Paul O'Dette

Few instrumentalists establish themselves with such firm authority as Paul O'Dette has on the lute. In fact, O'Dette helped define the technical and stylistic standards to which 21st century performers of early music aspire. In doing so, he helped infuse the performance practice movement with a perfect combination of historical awareness, idiomatic accuracy, and ambitious self-expression. "I remember when I first started playing the lute," O'Dette once recalled, "the common perception of Renaissance music was that it was kind of pre-expression -- that people didn't use dynamic...