It was way back in June 2013, when I was attending the Boston Early Music Festival, and I happened to have an extra ticket to a recorder concert. My husband opted to go to the service at the Church of the Advent, and we decided that I would look for a student-looking type to give away the ticket. That’s how I met Aik Shin Tan, a recorder player from Malaysia, now living in Paris. (If you’d like to read all the intricate details, click this link to “A chance meeting.”

What happened was that Aik Shin introduced us to Mark Cudek, chairman of the early music department of Peabody Conservatory and director of the Peabody Consort, which came to Hawaii to give three concerts. If you came to the concert at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu on November 11, 2017, “Music of Three Faiths,” you may remember that that was the night the heavens opened up, and we had a tremendous downpour of rain coming down, flooding the courtyard and making a generous mess. In spite of the horrid weather, we had an amazingly respectable crowd—but the most memorable part of the evening was undoubtedly the fabulous performance.

This coming Saturday, Mark will return with the Baltimore Consort, which will be presenting Early and Traditional Music of Scotland. I just finished typing the program, and if you’d like a sneak peek, you can find it here.

The program promises to be a great delight, and look at all the unusual instruments the group is bringing! In addition to the usual complement of lutes and viols in all sizes, the performance will also feature a cittern, rebec and crumhorn. To save you from doing your own Google search, here’s a short definition and picture of each:

Cittern, plucked stringed musical instrument that was popular in the 16th–18th century. It had a shallow, pear-shaped body with an asymmetrical neck that was thicker under the treble strings.

The rebec is a bowed stringed instrument of the Medieval era and the early Renaissance. In its most common form, it has a narrow boat-shaped body and 1-5 strings.

Crumhorn, also spelled Krummhorn, (from Middle English crump: “crooked”), double-reed wind instrument that flourished between the 15th century and about 1650. It consists of a small boxwood pipe of cylindrical bore, curved upward at the lower end and pierced with finger holes like those of a recorder. (By the way, there is also a krummhorn stop on the organ!)

Here is a video of the Baltimore Consort to whet your appetite. Tickets may be purchased at the door or on the Early Music Hawaii website.