Entrepreneurs in Music — and Don’t Forget about Mozart!

My name is Robert DiLutis and I am the owner of The Reed Machine, as well as a clarinetist with the Rochester Philharmonic and a teacher at the Eastman School of Music. I began my involvement in reed making back when I was in middle school, making hand-made clarinet reeds. Over the course of the next several years I struggled with this process and even tried in high school to create a machine that could copy a good clarinet reed, to no avail.

After landing my first job in the San Antonio Symphony in 1992, I decided I needed to finish this project and really invest in the ideas I had been carrying around for so long. I made some sketches and went to a local machine shop. I told them what I was trying to do and they helped me produce my first reed-making tool. For under $1000 dollars and about 100 shop trips later, we had a product that worked and could be sold. Since that day more and more ideas have come and gone, some good and some not so good! Many others are now on the market as well. The bottom line for me was, make the time and take a chance; it might just pay off.