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Artist: Paul O’Dette
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Paul O’Dette is a world acclaimed lutenist, researcher and conductor of early music. If you take the number of recordings he has to his name and divide that by the years he has been alive then you will see that he has been one very busy musician, averaging a little over two recordings per year.

He has researched performance and sources of 17-century Italian and English solo song, published numerous articles, served as Director of Early Music at the Eastman School of Music since 1976 and is Artistic Director of the Boston Early Music Festival. He also performs and travels extensively. He has even performed in Australia and recorded for the ABC here.

I had initially found numerous brief samples of his lute work but bypassed those after I found the following videos of him in performance on Spanish Baroque Guitar.

Here he is performing an improvised Galiarda at the New York Guitar Festival’s third biennial Guitar Marathon. I love this piece.

And also performing works by Santiago de Murcia (1685-1732) at the same concert.

The next has a considerably younger Paul O’Dette playing lute in some 1984 footage of SOUNDBOARD TV

For a purely auditory experience, the following link has him accompanying the soprano Ellen Hargis from their CD The Power of Love, 17th Century English Songs of Passion. Certainly worthy of a listen.