A rare chance to hear two exquisite instruments, beautifully played — Marshall McGuire (harp) and Simon Martyn-Ellis (theorbo) in solos and duos, old and new, by Froberger, Leonarda, Glanville-Hicks, Lim, Kapsberger, Chance, Castaldi.

Harps and lutes — in their many forms — have long been associated with Arcadia.  Played by angels in frescos and nobility in bedchambers, fabled in verse and immortalised in manuscripts, this concert extols two of Western music’s most poetic instruments.  Illustrious musicians Marshall McGuire and Simon Martyn-Ellis collaborate for the first time, creating a program dancing elegantly between classic baroque repertoire and urbane contemporary works written for harp and theorbo.

Duets and solos by seventeenth-century maestros Johann Jacob Froberger, Bellerofonte Castaldi, Isabella Leonarda and Giovanni Girolamo Kapsberger are interlaced between works by contemporary composers who share a love for these fine sonorities: Alice Chance, Liza Lim, Mike Marshall and Stephen Goss.

This an uncommon opportunity to discover just how sumptuous these instruments are.