VandorenUSA

Since 1905, the Van Doren family has been making reeds and mouthpieces. It all began with Eugene Van Doren, who was a clarinetist at the Paris Opera during the Belle Epoque at the end of the 19th century. It was a time when wind players made their own reeds, with greater or lesser degrees of success. Eugene Van Doren must have had the knack: his reeds sounded so good that his colleagues prevailed upon him to sell some of them.Making reeds by hand is a long and tedious business. In order to save time, Eugene, a skillful and gifted engineer, designed and built a special reed-making machine, treadle-operated in the same way as a sewing machine. The reeds he made with this machine in the dining room of his home in the rue Andre del Sarte were immediately successful, and in 1905 (the year his son was born) he founded a reedmaking business at 51 rue Lepic, which soon took up more of his time than playing clarinet.His son Robert also studied clarinet, graduating from the Paris Conservatoire. He considered a performing career, and in 1928 left France for a year-long tour of the United States during which he drew attention for the beauty of his tone. He was one of the first French clarinetists to perform as a soloist at Radio City Music Hall in New York. It was during this tour that American musicians first discovered Vandoren reeds, and since then their popularity in the United States has skyrocketed.As the company grew, Robert Van Doren, like his father, found himself devoting more time to making reeds than to his performing career. He soon took over management of the company and in 1935 bought a vacant lot at 56 rue Lepic, Vandoren's present address. It was about this time than Robert Van Doren started selling a mouthpiece he has developed, the famous 5RV still so popular with professional musicians today.In 1967, Robert's son Bernard, blessed with his grandfather's mechanical genius, joined the company, bringing a third generation into the family business. A range of mouthpieces was developed under his guidance, the basic model being the B45, which soon became as familiar as the 5RV. Applying the same manufacturing principles as his father and grandfather, Bernard Van Doren developed highly sophisticated machines which have made it possible to reduce manufacturing tolerances to less than one hundredth of a millimeter while allowing output to increase tenfold.For several years now, all of Vandoren's manufacturing facilities have been maintained in supervised hygrometric conditions. This revolutionary advance, combined with refined grading techniques, allows continued improvement in selection by strength and optimization of product quality. In order to preserve this quality, Vandoren developed factory fresh Flow Pack packaging that maintains reeds as fresh as if just picked from the factory.Vandoren's products are used by a majority of professionals and amateurs around the world, and distributed in more than 100 countries. People like Kirk Whalum, Jeff Coffin, Eddie Daniels, David Sanborn, Warren Hill, Mike Phillips, Rudresh Mahanthappa and Mark Gross play Vandoren.By the way...check our our friends...everybody's playing Vandoren.Thanks for checkin' us out.