We decided to take a little break from the festival today and only went to one concert. One of the most eagerly anticipated events of the Boston Early Music festival is the exhibition —the display of musical instruments and other musical vendors. We spent a couple of hours here and ran into Carey Beebe, the harpsichord builder from Australia who looks after LCH”s harpsichord.

Then we had lunch with Richard Sparks and his wife, formerly the choral director of Pacific Lutheran University and now at the University of North Texas in Denton.

The afternoon concert was back at Jordan Hall and was all medieval and renaissance secular music. Instruments included gamba, recorders, lute, and a fantastic percussionist plus two lovely sopranos. The music was supposedly early Italian but sounded very middle Eastern. The virtuosity of these players was just phenomenal.

We took a break from the festival by having very nice dinner with my cousin at the Harvard Faculty Club. What a lovely campus it is! The food was delicious, too.