LUTE AND STRINGS BY CANDLELIGHT

Brandon Acker is a specialist on early plucked instruments such as the theorbo, baroque guitar, and lute.  His latest passion has been running his successful YouTube channel, which now has over 575,000 subscribers and 55 million views.  His channel provides educational content about early plucked instruments as well as guitar tips and artistic performance videos.  In 2020, he and his wife started an online school for “all things that go pluck!” called Arpeggiato.  The school offers lessons from professional musicians from around the world on guitar, ukulele, lute, and more.  His online beginner classical guitar course, “Classical Guitar Pro,” currently has over 1700 students enrolled and he has launched the first online course for playing classical guitar without nails, called “No Nail Guitar in 10 Days.”

Brandon’s performance career has varied from starting out playing electric guitar in metal bands to his current main focus: researching and performing on early plucked instruments. He has toured extensively through England, Canada, Scotland, and Wales, and performed with notable groups such as Apollo’s Fire, Bruce Dickey’s Breathtaking Collective, Piffaro, the Joffrey Ballet, Chicago Philharmonic, Newberry Consort, Haymarket Opera Company, and more. For more information, please visit www.brandonackerguitar.com or check out his YouTube channel.

The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra is composed of top-notch artists adept at ensemble playing, and often emerging as soloists within the group. Much of the repertoire requires such talent from all of its members due to small performance forces (typically not more than sixteen musicians). In lieu of a conductor, the group performs as one organism, each player contributing to the whole that is suggestively steered by lead violinist Julie Andrijeski.

The ABO consists of a small core of musicians who live in the Atlanta area, supplemented by guest performers and featured soloists from throughout the United States and the world. The Orchestra often supplements its strong base with guest artists specializing in historically-informed Baroque performance.

In addition to its intimate yet powerful performing forces, the Orchestra’s venues are cozy compared to typical concert halls. This close proximity helps to break down the barrier between musicians and their audiences, creating a sense of cooperative interaction.

Members perform on instruments made in the Baroque era, about 1600-1750, restored to their original setups, or on authentic replicas. The string instruments, fitted with gut rather than steel strings, are played with bows of an earlier design. This allows tones and articulations that differ from “modern” instruments. Horns and trumpets have no valves. Flutes are made of wood. The harpsichord, lute, and a portable pipe organ stand in for today’s piano and guitar. But, the tuning is different. Most importantly, our musicians have ample room for improvisation and a great deal more individual expression than what is tolerated in a conventional symphony orchestra.