French virtuoso Thomas Dunford shares his love of the lute

French virtuoso Thomas Dunford shares his love of the lute, from the Baroque to his own music.

I’ve played plucked instruments since I was a kid. When I was a baby, I had a ukulele; a guitar when I was about six; and a lute when I was nine. My dad [Jonathan Dunford] is from New York, and he was obsessed with the viola da gamba. He met my mum [Sylvia Abramowicz], who is also a viol player, at Jordi Savall’s class in Switzerland, so I grew up surrounded by Baroque music.

One morning, I was at a workshop with them. They said, ‘You look bored,’ and my mum added, ‘Why don’t you take a lute lesson with Claire Antonini?’ At the time, I was playing the guitar, which I loved, but the lute had this magical, sparkly sound. I learned a little melody – thumb, index, thumb, index – and at 12 o’clock that same day I gave my first concert on the lute with a bunch of students from the workshop.

I kept on playing the instrument, so I had martial arts, astronomy, video games and the lute – that was my childhood.

I studied classical technique with Claire, Hopkinson Smith and Paul O’Dette, but I also learned a lot from jazz players. 

When I was 14, I was asked to do a show at La Comédie-Française, because I was really into John Dowland, and they needed a lute player in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. That was my first gig. 

After that, I started playing with Raphaël Pichon’s [Ensemble] Pygmalion, Skip Sempé, Hervé Niquet, all the French Baroque ensembles and some English ones too. It was all very organic. By the time I was 20, I was playing with lots of different groups, but there’s never been a moment where I thought, ‘I’m going to be a musician.’ I just love music, and it ended up being my life, for better or for worse. 

What I really love is the simplicity of being in the moment when making music with other people. I love the intensity and sharing that with the audience, but the lifestyle is crazy. It’s wonderful to get to see all these places, but if you don’t profoundly love music, it’s not something you should do.

I fell in love with the lute, and I still love it today. Playing it is very intimate, because you just put your thumb on the string, and they embrace each other and create a contact. It’s very immediate, and there's so much colour and resonance. 

The lute is like a brother to me – a part of my body or another voice. Travelling is a difficult part of the job, especially going through airports. Someone moved it yesterday, and I literally was sick because I didn’t know where it was.

It’s also very fragile. When I was nine, I started on a Renaissance lute my parents gave me, and when I was 14, I got this archlute that I still play today. It was made by Giuseppe Tumiati, an Italian luthier near Milan, and Vincent Dubès does all my maintenance. Lutes don’t age very well and need to be restored, because they have very thin tables [soundboards] of only about two millimeters, rather than a guitar’s, which is thicker. 

My poor lute went through hell when I was a teenager, because I would play it on skateboards, on beaches and at parties. I still do. After being traumatised for so many years, it was finally opened up, and the last surgeon managed to get it back into shape. 

It’s my ‘special’ instrument, like the Ring of Power [from The Lord of the Rings], and when I’m away from it, I turn into Gollum because I get so worried about it. 

There aren’t many good lutes out there. Mine has that halo, so I keep on asking Giuseppe to make new ones for me. I have three others of the same model, and while they’re all good, they’re not quite the same. 
I like to play pieces like Bach’s Chaconne – he’s a good foundation, as is John Dowland, so I keep saying hello to them in shows and my own time.