Dear Lute World, A couple of days ago I informed Norman Lebrecht about the far-from-unique experience of Christopher Wilke and his smashed lute, and he has now featured a report about it on his widely-read music blog.
There seems to be a growing body of opinion that damage to musical instruments may, in some instances, be being deliberately perpetrated by a tiny minority of maladjusted or disgruntled baggage handlers (typically instruments are smashed, yet there is no obvious damage to the outer hard cases etc., suggesting the cases are opened and damage done), and I urge anyone who has any experience of this to add a comment to Norman's site at: http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2014/01/heres-what-delta-airline-did-after-they-smashed-my-lute.html where more information and photos of Chris' theorbo at the airport can be seen. If there really is a history wilful damage, this is a serious problem that needs to be addressed, so please speak up, tell Norman about experiences, and help us all to get a better and fairer picture of what may be happening behind the scenes at airports, and, in particular, on certain airlines. Time to get the horror stories out there. David Hill To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
