I just finished sending the program off to the printers for this Saturday night’s Early Music Hawaii program at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. It’s a group called Ostraka, and they will be performing a program called “Leaving Parnassus: French Baroque refinement,” and will play music by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, Jean-Baptiste Lully, Marin Marais, Louis de Caix d’Hervelois, François Campion, and Michel Corrette, all French composers from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Carl went to hear them play today at Hawaii Public Radio, and was most impressed!

Here’s a little scoop on the artists:

Josh Lee performs on viols and double bass with some of the world’s leaders in period music. Founder of Ostraka, Josh is a member of Musica Pacifica, Les Délices and The Two, and has performed with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Early Music Festival, Orchester Wiener Akademie, Carmel Bach Festival and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. His performances have been heard on Public Radio’s Performance Today and Harmonia, and Österreichischen Rundfunk, and he has recorded for Dorian, Koch International, Magnatune, Bear Machine and Reference Recordings.

John Lenti has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician on lute and theorbo across the U.S. and abroad, and his performances have been broadcast on Public Radio’s Performance Today and Harmonia. His playing has been described as a “joy to behold” (Seattle Times) and praised for its “nuanced beauty and character” (Gramophone) and “uncommonly big sound” (Third Coast Digest).

Lutenist and guitarist David Walker has performed extensively throughout the U.S., earning praise for his “surety of technique and expressive elegance,” as well as his “tremendous dexterity and careful control.” David has appeared in concerts with such groups as Chatham Baroque, Early Music New York, the Newberry Consort, Tempesta di Mare, the Wolf Trap Opera Company and Glimmerglass Opera.

If you have been to any of the other Early Music Hawaii programs, you know that their performances are of extremely high quality, and their artists are all virtuosos. This is a program not to be missed!

By the way, the definition of “ostraka” is the the name for potsherds most notably used in the process of ostracism. Ostrakon is the singular form of the Greek noun. A person’s name would be scratched into the broken piece of pottery for ostracism (as a vote for exile), but ostraka could also be used the way we might use scratch paper. In addition to scratching a name on the surface, ostraka could also be painted.

The concert is Saturday night, March 22nd at 7:30 pm at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu. The program will be repeated on Sunday afternoon, March 23rd at 3:30 at the Queen Emma Community Center in Kealakekua on the Big Island. (Sorry, I’ll be in Maui playing a concert at St. John’s in Kula).