Consort members will chat with the audience tonight, explaining their instruments as well as the program.
Instruments to be played tonight include the lute, viola da gamba or viol, rebec, renaissance guitar, recorder, wooden flutes and crumhorn, says consort member Mary Anne Ballard.
Ballard plays violas da gamba - from a family of instruments that look like large and small cellos. They are held between the knees and have six strings rather than four as on modern cellos.
The rebec is a tiny pear-shaped fiddle. A crumhorn is similar to the part of a bagpipe a musician fingers. The musician blows into a chamber that activates the reed, producing a buzzing sound, Ballard says.
She says tonight's program is set around 1492.
That's when the Christian king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, drove from Spain the Islamic Moors, who had occupied Spain for nearly 800 years, and Sephardic Jews, who had lived in Spain for more than 1,000 years.
The program will reflect the music of those three cultures, Ballard says.
If you go ...
WHAT: Baltimore Consort
WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 26
WHERE: Shepherd University's Frank Arts Center.
COST: $15, general admission; $10, seniors, faculty and staff; $5, students 18 and younger; free to Shepherd University students. For tickets and more information, call 1-304-876-5555, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. today or buy tickets at the door tonight.
DIRECTIONS: From Hagerstown, take Md. 65 (Sharpsburg Pike) south to Sharpsburg. Turn right on Md. 34 (Main Street) and cross the Potomac River into Shepherdstown, W.Va. Past the bridge, take the third right and turn into the West Campus. The Frank Arts Center is straight ahead, on the right-hand side at the top of the hill.
