Steve Lewis, Hornmaker

It usually takes years, sometimes generations, for a new instrument to be fully accepted by professional musicians. This has never been a problem for Chicago horn maker Steve Lewis, who in the 8 years since opening his shop has sold 111 custom-made horns to advanced students, major educators, and professionals in orchestras throughout the world. His first five horns went to the Pittsburgh Symphony. Conductor André Previn asked Dale Clevenger, solo horn of the Chicago Symphony, how he could get a sound like Chicago’s from his section. Clevenger replied, “Part of it is concept, and part of it is instrument. Concept is up to you, and for the instrument, there’s only one place to get them: Steve Lewis.” At that moment, Steve Lewis had not yet made his first horn! And shortly thereafter followed orders for four from the Syracuse Symphony…

Steve Lewis originally came to Chicago to study horn with Dale Clevenger. To earn a little extra money, he took a job in instrument repair at Schilke’s. As it happened, he was paired with Jerry Lechniuk, a master craftsman who learned his skills in the Ukraine and in Poland before World War II. Lechniuk taught him a step at a time to make and repair every part of the horn. (Lewis also made six horns before leaving Schilke’s.) This apprenticeship lasted four years, until Lechniuk’s fatal stroke in 1976. “Jerry taught me restoration,” says Lewis, “But more than anything else, he taught me pride of workmanship, to slow down and take my time doing something step by step.”

Lewis left Schilke’s a few months after Lechniuk’s death. It was then that members of the Chicago Symphony brass section suggested to him that he set up his own shop in horn making and repair, and they later backed up the suggestion with a $25,000 loan to help him do so. So, with that plus a personal loan for $10,000, Steve Lewis spent five months selecting and ordering machinery, parts, tools, and supplies, assembling an impressive array of the finest equipment which enabled him to establish a state-of-the-art shop to manufacture new and restore old horns.

What kind of horn does Steve Lewis make? “All my career I’ve played a Schmidt model Geyer (made in 1919), a beautiful horn… I thought if I could ever make a horn, that would be the horn I’d want to make. The problem with that is that there are just a few people who will play a horn with a piston change valve. I had to have a horn more universal in appeal from a mechanical standpoint, so I used a traditional model with a rotary change valve, a 70 year old Knopf. You could call it a Geyer model. Knopf always said that Geyer copied him, and Geyer said that Knopf copied him. Knopf was in Markneukirchen, which is where Carl Geyer born, so… it’s a very beautiful design. It seemed like a natural evolution from the piston change valve to a rotary change valve. The Schmidt to me is the ideal design, but in lieu of that, this Knopf-Geyer model seems to be the best design.