Posted on December 11, 2024June 5, 2025 by Dale Phillips An Important Message From the GAL Staff An Important Message From the GAL Staff Originally published in American Lutherie #153, 2024 The Guild’s staff and Board of Directors have recently made some decisions about the future of the Guild’s activities. Tim, Deb, and Bon (the Guild’s original staff) have been working for the Guild for over fifty years, and are hoping to retire from their decades of nonstop publishing. In light of this and other factors (including financial), we’ve decided that next year will be our last year of publishing our journal, American Lutherie. The full staff will continue working in 2025. Our print publishing schedule for the 2025 issues of American Lutherie will be the same as this year (Spring, Summer, and Fall/Winter), and we’ll continue to add lots of great content from our earlier issues to our Articles Online. Then in 2026, we’ll transition to an all-online “Legacy” mode, so members can continue to access our online content. The rest of our longtime staff (Dale, Kurt, and Steve) will still be here to sell our books, plans, and back issues, and to continue adding more content to our Articles Online. We’ll continue in this mode as long as it’s financially viable. We’re hopeful that members will rally for our final year of paper publishing in 2025. Renewing your membership now for 2025 will help us tremendously. (And if you’ve already renewed, we thank you!) We hope that members will stick with us as we go into our Legacy phase. We will likely need to do some fundraising to cover the costs of continuing our efforts to keep what we’ve published available online to members. We’ll keep you posted on how you can help with that. Of course, tax-deductible donations are always welcome anytime: See https://luth.org/membership/donate/. So the Guild is not “going out of business,” we’ll just be moving to a new mode of sharing. We’re proud of everything that we and our members have been able to accomplish in the last fifty years. The Guild has stayed true to our core values of generous and humble information sharing that has become the standard for the lutherie community. We’ve played a major role in the progress and excellence achieved in the handcrafted instrument field since the early 1970s. We thank you for your continuing support as we transition from paper publishing to digital sharing. Please renew today and don’t miss out on our historic final issues of American Lutherie! The Guild is great, The Guild is good, The Guild is great and good! The GAL Staff and their years of service, from left: Steve McElrath (14), Kurt Kendall (31), Bon Henderson (52), Dale Phillips (38), Tim Olsen (52), and Deb Olsen (52). Photo by Isaac Olsen.
Posted on June 6, 2024May 28, 2025 by Dale Phillips Letter: NMM Opens Gudelsky Gallery Letter: NMM Opens Gudelsky Gallery by The National Music Museum Originally published in American Lutherie #82, 2005 GAL members — The National Music Museum on the campus of The University of South Dakota in Vermillion, South Dakota, will celebrate the 500th birthday of Andrea Amati, in whose workshop in Cremona, Italy, the form of the instruments of the violin family as we know them today first crystallized, by hosting an international conference — The Secrets, Lives, and Violins of the Great Cremona Makers 1505–1744, Friday–Monday, July 1–4, 2005. The program brings together individuals who have been at the forefront of archival research in Cremona, amidst some of the earliest, best preserved, and historically most important instruments known to survive. Presenters include Carlo Chiesa, John Dilworth, Andrew Dipper, Roger Hargrave, and Duane Rosengard. The event is being coordinated by Claire Givens (Minneapolis), a NMM Trustee. Major underwriting is being provided by four prominent American violin dealers: Chris Reuning (Boston), Jim Warren (Chicago), Bob Bein and Geoffrey Fushi (Chicago), and David Kerr (Portland). Registration forms and housing information are available on the NMM website. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on June 1, 2021May 21, 2025 by Dale Phillips Trends: 1985 Lute Society Seminar Trends: 1985 Lute Society Seminar by Lawrence D. Brown Originally published in American Lutherie #3, 1985 The 1985 Lute Society Seminar in Oakland, Michigan, June 16-22, was attended by 50 students, 5 professional luthiers, 7 faculty, and 3 guest speakers. The students included serious amateurs, professional and semi-professional players, and rank beginners. They came from as far away as Japan, Europe, Canada, and England, providing a fascinating cross-section of players and instruments from around the world. Since many of those attending brought two or sometimes three instruments, a great many instrument makers were also represented. For me, as a full-time builder of lutes and other early instruments, it represented an unparalleled opportunity to examine the quality of instruments currently being made by a great variety of makers, and to identify any trends in playing techniques (which can greatly effect the mechanics of a musical instrument). Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on May 21, 2020May 19, 2025 by Dale Phillips The American Luthier: A New Era The American Luthier: A New Era by J.R. Beall Originally published in Guild of American Luthiers Newsletter Volume 1 #1, 1973 Guitars of all kinds are currently enjoying an unprecedented popularity in this country and, indeed, throughout the world. People of every sort are playing or enjoying the performance of guitar music and even the ivied halls of American’s most prestigious conservatories are echoing at last with the sounds of the guitar. The upshot of this welcome boom in popularity and attendant dignification of the guitar as a legitimate instrument is that classic guitars of very fine quality are in high demand and very short supply. Although quite good instruments are available at very reasonable prices, really excellent ones are frequently unavailable at any price. Many advanced students, teachers, and budding concert artists would like to own outstanding instruments but are unable to find them. The guitar, unfortunately, does not have the long, rich history of the violin and artists, therefore, are unable to find antique instruments of high quality. As a result, one must conclude at last that the really top quality concert instruments are yet to be made. This, then, brings me to the point of my writing which is that when guitars of outstanding quality are finally made more available, they will come, for the most part, from small shops in the United States. Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
Posted on March 13, 2020May 23, 2025 by Dale Phillips Sustainability: An Issue Confronting Luthiers Sustainability: An Issue Confronting Luthiers by John Curtis from his 1992 GAL Convention lecture Originally published in American Lutherie #33, 1993 and Big Red Book of American Lutherie Volume Three, 2004 All around us we see people whose livelihoods are undergoing change. For some the change is minor; for others it is cataclysmic. How would you like to be a furrier or a slide-rule manufacturer? While most people can conceive of life without a mink coat, these same people have trouble conceiving of a world without musical instruments. What can we do to keep building instruments that sound great and keep our customers happy? Let’s look at where we are and where we want to be a few generations down the line. A few items in our favor are: ▶ People would have low tolerance in a world without music. It would be hard to celebrate, to dance, sing the blues, or create a common ground among people. ▶ We are learning to manage our forests sustainably. ▶ There are other woods that would probably make very good instruments until we can ensure the survival and healthy propagation of species which have come to be preferred over the ages, even though this ensured survival will probably not happen in our lifetimes. ▶ Support for woodworkers who “source” their raw materials more responsibly is growing among consumers. ▶ Methods of verifying claims of sustainably-produced woods is starting to reward producers and users. ▶ Changes in the trade have begun to be seen as opportunities and not obstacles. ▶ There are organizations ready to help luthiers make adjustments: crafts organizations, schools of design, the media, galleries, forest-products laboratories, even CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species). Become A Member to Continue Reading This Article This article is part of our premium web content offered to Guild members. To view this and other web articles, join the Guild of American Luthiers. Members also receive 4 annual issues of American Lutherie and get discounts on products. For details, visit the membership page. If you are already a member, login for access or contact us to setup your account.
