Maine is home to a remarkable array of world-class string instrument makers whose specialties range from petite ukuleles to towering double basses. This beauty was made by Matthew Arcara, who invests hundreds of hours in creating heirloom-quality instruments calibrated to the individual playing styles of his clients. PHOTO: THE MUSIC EMPORIUM
By June Donenfeld
The hardest thing about writing an article on Maine’s deep bench of stringed instrument makers is knowing where to stop —there are that many. But after collecting invaluable suggestions from some Maine musicians and plumbing the depths of the internet, I whittled down the original cornucopia of a list to a more manageable group of luthiers who vary in background, specialty and generation. And if you happen to be in the market for one of their stringed marvels, we hope that at least one of these remarkable artisans strikes a chord.
Jawad Al Fatlawi has devoted his heart and soul to the oud, and shares that love through teaching, performing and crafting both traditional and hybrid versions of this beautiful, ancient instrument in his home studio in central Maine. COURTESY PHOTO
Jawad Al Fatlawi
Six and a half thousand miles lie between Baghdad, Iraq and Maine, where musician, composer, professor and master oud maker Jawad Al Fatlawi moved as a refugee in 2016. It was a hard transition. “During my very first days in Maine, which I now consider my true home,” he says, “I lacked sufficient funds and had to ride a bicycle all the way from the far end of Westbrook to Scarborough for a job at Walmart. It was often raining, and since my shift began at 4 a.m., I would have to leave my home at 2 a.m. just to make it to work on time.”
Ten years on, Al Fatlawi’s life looks completely different: He is an instructor in applied oud in Colby College’s music department, performs in venues from Portland to Waterville, and builds instruments in his own home workshop in Fairfield. The oud is a pearshaped, fretless Arabic instrument, first appearing in Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq) around 2350 BC. Al Fatlawi learned to play the oud at the Baghdad Conservatory when he was 13, then got a master’s degree in the philosophy of musical sciences at the University of Baghdad. In 1988, at age 18, he apprenticed with one oud maker, then another, and went on to make ouds for professional musicians in Iraq, Jordan and Turkey. After moving to Maine, knowing people were far more familiar with the guitar than the oud, he designed and built an instrument to bridge that cultural gap: an East-West hybrid he dubbed the Goldeneye, after a bird that can be found around the world, just like music.
Al Fatlawi’s devotion to the instrument he first picked up so many years ago in Baghdad has never flagged, even after making more than 3,000 ouds and other instruments, speaking to his “passion and love for the oud and for music itself.”
With an engineer's eye for detail and a professional musician's refined ear for sound, Matthew Arcara uses rosewood, spruce, ebony, bone, and other fine materials to make his MGA Rosewood-2 series of acoustic guitars. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MUSIC EMPORIUM
Matthew Arcara
Matthew Arcara has worn many hats in his career: award-winning flatpicking guitarist, recording artist, founder of the progressive string band Joy Kills Sorrow, and now builder of heirloom-quality acoustic guitars and banjos in his South Portland studio. Arcara has performed on NPR’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” at Colorado’s Telluride Bluegrass Festival and RockyGrass Festival and the multiday Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. These countless hours spent as a performer have directly influenced his techniques as a luthier, enabling him to build instruments tailored precisely to the playing styles of his clients. A third-generation engineer, Arcara credits his artistry and “obsessive” attention detail as vital to his success as a fine instrument maker. He started developing those skills as a middle schooler making his first guitars, strengthened them with later stints in custom cabinetry and furniture making, and further refined them working alongside such Maine master luthiers as John Slobod, Scott Conley and Jonathan Cooper.
It's been a long and winding road for Dana Bourgeois from the college dorm room where he fashioned his first acoustic guitar to his Lewiston shop where he and his crew continue the tradition of consummate craftsmanship developed over five decades in the business. COURTESY PHOTO
Dana Bourgeois
In 1964, at home in Westbrook, 11-year-old Dana Bourgeois saw the Beatles perform live on “The Ed Sullivan Show” in one of their first U.S. appearances. This left an indelible impression on the boy and ignited a love for the guitar that has never left him. Bourgeois went on to study art history at Bowdoin College, where he made his very first guitar in his dorm room, guided by Irving Sloan’s book Classical Guitar Construction and helped out by his woodworker father. After graduating, he opened a modest oneperson guitar repair and build shop in Brunswick, which became the springboard for his career as one of the world’s foremost acoustic guitar makers. In 1993, he opened Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston, where he and his team continue to make the guitars beloved by the likes of Doc Watson, Ray Lamontagne, Zak Brown and Natalie Maines, along with thousands of others across the United States—and beyond. (And now Bourgeois Guitars makes mandolins, too.)
PHOTO: REBECCA CONLEY
Scott Conley
When Scott Conley was growing up in the ’70s, his family may not have been musically inclined—but he was. Now an acclaimed acoustic guitar maker, as well as a singer, songwriter and guitarist, the South Portland native got his first guitar at age 8 and made his debut as a performer in front of the family television, strumming along to the music from commercials and popular shows. In his mid-twenties, Conley apprenticed at the famed repair and build shop The Guitar Hospital (now Galloup Guitars) in Michigan, which had names like Jerry Garcia, B.B. King and Eric Clapton on its client roster. On his return to Maine, he launched his first guitar business in his family’s auto body shop, then further honed his skills at Bourgeois Guitars in Lewiston. Conley struck out on his own at Acoustic Artisans in Portland, the workshop he cofounded in 2008 with acclaimed violinmaker Jonathan Cooper, and is now back at Bourgeois Guitars fulltime, creating some of the finest guitars in the country.
Each exquisite instrument that Jonathan Cooper builds is the result of his years of intensive training and decades of experience; they are prized by musicians, from the professional to the serious amateur. PHOTO: ELISE KLYSA PHOTOGRAPHY
Jonathan Cooper
At 20, Jonathan Cooper had a dream—a literal dream. Guitars were his musical passion in high school, and when he moved to Maine for college that love went with him. But one day, he started noodling around on a bandmate’s violin, producing the typical squeaks of a novice. That very night, he had a vivid dream in which he was playing the violin perfectly. It was a sign. The next morning, he headed straight to an antique store, picked up a violin for a pittance, taught himself to play and became an accomplished fiddler, winning competitions throughout Maine and New Hampshire. He began buying violins to repair, teaching himself and taking a university summer course, too. In his late twenties, Cooper made a life-altering journey to Cremona, Italy, the world capital of violin making, to begin a three-year apprenticeship. On his return to Maine, he embarked on a now-storied career building violins, violas and cellos for serious amateurs and celebrated performers alike and has crafted more than 500 instruments to date. How much love do his instruments inspire in their owners? There is even a 2016 tribute album dedicated to him, The Cooper Sessions, featuring 12 tracks from different artists, each playing their very own Cooper violin.
Editorial note: Jonathan Cooper passed away in September 2026 not long after this feature was published. He was beloved by musicians and the music community across Maine and around the globe. He leaves behind a legacy marked by kindness, generosity and masterful artisanship.
PHOTO: JAMES MACDONALD
James Macdonald
James Macdonald is an awardwinning maker of electric guitars that are as much works of art as they are playable instruments. Displayed in museums and galleries around the country, they are crafted with time-honored techniques and world-class marquetry that bring stories and memories to life. Macdonald moved to Maine in 1984 when he was 25 and built the house in Burnham he still lives in today. He has devoted his career to woodworking, including time as a former cabinetmaker, boatbuilder, mold maker and furnituremaker, but found his calling as an art guitar luthier, “the culmination of all my skills focused on something I love.”
To fashion his instruments, Macdonald uses the knowledge he gained some 40 years ago working at a small Connecticut company, methods he likens to the same ones used to create “the great guitars of the 1950s that we still revere today.” Once assembled, the painstaking marquetry work begins, which he considers both a craft and an art. “I really put my heart and soul into the process, creating designs that could only be mine,” he says.
Macdonald also enjoys teaching his craft and recognizes the importance of passing on his skills, “especially in this ever-increasing age of technology.” He has taught marquetry at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship and Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, as well as the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado. He is also the 2026 recipient of the Fellowship in Fine Craft from the Maine Arts Commission, a merit-based award that recognizes artistic excellence across the span of an artist’s career. But he has no plans to rest on his laurels, let alone slow down. “There are so many ideas and opportunities to pursue. I’ve been living my years as a maker of things and feel like I’m just getting warmed up!”
A place for everything and everything in its place in Gaël McKeon's Camden workshop, where he brings decades of experience to his exacting work on double basses and other instruments in the violin family. COURTESY PHOTO
Gaël McKeon
On a quiet street in Camden, light pours through the skylight in Gaël McKeon’s workshop, shining on the neatly ordered tools indispensable to his meticulous work on both the double bass, which was his first love, and the other violin-family instruments that he also works with now. Born and raised in New York City, McKeon has been playing the double bass since 1993 and earning his living as a luthier since the late ’90s. At age 19, he took a lutherie class, where the instructor saw he had a decided knack for the craft and advised him to consider it as a career. McKeon took his words to heart, and soon after landed a coveted spot as an apprentice at the renowned David Gage String Instruments in New York City, where he worked six days a week for three years. He then moved south to North Carolina and spent years refining his craft at the Bass Violin Shop in Greensboro. In 2011, he opened his own shop in Berkeley, California, serving clients ranging from jazz, folk and bluegrass players to classical musicians in the San Francisco Philharmonic. Seven years later, a career opportunity took McKeon to Toulouse, France, where he worked with the National Orchestra of Toulouse and musicians from Paris, Bordeaux, Marseille and Spain; concurrently, he also collaborated on the design and building of basses for the renowned 18th-century London string instrument maker W.E. Hill & Sons. Eventually, family ties brought him to Maine, his wife’s home state, where he works on basses, violins, violas and cellos in his tranquil workshop, just steps from home.
Multifaceted Steve Roy brings an infectious love of music and craft to everything he does, whether performing, teaching, or building violins in his home workshop, where he finds joy in both the process and the product. CREDIT: AMANDA KOWALSKI
Steve Roy
It’s a long way from the jungle caves in Belize that Steve Roy explored as a young archeologist to his workshop in southern Maine, but his intense interest in the artifacts of history remains. Today, Eliotbased Roy is a violin maker, educator and multi-instrument musician, playing the upright bass, mandolin, violin and ukulele. He performs with Old Hat Stringband and other groups throughout the Northeast and has toured internationally with bluegrass and acoustic luminaries. A sought-after instructor, too, he teaches at music centers, workshops, and festivals in New Hampshire, Maine and British Columbia. He has also been working and studying lutherie with Jonathan Cooper for more than a decade (“I continue to learn from him every day I’m in the shop,” Roy says). These days, he is focused on adapting the forms of 16th- and 17th-century Italian masters like Guarneri and Amati to the construction of five-string violins. This presents a gratifying challenge for him, but what Roy has learned from violin making goes beyond the technical: the value of patience, growing through his mistakes, and the joy of seeing the finished instrument come alive in a musician’s hands—including his own.
More jewels in Maine’s musical crown
Acoustic
INSTRUMENTS NIKOS APOLLONIO
Guitars (6- and 12-string), citterns, bouzoukis, and more. Rockport. nikosapollonio.com
LAURENT BRONDEL
Guitars. West Paris. laurentbrondel.com
JAY DICKINSON/PORTLAND GUITAR
Guitars. Portland. portlandguitar.com
ROB DMITRIEFF/BIG WAVE GUITARS
Guitars. Boothbay Harbor. bigwaveguitars.com
LINDEN FREDERICK
Violins; violin and bow repair. Belfast. lindenviolins.com
TODD GOLDENBERG
Violins, violas, cellos. North Berwick. toddgoldenberg.com
JEFF MONKMAN/MONKMAN GUITARS
Guitars and ukuleles. York. ukesandguitars.com
DENNIS PATKUS/PATKUS GUITARS
Guitars. Waterville. facebook.com/PatkusGuitars
DON ROY
Violins. Gorham. donroyonline.com
BILL RUSSO/WR CUSTOM GUITARS
Guitars; electric guitar repair, maintenance, setup. Wilton. wrcustomguitars.com
TOBY RZEPKA
Concert classical guitars and viols. Portland. tobyrzepka.com
JOHN SLOBOD/CIRCA GUITARS
Guitars. South Portland. circaguitars.com
NATHAN SLOBODKIN
Violins, violas, cellos. Bangor. slobodkinviolins.com
Electric Instruments
THAD CHILTON/CAMDEN HARBOR CUSTOM GUITARS
Guitars. Camden. camdenharborcustomguitars.com
DALLAS SEGER/SEGER GUITARS
Guitars and basses. Bangor. segerguitars.com
CHUCK THORNTON/CP THORNTON GUITARS
Guitars and basses. Sumner. cpthorntonguitars.com
BRANDON WALTZ/ODD ORCHARD GUITARS
Guitars. Turner. oddorchardguitars.com
RESTORATION, REPAIR, APPRAISALS, AND BOWS
LYNN ARMOUR HANNINGS
Bowmaking, restoration, repair, and rehairing. Freeport. lahbows.com
KEVIN MCELROY
Repair and sales. mcelroyviolins.com
ROBERT T. MILLER VIOLINS
Maintenance, repair and restoration; bow making, and rehairing. South Portland. robertmillerviolins.com
STEVE RYDER/STEVE RYDER INSTRUMENT REPAIR
Acoustic and electric string instruments. South Portland. sjryder.com
MATTHEW SOHL/SOHL GUITARS
Repair, setup, and custom builds. Harrison. sohlguitars.com
