John Lenti, principal

John Lenti specializes in music of the seventeenth century and has made basso continuo improvisation on lute, theorbo, and baroque guitar the cornerstone of a career that encompasses chamber music, recitals, and work for opera companies and orchestras both modern and baroque. He has recorded, with various ensembles, some nice albums you can find on the various streaming services. Some notable critics have said very nice things about him but nothing pithy enough to share in this format, you know, how sometimes the name of the newspaper takes up more space than the single adjective the artist has been hailed-as-by? That looks funny on the page, John thinks, all those quotation marks and italics and parentheses. You’ll just have to take us at our word, he has been favorably hailed.

He studied lute with Nigel North, Jacob Heringman, and Elizabeth Kenny. His favorite authors are Jorge Luis Borges and Iris Murdoch, though he’s in the midst of more than casual twin manias for E. Lily Yu and Gina Berriault. When John’s not on the road he’s mostly a stay-at-home dad in Seattle. John likes cheap wine, fancy sausage, and mid-level cheese.