From Ludwig Van Toronto:
Calgary police temporarily shut down the International Terminal Building at the Calgary airport yesterday afternoon after a musician’s instrument from local kids orchestra was mistaken for a rifle…
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I always knew that clarinets could kill at 100 paces.
In some states in the USA, the Eb clarinet has to be registered as a deadly weapon and licensed by regulatory authorities. Saxophones are illegal for obvious reasons.
Pretty soon eardrums will be banned as well, resulting in everyone being bumped off of every flight.
Good think it wasn’t a bassoon. It would have been mistaken for a bazooka.
You think that’s bad? Imagine what they’d do when confronted with a tuba? Call in the Mounties? The army? A surgical airstrike? LOL!
I’ve mentioned this before, but I’ll say it again: in the years before 9/11, I was regularly asked by security to open my flute case. Apparently on the x-ray machine it looked like some kind of pipe bomb, or the kind of rifle that screws together. (The first time it happened was in 1979; it happened more often than not, probably 60-75% of trips, over the next 22 years. One exception was when a security agent looked at the scan and said “Oh, are you in town for the audition? My daughter’s auditioning too. Good luck!”) After 9/11 I was never asked about it once.
I came to hate air travel and have successfully avoided it for the last 5-6 years. I wonder what would happen now.
Good thing it wasn’t a piano; just ask Krystian Zimerman.
This all seems a metaphor for modern culture’s general attitude of suspicion and antipathy toward the arts.
To be fair, the attitude of American airport staff and customs people is to be suspicious of everything.
Sadly, very true.
Players of the ondes martenot have this difficulty all the time since they always fail to convince airport security staff that it is a musical instrument. Players of the ophicleide, serpent and litui get into comparable trouble and are mostly required to demonstrate their claim, which is then always resulting in some general upheaval.