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Outlook: Making Top Violins in my Living Room

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Danny Houck - making top violins in my living room (credit: 1170 Productions LLC)

27/12/2017 GMT

Making Top Violins in my Living Room

BBC World Service - Outlook, Making Top Violins in my Living Room

Amateur violin maker Danny Houck tries to build a copy of one of the world's best violins

How a young man from Ohio with no training whatsoever managed to build a perfect replica of one of the world's finest violins.

Romanian violinist Razvan Stoica owns a replica of Il Cannone, one of the world's finest violins. The story of this violin is quite remarkable. It starts in a humble house surrounded by a corn field in the American state of Ohio. That's the home of 34 year old Danny Houck. Danny suffers from bipolar disorder and rarely leaves his house, but he has a talent: he's taught himself to make violins. Danny's story has been turned into a film, "Strad Style", directed by Stefan Avalos.

Aerialist Erendira Wallenda is a successful circus performer. She comes from a renowned family of Australian and Mexican daredevils and she is the wife of legendary tightrope walker Nikolas Wallenda. In June this year Erendira performed a stunt where she hung by her teeth from a helicopter 300 feet over Niagara Falls. 

Alejandra Montalba is the first female director of the National Zoo of Chile. Her love for wild animals started when she was really young. When she was seven, Alejandra's father was working for the United Nations and he was posted to India and Pakistan. That's where Alejandra had her first encounter with exotic species.  She tells Matthew Bannister how she ended up becoming director of the zoo.

Image: Danny Houck
Credit: 1170 Productions LLC

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