barbouze de chez Fior, La Compagnie d’Eustache, Christian Denisart et enseigne le violon au Conservatoire de Musique de Genève où elle dirige aussi “les Cordes du Samedi”.