Making it in Michigan: A gearhead turns from tune-ups to tunes for success

Here’s the next installment in Michigan Messenger’s series, Making it in Michigan.

Matt Kazmierski, a high school teacher, master musical instrument builder and small-business owner from Plymouth, is living proof that Michiganders can move beyond a destiny locked into the decline of the auto industry.

He builds and sells marimbas.

Kazmierski credits growing up in Michigan with his being able to build musical instruments. “I thought everybody worked on cars with their dad and everybody knew how to rebuild an engine,” he said of his youth. “I grew up thinking that when an engine light went on that meant you opened the hood.” His father, who worked at Ford and had taught shop class, taught him woodworking and automotive mechanics.

Michigan’s new economy won’t arrive on a particular day and it won’t be announced in the papers. In fact, Michigan’s old economy and new economy are both here now in the lives of individuals who are making it in Michigan. People combining industrial economy skills with higher education are bridging old and new into a coherent now — demonstrating adaptability and flexibility in changing economic times.

Continued -Crouched under the hood of an old Ford or Chevy at their father’s side, lots of Michigan boys picked up the tools of the automotive trade in their front yard. While many followed their fathers into the auto industry, some didn’t.

Kazmierski was one of the boys who didn’t join the ranks of the UAW. Although he spent hours with his father learning about tools and cars, he pursued higher education rather than work in the automotive sector. Combining his early mechanical training with musical education, he is one of a handful of elite master craftsmen who build custom marimbas, xylophone-like percussion instruments with wooden resonating bars.

He built his first instrument in 1999 as an enterprising response to financial necessity.

With a fresh master’s degree in percussion performance and very little money, building an instrument was the only way he could get one. “The one I wanted was about $14,000 and I couldn’t afford it. My wife had saved enough money for us to buy a bunch of tools and so I decided I would make one,” he said.

Integrating the woodworking and technical skills taught by his father and his graduate-level music education, Kazmierski built his first marimba. He still considers that first bass marimba one of his best.

Now, the Ypsilanti High School band director’s company, Planet Marimba, is one of only four in the country that makes custom marimbas.

About a third of his business comes from schools in Michigan, but the rest is from across the country, generated largely from his Web site and word of mouth. “I am in a very niche market. Only people who know what they want do business with me. They’ve already played these instruments,” Kazmierski said.

Kazmierski builds about six instruments a year, ranging in price from $1,500 for a practice marimba all the way to $20,000 for a large concert instrument. But this specialized craft is his second job; during the school year he teaches band at Ypsilanti High School.

In the last 10 years, Kazmierski has taught band in Ypsilanti’s public schools and has seen the auto industry’s decline create economic hardship for his students. His own experience in Michigan and struggling to afford an instrument gives him compassion for students and their families. He says that families are finding it harder to support music study for their children and so are the public schools.

Last school year the middle school ran out of instruments because demand was so high among students who couldn’t afford to purchase or rent them. “It got to the point where kids couldn’t afford it at all. This year the middle school bought about 14 more instruments because they saw it coming,” he said.

At the high school, parents face tough decisions come time for the band to go on tour. “Parents who’ve had older kids in the program say, `In the past this hasn’t been a problem, but this year we’re struggling to make ends meet.’ ” He says there are scholarships available through some nonprofits in Ann Arbor.

Building instruments on weekends during the school year and full time in the summer, Kazmierski said, “is what I love to do when I’m not teaching. It’s very therapeutic and also really helps to make ends meet.”

Catch the rest of our Making it in Michigan series at this link.