Maude Gratton studied harpsichord and organ at the Conservatoire de Poitiers. Studies in Paris included harpsichord with Olivier Baumont and Blandine Rannou, and organ with Olivier Latry. She is a Bruges International Competition prize winner in organ. Maude has played harpsichord and organ recitals in a number of festivals in France as well as in the United States, Canada, Finland, and Slovenia. In 2006 she was named “Young Soloist for Public Francophone Radio Stations” in harpsichord, clavichord, and organ.

…Maude Gratton’s instinct for programming reveals great maturity and perception, and her playing is simply captivating, seeming to follow the composer in his flights of fancy and accesses of rigour with equal deftness. ...this is playing of real purpose and subtlety, and music that demands to be heard. – Gramophone

All Souls’ Church is easy to find: from Interstate 5, take the Rosecrans Street exit. Continue on Rosecrans to Lytton Street, turning right on Lytton. Lytton merges into Chatsworth Boulevard. Continue on Chatsworth for about two miles, and the church will be on the right, at the junction of Chatsworth and Catalina. Another plus: ample free parking, steps from the church!

Internationally recognized as a leading personality in the field of early music and one of the world’s great lutenists, Hopkinson Smith gives concerts and master classes throughout Eastern and Western Europe and in North and South America. In the mid 1970s, Hopkinson Smith was involved in the founding of the ensemble Hesperion XX and enjoyed a ten-year collaboration with Jordi Savall. His program includes three cello suites by J. S. Bach, transcribed for German theorbo.

Hopkinson Smith plays the lute like it never went out of style. – CD Classical Review

…subtly shaded, gracefully virtuosic readings... – Allan Kozinn, New York Times

Hopkinson Smith is the supreme “poet” of the lute... – John Duarte, Gramophone