Eider Torrent reunites Sebastien Luthers with his lost violin.

Tale of Sebastien's lost violin ends on high note

Thomas Lyons

Last February Canton Casey’s in Mullingar hosted the launch of a traditional music album. The Lost Violin is a collection of tunes with a mixture of Scottish, Cornwall, Brittany and Irish influences.

The musician bringing his latest creation to the attention of the public is not originally from Westmeath, but his local connections made the popular music venue a solid choice for its first presentations.

Born in Montpellier, France, to a Belgian father and an English mother, Sebastien Luthers’ family moved to Leitrim when he was six years old.

“I started learning the whistle with Michael Clancy in Leitrim, he was known as ‘the man of a thousand reels’. He collected a lot of tunes. He lived in a strange part of Leitrim, up the Benbo mountain.

“I went to him from the age of about six or seven. I started off playing the whistle and then progressed to the fiddle. The particular road along the side of the mountain, I would have walked four kilometres there and back, just to get the fiddle lessons.”

From those beginnings, Sebastien’s love of music has blossomed. He is currently teaching French and English in Wilson’s Hospital School and is a member of the Clann Lir Comhaltas branch.

His engagement with Clann Lir came about in an unusual way: “When the fleadh was in Mullingar I set up a stall in front of Smith’s hardware store, where I was selling furniture I made. It felt strange selling furniture in the middle of the fleadh.

“I was interviewed by Radio Na Gaeltachta. I speak Irish, as I taught in the Gaelscoil in Monaghan. I then played a tune that I wrote.

“I went from selling furniture in the first year of the fleadh in Mullingar to playing with Clann Lir Comhaltas branch the second year.”

Sebastien’s album, The Lost Violin, is a collection of tunes he wrote over the last 20 years inspired by the landscape of Leitrim and the Auvergne volcanic peaks, where he lived and toured with a Celtic rock band Oubert .

The name of the album relates to a custom-made instrument by renowned fiddle maker and All-Ireland champion Jim McKillop. It was stolen from Sebastien in Barcelona in 2013.

“I was in the middle of recording the album when I got a message from a friend of mine in Barcelona to say that the violin had been found,” he told the Examiner. “A woman named Eider Torrent bought it in a second-hand shop. When she found out it was stolen, she had it returned to me.”

The musician travelled to Spain to be reunited with the lost instrument: “I took a flight to Barcelona, picked up the violin, and met with Eider.

“That is where I came up with the name of the album, The Lost Violin. Before I went over, I wrote a waltz and called it The Lost Violin Waltz.” That waltz was born in Westmeath: “I wrote it in Tullynally, where I live, for my album.

“Christy Salmon is a bus driver who took a Wilson’s rugby team on tour to Rossnowlagh. I asked him if he knew anywhere quirky that’s renting out a place, and he suggested Mrs Valerie Pakenham. I wrote The Lost Violin in my flat in Tullynally Castle, before going over to Barcelona to pick up the violin.”

Sebastien is currently on a mini music tour across the country to promote the album in the company of fellow musicians Nico Contamine, Carol Scott, and Peter Gallagher.

Eider Torrent reunites Sebastien Luthers with his lost violin.
The cover of The Lost Violin.

https://sebastienluthers.bandcamp.com/album/the-lost-violin

Sebastien Luthers on Facebook