Stories of falling head over heels for an instrument are not unusual. What is unusual is love at first sight — or sound — when that instrument is the theorbo. In fact, it was the combination of both ...

Aziz Sahmaoui is a virtuoso of the stringed instrument known as the gimbri — the main sound of the North African trance music known as gnawa. He’s also pretty darn good at playing the ngoni, a lute ...

Apart from Renaissance fairs and Sting albums, the lute makes relatively few public appearances these days. And when it does grace a concert stage, it's generally in the service of centuries-old ...

Upon hearing this terrific release for the first time, I remarked to a friend that it could easily have been titled ‘Jakobean Lute Music’. Because, apart from its being an excellent survey of ...