Art Classics: Metamorphosis featuring Nicholas Pollock

Internationally-acclaimed lutenist and theorbist Nicholas Pollock takes you on a breathtaking voyage into the kaleidoscopic world of the guitar’s ancestors.

Transporting you to the momentous brink of the emergence of the world’s most popular instrument, Metamorphosis explores the bridge between the final glorious blaze of harmony from the late Renaissance, into the dawning of the age of the eccentric and ornate Baroque, presenting the compositions of Italian masters of the plucked string – Kapsperger, Castaldi, Caccini, and Piccinini.

This intricate musical mosaic is masterfully performed on the theorbo, also known in Italian as the chitarrone, literally “the large guitar” – exemplifying the centuries-old human urge to make more sound, and the beginnings of a trajectory that led ultimately to metal.