Joe Peterson

I was born and raised in the twin cities in Minnesota, and that’s where I first got interested in woodworking. I trained as a classical violist, and because instruments are expensive, I took an apprenticeship with a maker in town, William Bartruff, in order to make my own instruments. After that, I moved to New York to study viola performance at Juilliard, giving my senior recital over Zoom during the height of the pandemic. Then I moved out here to California to work on a PhD in music composition at UC Davis, but I was missing working in a shop. I came to the Tools & Techniques workshop up here at The Krenov School last summer and fell in love with the place. And now I’m here to study fine woodworking! One of the things I am excited about is putting my name under my bench at the end of the year, a decades long tradition. The community of people who really care about what they are doing and want to do it at a very high level drew me to the program. Oh and the weather is good, it’s like 110 in Davis right now.