Like 'the wand shop in Harry Potter' -- only it's in Miami and full of violins

MIAMI — It’s a bit like going through the secret portal in the back of the wardrobe to the magical land of Narnia.

In the tiny village of El Portal just north of the Miami city line, in the lush and tree-shadowed Sherwood Forest section on a bend in the Little River, the door to a storybook 1930 cottage opens to an utterly unexpected world: neatly arrayed rows of fine cellos, violas, violins and bulky double basses, some of them rare and antique, fill a compact showroom in what used to be the living room.

In the adjacent workshop, a superbly skilled, bearded and ponytailed master luthier named Dale Cockrum bends over a bass he’s spent days working on. Owners Charles and Katrina Winters, who live upstairs with their young daughter, attend to visitors who have come from afar for what Miami String Haus offers in this enchanted setting — a full panoply of stringed instruments and repair and restoration services for classical and jazz musicians, from miniature violins for preschool beginners to basses for orchestral professionals that cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Presiding over it all is the ebullient, Mohawk-topped and flip-flop-shod Winters, a Miami native, music teacher and double-bassist who plays a dozen other instruments. The 43-year-old, who is also an El Portal councilman, started the business over 15 years ago on little more than a shoestring and a burning desire to fill a growing void.

At a time when classical and jazz musicians struggle to attract and retain audiences, the startup has grown into one of the biggest — and, according to Winters, one of the last — full-service shops of its kind in Florida. It boasts an international reach that includes bespoke fabrication of high-quality instruments in a Chinese factory and a workshop Miami String now owns in eastern Europe.

That this best-kept of Miami secrets has its setting in out-of-the-way El Portal only adds to its surprising story, fresh evidence of the hidden layers that often define this fast-changing city.

The wooded, dreamlike ambience is further enhanced by what’s across the narrow street on which Miami String sits: a preserved Tequesta Indian burial mound, some 1,400 years old, that’s village property. As a first-term El Portal councilman, Winters has endeavored to make sure the mound — a big selling point when he and Katrina bought and restored the cottage to house their growing business a decade ago — is properly maintained and protected.

Underlying their enterprise, Winters says, is a drive to spread his lifelong love of music, especially to young people, and to do what he can to ensure that high-caliber music-making remains a vital force in his hometown.

“Music is the accompaniment to life,” Winters says. “Music is life.”

Daniel Andai, principal violinist of the Miami Symphony and dean of the New World School of the Arts, has known Winters since they played in local youth orchestras. Andai says Miami String meets a critical need, especially in serving Miami music students, that would otherwise likely go unfilled.

“What’s nice about Charlie’s operation is that he is someone from this city who found a need and decided to devote himself to filling it,” Andai said. “A lot of teachers who understand he has the inventory send their students to Charlie. Anyone who has a need, he can accommodate it. He’s a one-stop shop in South Florida.

“If he didn’t do this, I think Miami would feel that absence.”

Two visitors on a damp recent weekday afternoon attest to the range of the Winters’ shop.

Matheus Ramos, a violist from Miami who is a student at Maryland’s Peabody Institute, the elite music conservatory at Johns Hopkins University, brings in a busted bow for a simple repair.

Then Vincent Hsu, a prominent jazz bassist and composer from Taiwan who is playing a series of U.S. concerts, comes in to rent a bass for weekend performances at the WDNA Jazz Gallery in Miami and Coral Gables’ new and under-the-radar The Burrow. Because standup basses are hard to travel with, touring jazz musicians like Hsu who are performing in Miami often rent from Winters.

After trying out several basses in the showroom, Hsu, who specializes in Latin jazz, selects a top-of-the-line $39,000 instrument. The next evening, it provides a potent anchor for a performance at WDNA with two Taiwanese musicians from his Soy La Ley Afro-Cuban jazz band, Shih-Chun Lee on guitar and Kuan-Liang Lin on drums, augmented by star Cuban trumpet player Reinaldo “Molote” Melián and Grammy-winning Miami saxophonist David Fernandez.

Hsu and the bass are also front-and-center for a trio performance at the intimate, packed Burrow with a pair of Miami-based jazz stars, Grammy-winning drummer and bandleader Dafnis Prieto and pianist Martin Bejerano.

Miami String Haus also regularly provides instruments to musicians playing at the Arsht Center and on cruise ships, as well as to local public and private schools and individuals, including New World school students, Winters said. And whether it’s a starter instrument or a valuable antique, he said, it gets the same level of care and preparation.

While other Florida shops sell and repair violins and other classical instruments, Winters said, few can boast of the quality and extensive stock that Miami String provides or the services of a master luthier like Cockrum, 69, who has been at the craft since for nearly 45 years and can build a cello from scratch — though they’re so busy, he doesn’t often get the chance to do so.

Most of their work consists of repairing and restoring instruments.

“We’re the mechanics,” Winters said.

Right now, for instance, they’re working on repairing a customer’s violin that dates to the 1880s or 1890s, Winters said. The shop also provides research and appraisals of instruments.

So in demand are their services that Winters and Cockrum created a full mobile workshop in a trailer that travels across Florida to provide on-the-spot repairs at music festivals and conventions, like the meeting of the International Society of Bassists in 2025 that drew 1,000 people to Florida State University.

“It’s like a food truck for fixing violins,” Winters said. “We go all over the place.”

Their services also come with an important bit of local know-how: Instruments to be used in humid South Florida — or on the high seas — have to be set up differently than those in drier northern climes because their wood can expand and warp in the tropical climate, even if they’re kept indoors in air conditioning.

Miami String also makes its own cellos and basses at a workshop in Romania, a longtime supplier that Winters took over after the owners ran into financial trouble, and imports them into the United States.

On another afternoon earlier this year, a truck pulled up to Miami String with a shipment of unfinished cellos in heavy wood boxes from a factory in China that makes them to the shop’s specifications — and that Winters and Cockrum will complete, down to careful and time-consuming varnishing.

Winters also travels to Europe every year in search of antique and rare instruments to restore and sell to collectors and institutions, an often lucrative sideline.

He brings out an 1790 cello, in the process of restoration, that was “in bad shape” when he bought it from a customer, but hopes to sell for six figures. After that’s put away, out comes another valuable instrument, this one a modern violin, from the early 20th century, made by the noted Luigi Azzola of Italy.

Then there’s something even more unusual that Winters acquired for restoration and sale — an elaborately carved viola d’amore, a Baroque violin-like instrument from the 1600s with extra strings that vibrate to create a resonant, echo-like sound.

Those instruments, Winters said, tell a story: about the development of stringed instruments over the centuries, about the people who made them, their owners and the musicians who played them, and the styles of performance and composition they were meant for.

“Every instrument is so unique that putting a price on it is an art in and of itself,” New World’s Andai said.

Winters, who grew up in Kendall, traces his uncommon devotion to the time when, as a seventh-grader taking bass lessons, he watched his teacher restore a bass that had been crushed in an accident. He began helping the teacher with basic repairs, and he honed his skills on the side as he studied music business and music education at Tennessee’s Belmont University, known for its highly rated music program, and Florida International University.

Back home after graduation, Winters, who had begun learning music at age 5 and performed in orchestra through elementary and high school at Westminster Christian, began visiting schools as a bass instructor, mentored students and taught at Miami Country Day, the private prep school in Miami Shores.

Over time, his interests coalesced in an idea to establish a workshop where students and musicians could find quality instruments and services. As his clientele grew, Winters sought to emulate an Old World European tradition of home-based violin and string-instrument workshops in a place that’s a lot newer.

He and Katrina — who is now expecting their second child — found the El Portal house, which was “a wreck” but otherwise fit the bill perfectly, and he set about restoring it himself.

The alluring ambience, he said, has been a big ingredient in their success.

“Our customers walk in and compare it to the wand shop in Harry Potter,” Winters said. “We found this niche. We’re following a style of business that has been popular for 200 years in Europe, and we are definitely trying to make it even better.”

Other Miami violin and luthier shops, and even chain retailers like Sam Ash, have gone out of business as local professional orchestras closed, schools scaled back music programs and a flood of cheap Chinese instruments cut sharply into profits, Winters says.

But Miami String has gotten so busy that Winters has acquired space in a nearby warehouse district to expand workshop space.

Winters said his mission is still driven in large part by getting kids excited about playing a violin or cello. And they won’t if the instrument is of bad quality, hard to keep in tune or has poor playability, making it harder to learn than it has to be, which is why he said he ensures even starter instruments that come in for repair get quality work and parts. He also has a trade-in program so that students can swap for better instruments as they advance.

Last year, Winters teamed up with another shop from California that he does business with to make a donation of instruments and musical accessories worth $100,000 to Horace Mann Middle School in El Portal. The California shop’s owner happened to have attended the school.

Andai said Winters plays an important role in supporting students and orchestral music-making at a time when classical music is at risk of being marginalized in Miami.

“You’ve seen how this city has changed,” Andai said. “Classical music in Miami is not something in everyone’s home. He goes to the shows. He puts his name out there. He lets other people know that Miami is on the map.

“He goes to the schools, and that’s really a meaningful service in an era where classical music has a hard time being understood by everybody.”

To keep the tradition alive, Winters wants to make sure he passes on the skills he and Cockrum have developed over decades.

Recalling the source of his own inspiration in the shattered bass his teacher repaired, he has instituted a free, one- to two-year luthier apprenticeship program for students at Miami String.

“Think of what inspires kids,” he said. “It can be such a small thing.”