Flutes |
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| One thing I don't have is "aulophobia"
-- the fear of flutes! I grew up surrounded by flutes and their music. Both of my parents were
professional flutists, and Dad also worked at the famous flute manufacturer,
Verne Q. Powell Flutes, Inc., in Boston. He had started working there in the
early 1950s and by the mid-1960s, he was one of four partners in the firm.
After a couple of years at R.I.S.D., studying architecture and industrial design, I returned home to work full-time at Powell. I had spent a few summers there, doing mostly odd jobs like cleaning the freshly-polished instruments and making simple hand tools, but now I learned how to actually *make* parts of the flute. My dad, Dick Jerome, was the master, and I the apprentice. I worked at Powell for seven years as a headjoint maker and lost-wax caster. |
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| Dick Jerome, at the Powell shop in Arlington Heights, MA, in the early 1970s. |
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| Verne Q. Powell, AKA "The Old Man", at the original shop at
295 Huntington, Boston. B. 7 April 1879, d. 3 February 1968. |
| While I was working at Powell, I sat next to a wonderful guy named Ciro D'Amore who was born and raised in Naples, Italy. He played piccolo in Mussolini's band! He came to the US just after WWII to work, first at the Haynes flute company, and then at Powell. By the time I was working with him, he had been in the US a LOOONG time, but his English was still very hard to understand. After a while, I caught on to many of his favorite words and phrases. A sample is below. |
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A
Guide to Ciro's English, compiled by Ted Jerome, 1979 |
After Powell, I moved to Vermont and worked for the new Geoghegan Company, which made the Phoenix flute model. |