The Baltimore Classical Guitar Society

Half Baroque Guitar & Half Baroque Lute

"Hopkinson Smith is the supreme 'poet' of the lute."
  - Gramophone

Native New Yorker Hopkinson Smith has been focused since the mid-80’s almost exclusively on the solo repertoires for early plucked instruments.  He has since produced a series of prize-winning recordings for Astrée, featuring Spanish music for vihuela and baroque guitar, French lute music of the Renaissance and baroque, early 17th century Italian music and the German high baroque. A music graduate of Harvard University, Smith studied with Emilio Pujol in Catalonia and Eugen Dombois in Switzerland and subsequently became involved in numerous chamber music projects including the founding of the ensemble Hesperion XX.

The recording of his lute arrangements of the Bach solo violin Sonatas and Partitas, released in the year 2000, has been universally acclaimed by the press. Gramophone magazine called it “the best recording of these works on any instrument”. More recently, a recording on Renaissance lute with works published by Pierre Attaingnant was awarded a Diapason d’Or and was called ‘superb’ by Le Monde. A Dowland recording, out since early 2005, also won a Diapason d’Or and was called ‘wonderfully personal’ in a review in the New York Times.

Smith has performed and given master classes throughout eastern and western Europe, North and South America, Australia and Japan sometimes combining the life-style of a hermit with that of a gypsy. In March 2007, he gave concerts and workshops in Palestine under the auspices of the Barenboim-Said Foundation and the Swiss Arts Council. He teaches at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis.

There is a pre-concert lecture before this performance, from 7:15 - 7:45 PM in the hall.  Free for ticket holders.

Hopkinson Smith website