Jordi Fontanet

Jordi Fontanet was born in Santpe­dor in 1993 and in his youth he be­came in­ter­ested in xy­lo­phones and per­cus­sion in­stru­ments. Be­yond just learn­ing to play them, he grad­u­ally be­came fas­ci­nated with phys­i­cal and math­e­mat­i­cal re­la­tion­ship with the sounds they pro­duced and it is this in­ter­est which led him to cre­ate his own com­pany, Sforzando Per­cus­sion, which is ded­i­cated to mak­ing, restor­ing and re­pair­ing all sorts of per­cus­sion in­stru­ments.

Sforzando per­cus­sion has made tam­bourines, drums and Fontanet is cur­rently work­ing on a new line of cym­bals, tri­an­gles and snare drums. His ar­ti­sanal ap­proach to his craft al­lows his cus­tomers to enjoy uniquely per­son­alised at­ten­tion and care, down to the last de­tail.

Jordi showed us around his work­shop and told us about the ob­jects he uses most in his craft, from woollen thread and nee­dles for mak­ing the marim­bas, stain­less steel and bronze, to the black­smith's ham­mers he uses to beat out the cym­bals, tri­an­gles and boxes. “My work com­bines every­thing I've seen and lived at home since I was a lit­tle boy. I learnt music and tools and the way of work­ing from my mum and dad and my per­cus­sion teach­ers.

Anvil. (in the small photo), dates back to 1850. It used to be­long to my grand­fa­ther who was a black­smith. Using a bronze sheet, a ham­mer and the anvil, I cre­ate form until I get a plate. The re­sult is that fu­sion of fire, anvil and ham­mer with its own par­tic­u­lar sound ob­tained with dif­fer­ent chem­i­cal and ther­mic treat­ments.

1. Bronze plate, is the base ma­te­r­ial; it comes from Is­tan­bul and it is made of a spe­cial mix­ture which makes it dif­fer­ent from the rest of the bronzes on the mar­ket.

2. Turk­ish ham­mers, also made in Turkey, as are the plates and tri­an­gles.

3. Drum­sticks, in­dis­pen­si­ble for any per­cus­sion­ist.

4. Mal­lets - maces, These drum­sticks are quite dif­fer­ent, and they are used to play the marimba and other xy­lo­phone-style in­stru­ments, but also to ob­tain spe­cific sound ef­fects.

5. Bronze drum shell- , an­other of our ar­ti­sanal crafted prod­ucts. Start­ing out with one sheet of bronze we ma­chine and turn the metal until we have the com­pleted shell.

6. Cym­bals - plates, the fin­ished prod­uct which started out as one sheet of bronze plate. .

7. Bronze and stain­less steel tri­an­gle, also fin­ished prod­ucts, and like the cym­bals, what the client fi­nally sees after many, many hours of crafts­man­ship.

8 Woollen thread and nee­dle

www.​sfp​ercu​ssio​n.​com