The Québec school

Québec treats guitar building as a teachable craft, and the territory is organized around its classrooms. The École Nationale de lutherie in Québec City trained Michel Pellerin (1998) and Julien Sublet; the Bruand school in Montréal trained Dontcho Ivanov — 2010, under Hugues Lefort for classical work and Mario Beauregard for steel-string — and Théo Kazourian, a 2015 honours graduate who now teaches there, the school's alumni becoming its faculty within a decade. Two teacher-luthiers extend the school beyond the classroom. Mario Beauregard of Sherbrooke, himself shaped by study with Ervin Somogyi, apprenticed Keisuke Nishi, who has built as Keystone in Tokyo since 2007 — the territory's longest-distance member. And Sergei de Jonge, working in Chelsea, teaches a line of his own: Michael Kennedy of Indian Hill trained under him before founding his Montréal shop in 2007; Zach Lefebvre apprenticed with him before starting TreeHouse in Hilton Beach, Ontario; Wayne Johnson of Irvin Guitars came through the de Jonge school and builds in Springfield, Missouri. De Jonge's own path runs back to Jean Larrivée's 1970s Toronto workshop, which makes the Québec school the place where two of the Atlas's lineages quietly meet.