Instrument Making
Boone, NC
Sophia Burnett (right) with Chris Testerman and Karlie Keepfer.
Photo: Pat Jarrett/Virginia Humanities;
Sophia Burnett of Boone, North Carolina has been deeply involved with Appalachian culture in and around her home and southwest Virginia since she was a child. She started playing fiddle at age five and was a member of The Tater Hill Mashers band as a student in the Junior Appalachian Musicians (JAM) program. She said it’s her love of her family’s Scotch-Irish heritage that keeps her playing old time and bluegrass music. Sher performs with her sisters as The Burnett Sisters Band.
In 2021-2022, with support from the Virginia Folklife Program, Burnett apprenticed under luthier Chris Testerman of Independence, Virginia to learn the trade. She recently finished her first fiddle and is working on completing several other instruments. Her fiddle, with its back adorned with the silhouette of a horse and local flora, is inspired by the late luthier Albert Hash, whose daughter trained Testerman in the craft. Burnett’s keen sense of her ancestry and the legacy of mountain culture drives her to keep learning. “To be able to put a fiddle together and then to play it, and maybe showing your kid what you built…it’s just incredible,” said Burnett. “And to be able to show our kids, and those kids show their kids, and it just keeps on going.” Burnett will be in the Instrument Makers Workshop in the Virginia Folklife Area on Saturday and Sunday and playing in the Instrument Makers Jam on the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Virginia Folklife Stage on Sunday.