Jesse Kenas Collins is a luthier based in Worcester. He has over a decade of carpentry and museum collections experience. Jesse started his studies with luthier Walter Stanul at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, building his first instrument, a Renaissance vihuela in 2010. Since then, Jesse has been committed to helping sustain culture through music craft and community. In 2019, Jesse started the Sound Archive project at the Armenian Museum of America. In seven years working on the project he’s digitized hundreds of early 20th century recordings. In 2022 Jesse’s craft and cultural preservation works merged when began to apprentice with master luthier Chris Pantazelos of Spartan Instruments. Under Chris’s instruction, Jesse has learned historically and culturally accurate restoration and construction techniques of fine strings instruments.

Jesse specializes in working on lute family instruments with a particular focus on instruments common to the large variety of cultures across West Asia, a wide region encompassing Anatolia, the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Mesopotamia, the Armenian highlands, the Levant, the island of Cyprus, the Sinai Peninsula, and the South Caucasus. Instruments Jesse builds and or repairs include some of those listed below.

• Oud

• Bouzouki, tzoura, and baglama

• Buzuq

• Laouto

• Lavta

• Tar

• Kanun / Qanun

• Lutes