The right note: orchestrating a business making musical instruments.

• Author: Christensen, Lisa
• Position: Cover story

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

In an erstwhile Chinese restaurant in Sandy, highly trained craftsmen put the finishing touches on the bells of saxophones, carving in swirling lines and shapes in the curved metal. Around the room, details are added and checked on clarinets and flutes. When each instrument is finished, they'll be shipped off to music stores across the globe--the newest members of the Cannonball Musical Instruments family--and bought and played by musicians from students in school bands to renowned professionals.

Cannonball, a well-known name in the international musical instrument market, is as home-grown a company as they come: Its co-founders came up with the idea in the kitchen of their Utah home and continue to be based here even as it has expanded abroad. And it's not alone--a small but sturdy collection of instrument-makers have found that the Beehive State is the place to grow their craft and business.

SOUND JUDGMENT

The saxophone-making giant had humble beginnings, recalls cofounder Sheryl Laukat. While tinkering with a saxophone that wasn't producing a good sound, Sheryl's co-founder and husband, Tevis, a professional saxophone player who had also trained with a master flute craftsman, and Sheryl, a saxophone-playing music educator, experimented with making changes inside the instrument to improve its sound.

The two were so impressed with the improvement in sound that they decided to put it all on the line to start a business making and selling instruments that sounded as good straight from the case as that first saxophone did after extensive tinkering.

"We wanted to take an instrument that's fine and make it into something you don't want to put down," Sheryl says. "That's always our goal."

They considered moving the business to California, where Tevis grew up, but ultimately decided to stay in Utah because of the strong musical community, business-friendly economic policies and the family-friendly culture. Utah is also close enough to the West Coast so shipping is convenient, Sheryl says, and the surrounding landscape makes a big impression on visitors to the company.

"It's a unique place and it's a clean city. We're always proud to be able to boast of our city being so clean," she says. "People come here and they look at the mountains and are just in awe."

The saxophones themselves are now manufactured in two plants in Taiwan, with trumpets, flutes and clarinets produced elsewhere using Cannonball's designs, but all instruments return to the company's Sandy headquarters for the finishing touches and quality testing. Those finishing touches include adding the polished stone keys, making sure there...