Benoît Marie Rolland (born 12 September 1954 Paris), is a bow maker and musician, currently established in Boston, Massachusetts.
In 1971, foregoing a promising career as a young soloist, he joined the historical bowmaking school of Mirecourt as a student of Bernard Ouchard.
This merging of modernity and tradition elevated his craft to higher recognition, and he was soon commissioned to make bows for Lord Yehudi Menuhin, Arthur Grumiaux, Christian Ferras, Maurice Gendron, Joseph Suk, Leonid Kogan, Henryk Szeryng, Stéphane Grappelli, and other leading musicians.
During this prominent stage of Rolland's career, a close dialogue with soloists was developing that would nourish his research on the sound qualities of bows in future years.
Rolland then imposed his style, which expressed a profound knowledge of music as well as his understanding of the intrinsic qualities that gave fine French bows their world renown.
While he continued creating traditional pernambuco bows, acquiring new clients such as Mstislav Rostropovich and Ivry Gitlis, Rolland broadened his reputation in Japan, where his creations were particularly sought.
Aware that his crafts rested on an endangered wood species, Pernambuco, thus far irreplaceable, between 1981 and 1986 he conceived the later trademarked Spiccato carbon fiber bow.
Rolland moved back to the mainland with his completed prototypes in order to launch the Spiccato bows carbon fiber manufacture in Vannes, Brittany.
His revolutionary concept of an inner tension mechanism allows the musician to modify the camber of the bow at will and change its playing qualities even on stage.
Within a few years, with the support of noted soloists (Yehudi Menuhin, Jaime Laredo, Ivry Gitlis, J.-P. Wallez, Heinrich Schiff, Christian Tetzlaff) his company attained international acclaim.
In 1999–2000 Rolland stepped back from active entrepreneurship in order to create a curriculum for the first bow making school in the United States.
This new phase of his career reflects an understanding of the bow making process as unifying fine artisanship and musical knowledge.