French Baroque Lute Music, Somerville Museum, Nov. 24

The Somerville Museum continues its 25th season of Early Music Afternoons on Sunday, November 24, when lutenist Olav Chris Henriksen performs l’Accord Nouveau: Lute Music of the French Baroque, featuring music by Ballard, Dufault, Mesangeau, Dubut and Pierre and Ennemond Gaultier. The concert will take place at 3 pm at the Somerville Museum, One Westwood Road (at Central St.), Somerville, MA.  Admission is $19 general admission, $14 students, seniors and Museum members.  Ample street parking is available.  An informal reception at the Museum follows the concert.  For further information and reservations, or for a series brochure, please call (617) 666-9810.

During the age of the Three Musketeers and Louis XIII, French lutenists were famed as the most sophisticated instrumentalists in Europe.  Today, the key part of their music, which dates from the 1630’s, is seldom heard in concert and on recordings, due to the many different kinds of  lute tunings explored by the composers.  Hidden behind this variety of experimental tunings is some of the most beautiful lute music from any age.  Olav Chris Henriksen will perform music from four of these tunings, including suites by Robert Ballard, René Mesangeau, François Dufault, Pierre Dubut, and others, and concluding with Ennemond Gaultier’s grand chaconne “La Cascade” (“The Waterfall”).

Somerville resident Olav Chris Henriksen has been acclaimed throughout Europe and North America as a soloist on lute, theorbo and early guitars with the Boston Camerata, Handel and Haydn Society, Ensemble Chaconne, Mark Morris Dance Company, Musicians of the Old Post Road, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, and Waverly Consort, among others.  His newest solo recording, Guitar of the North, is on the Centaur label; his first solo recording; La Guitarre Royalle: French Baroque and Classical Guitar Music, is on the Museum Music label.  Mr. Henriksen has also recorded for Centaur, Nonesuch, Erato, Pro Musica, Telarc and Decca, and he teaches at the Boston Conservatory and the University of Southern Maine.