TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers. About the Archive This is a digitized version of an article from The Times’s print archive, before the start of online ...

A Chinese lute that requires virtuosic technique to master its intricate and delicate tonality. Let's see Sting try and wrap his fat fingers around this one ... What is it? A kind of Chinese lute.

This month's Early Music Series in Grayslake features a concert by Nigel North, proclaimed by one music critic as "the greatest performer of the instrument of all time." Yet I don't even know the word ...