About John Phillips
My Southern California youth was spent building model trains and playing the piano and various wind instruments. I was first smitten with the harpsichord when I was an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where I built my first harpsichord from a kit in 1969. I studied harpsichord with Mark Kroll while completing a BA degree with majors in German Literature and music. I later earned an MA in musicology at UC Berkeley, while continuing harpsichord studies with Laurette Goldberg and Alan Curtis and learning to build and repair the instrument on the side.
With a commission for a complicated French double harpsichord in hand, I opened my shop in Berkeley in 1975. Over the ensuing years my talented co-workers and I have produced over one hundred and twenty new harpsichords, as well as restorations of several antiques. I still play the harpsichord for fun.
About Janine Johnson
Janine Johnson built her first harpsichord from a kit when she was a teenager and went on to study both art and music at California State University at Northridge. She has been a member of the shop since 1986 as our in-house painter, decorator, and painting conservator. She makes the keyboards for the new instruments and performs myriad other useful tasks.
Janine is also an accomplished harpsichordist and composer, as well as an avid collector of rocks, especially if they are large and heavy!
About Dominic Favia
Dominic Favia joined the shop in 2017 and has been learning everything he can about all aspects of harpsichord making. Having grown up around a father who enjoys making things out of wood, he started his woodworking journey in his apartment’s bedroom by restoring old hand tools with the help of books and the internet. Away from the shop, he can be found performing on both a baroque and modern trumpet around the Bay Area. He holds degrees in trumpet performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
In his spare time, he fills his new house with handmade furniture and mended doors.