A rental company run by people who play, and repair, the instruments.
Most instrument rental is a logistics business. Boxes in, boxes out, and a third party somewhere doing the repairs. We started from the other end — with a cellist who cared what the instruments sounded like, and who had spent time on the bench in Manhattan repair shops learning why some instruments fight the player and others don’t.
Kenneth Kuo
Ken was born in Taipei and started cello at four. By eight he had won the Taipei Youth Cello Competition three years running. He came to New York in 1986 for the preparatory division of the Manhattan School of Music, took his bachelor’s at Juilliard and his master’s at Yale, where he won the Aldo Parisot Prize.
He has recorded and performed internationally, and played on Stradivari, Guarneri and Amati cellos. Today he plays his own 1735 Goffriller and 1867 Vuillaume.
The part that matters most for a family renting a student violin is the least glamorous: while he was studying, Ken spent time in some of the finest repair shops in New York, watching and assisting. That’s where the company’s obsession with setup comes from. He still chooses the instruments himself.
“Effortless technique, a beautiful, warm tone, and an unabashedly romantic soul.” — Strings magazine
Why we started
Rental Instrument exists because of one cracked cello.
In 2000, Ken founded the Connecticut School of Music, and as a cellist and teacher he saw every instrument that came through its doors. One belonged to a student who had bought her cello six months earlier for three thousand dollars, and it had developed a small crack in the top. The shop that sold it told her not to bother with a repair. Better, they said, to put the money toward a brand-new cello, and they would even take five hundred dollars off.
Ken thought that was wrong. Not mistaken wrong, ethically wrong. A minor crack is a repair, not a reason to spend three thousand dollars twice. So he took the cello and repaired it himself.
That repair became a business plan. If shops in the area were treating families this way, there was room for one that did the opposite: honest advice, real repairs, good instruments at fair prices, from people who actually play them. Rental Instrument opened in 2004, first from offices in Greenwich and Westport. It has grown into one of the largest instrument rental companies in Connecticut and New York City on the strength of its team: luthiers and repair technicians who are also performing musicians, and a staff that knows what a school year demands of an instrument.
The music school had been teaching the same lesson from another angle. The instruments students arrived with were often the problem: a child who cannot get a note out, or whose violin will not stay in tune, concludes they are not musical. Usually they are. The instrument simply was not set up to be played, and nobody had told the family.
The cracked-cello rule still runs the shop: repair what can be repaired, tell the truth about what cannot, and never sell a family something they do not need.
What actually makes us different
Every rental company says quality and service. Here’s the specific version.
We have a repair bench
Trained luthiers and band technicians, in our own shop in Norwalk. Most rental companies send instruments out to a third party. Ours never leave the building. More on repairs.
A player picks the stock
Every model we stock was chosen and vetted by Ken. He knows what a student instrument needs to do, because he taught on them and because he still performs, and every string instrument is set up on our own bench before it goes out.
We answer the phone
Rent from us and someone here calls you about your specific instrument, usually within a day. Walk into the Norwalk shop with a problem and it’s generally fixed while you wait.
What this looks like in practice
A saxophone arrived at the bench days before the end-of-year school concert, needing a part we had to order. There was no way the repair would finish in time, so we handed the student a loaner from a better line, and she played her concert on it while we fixed hers properly.
We don’t normally tell this story. It’s here because it’s the clearest answer to what kind of company this is.
★★★★★
“It is difficult to learn when the instrument is fighting you. Ken brings a player’s knowledge to everything from choosing great instruments to careful set up and the choice of strings. My students love playing his instruments.”
Marc Schmied
MM Juilliard · Double bass teacher · Manhattan Chamber Orchestra
Come and see for yourself.
The Norwalk shop is open Monday to Saturday, 10am to 6pm, and you don’t need an appointment. Bring your child, try a few instruments, ask us anything.
The people you will actually talk to
Everyone here plays. When you call about a squeaking clarinet you get someone who plays clarinet, and when an instrument comes to the bench it is worked on by someone trained to do it. That is the whole idea, and it is the reason the same families come back year after year.
Andrew Brittle
Double bass
Bass luthier, operations and purchasing, school accounts
Trained at the Chicago School of Violin Making. Has been our general manager for over a decade, and is the person most New York school programs deal with directly.
Hsin Chen
Cello, piano
Cello expert, band technician, ultrasonic cleaning
Studied at the Hartt School of Music. Teaches at the Connecticut School of Music and plays with the Connecticut Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra.
Frank DeVito
Clarinet, saxophone, flute
Band repair expert, woodwind specialist
Trained through a five-year band technician apprenticeship under Ray Toronto. Previously at New England Instrument Repair, and plays with the Frank Porto Big Band.
Jen Durkin
Vocals, electric bass
Short-term rentals, collections, customer service
Teaches at School of Rock New Canaan. Has toured with the Rhythm Devils, the Mickey Hart Band, and Bernie Worrell and the Woo Warriors, and fronts Jen Durkin and the Business.
Kenneth Kuo
Cello
Owner; instrument and bow sales; band technician and strings luthier
Manhattan School of Music, Juilliard, and the Yale School of Music. Featured soloist with the Norwalk Symphony, founder of the Connecticut School of Music, and the person who chooses every instrument we carry.
Dominik Landowne
Violin, viola, fiddle
Head luthier for violin, viola and cello; bow rehairing
Trained at the Chicago School of Violin Making. Plays the Irish sessions at The Castle in Black Rock.
Sofia Ramos
Saxophone, clarinet
Saxophone expert, customer service
Studied at Western Connecticut State University. Performs at the Norwalk Art Space.
Robin Rockwell
Clarinet, bass clarinet, saxophone, bassoon
Clarinet expert, customer service lead, education sales lead
Studied at Western Connecticut State University. Plays with the Norwalk Symphony and the Monroe Summer Orchestra, teaches privately, and can be heard on WMNR Fine Arts Radio.
Caroline Russell
Flute, piccolo
Flute expert, customer service, education research
Studied at St. Olaf College. Teaches at Greens Farms Academy and plays with the Greater Connecticut Youth Orchestra and the Norwalk Youth Symphony.
How the company grew
Rental Instrument began in 2004 with two small offices in Greenwich and Westport, renting to students Ken already knew through his music school. Everything since has come from the same place: parents asking for a better instrument than the one their child had been handed.
2004
Rental Instrument opens, with offices in Greenwich and Westport, Connecticut.
A New York office
Manhattan schools and visiting performers start calling, and we open a New York location to serve them.
2013
We buy thousands of European string instruments held in storage since the 1970s and 1980s, and open the Norwalk shop at 547 Main Avenue to house them.
Today
Norwalk and New York, our own repair benches for strings and for band, and school programs across Fairfield County, Westchester and New York City.
Why no two of our string instruments match
Our handmade string instruments do not just sound good, they look it. You can see the grain of the maple back, the spruce top, and the antique finish on each one, rather than the bright orange or yellow of a toy.
No two instruments are the same, because no two trees are the same.
Each one has its own look and its own personality, which is part of what makes a string instrument worth playing. Some of the finest in the world sell for millions because of their history, their craftsmanship, and the sound they make. Yours will not cost millions. It should still feel like something worth taking care of.
Ken, in his own words
Filmed in the earlier years of the company. Ken talks about how he chooses instruments, what he looks for in a setup, and why a student plays better on something worth playing. The shop has grown since. None of that has changed.
News from our early years
- A Successful Tune
Stamford Advocate, August 26, 2010 - Purchase of thousands of string instruments bolsters Norwalk music company
The Hour, August 21, 2013 - Musician, founder of CT School of Music, makes donation to city schools
The Hour, September 29, 2013