The case of the missing cello
 

I've been following the tweets of @zoeCello (Zoe Keating) this evening - she's a fabulous cellist who uses loops to create amazing soundscapes, wonderful. I don't know her personally but I'm a big fan of her music.


Anyway, she's reporting that BA have lost her cello between Dusseldorf and London, so thought I'd post just in case anyone in the know can give her some info.


Losing an instrument for a musician is like losing a limb, she's bereft.

Not seeking to be deliberately difficult but would you check something so important? Can’t you ‘sit’ it next to you?

There are quite a few that are doing just that. Seat booked for Mr or Mrs Cello. Does get complicated on international flights as the UK requires API for Mr/Mrs Cello.

You can order an extra seat for a cello.

You do have to know this is possible, do it correctly (not by buying a second ticket for a second passenger called "Mr Cello"!) and get whoever is paying for the ticket to pay for it (and afford it yourself if you're paying). Musicians are not always well off.

In any case, passengers should not be blamed for airlines losing luggage.

Maybe wrongly I’d assumed there was a proper procedure for this. Using a fake name, descriptive or otherwise, would obviously be problematic.

What about the case?

Everyone I know that plays a cello reserves a seat for it.

To be fair to her, I think she does, she's An experienced international musician. I suspect she was a victim of the "for operational reasons..." thing. But anyway that's hardly the point, was really just asking to see if any inside info. If not then hopefully official channels will work this morning.

It reached the Tarmac airside, so a little disturbing if it got lost from there I guess.

It's been found, BA and DUS airport were painfully aware of this problem and went the extra mile. It's now en route to London.

Why on earth do cellist and double bass players take instruments with them? Pianists seem to manage OK with whatever the concert hall provides them. :)

I expect it's more that all musicians would prefer to bring their own, but pianists grudgingly accept that it is beyond the limits of practicality.

String instruments are definitely considered to be amongst the most sensitive and personalised - with players having preference over things like the resin used, the type of bow-hair, the brand of strings, how long they need to be played in before they are ready for a concert etc.

Pianos are relatively robust and highly engineered to mechanical perfection - much more standardised at the top end.

String players are very, very protective of their instruments - she must have been horrified. I'm an orchestral conductor and during my last performance at a large music festival in the UK, there was a dedicated storage container and security man for the string orchestra to store their instruments. They were still nervous when out and about between performances!

I guess you don’t play a musical instrument? While it is of course possible to pick up any old thing and get a tune out of it, as a musician you learn to deal with differences between instruments which are very obvious to the player, but it takes time, and gets in the way of concentrating on the music itself.

It’s not unlike getting used to a new car. While it gets you from A to B, finding the right settings for the windscreen wipers and headlights are not all the same, the clutch bite is different, the accelerator response isn’t the same, the brakes behave differently, etc. After a while you learn the subtleties and adapt, and it becomes second nature, but it takes time, and it’s not unusual to stall and judder while you do so.

Does flying them not bring its own problems. The pressure and humidity changes. Must be tough in such things.

A long time ago, when I played double bass, we tried hiring basses locally but sometimes we got terrible instruments. I remember some experiences in Malaysia and China. The best one I ever got was from a player in the Vancouver Symphony.

Now I am mostly a pianist and I can make do on almost any instrument, even occasionally on electronic ones! String instruments are different creatures I'm afraid. It's interesting to note that good string instruments typically accrue in value whereas pianos just become more knackered and valueless with time.

When I'm conducting, easy enough to put the baton in its long case and off I go, you'd think. But I occasionally I run into problems at security with it. And once, security at Frankfurt found my tuning fork (useful if you're rehearsing a choir).

In this case, the subject of the thread, I am glad the instrument turned up. I guess she won't let herself get separated from it again!