"Our specialty is popular music of several hundred years ago," Mary Anne Ballard said of the Baltimore Consort.

The group of six will perform at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 17 at the Juneau-Douglas High School auditorium.

The consort started out performing the music of Shakespeare's England - popular tunes heard in the theatre or for dancing in the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Their current program, entitled "Adew Dundee: Early Music of Scotland," features a combination of folk and art music from Scotland, circa 1600, and traditional Scottish tunes that migrated with the early Scottish settlers to the United States through the oral tradition, Ballard said.

Some of the music comes from the Scottish court during the time of King James VI, before he became King James I of England.

"He had court musicians and was interested in music himself," Ballard said. "Some of our program will include music from that court, but some of it also includes folk music of the time in Scotland. Our instruments are from that period. We play replicas of instruments that were used at that time and there's quite a variety of instruments."

The group features a lute (a plucked instrument), cittern, (described by Ballard as "a renaissance banjo"), wooden flutes, recorders and viola da gamba (a stringed instrument of different sizes).

The Juneau performance will also feature a guest soprano who will sing the program in the Scottish dialect of the time.

"It's English and you can understand most of the words, but it's called 'middle Scots,' -the dialect that was prevalent in Scotland around the end of the 16th century," Ballard said.

"It's really colorful, uplifting music. It strikes some people like folk music," she said.

Their music has even been described as resembling American Bluegrass music.

"You have the same kind of array of instruments. In a Bluegrass band you have a bow, you have a fiddle, you have the plucked guitar and in our case we have a lute and a cittern and we have these wind instruments, so a lot of it is very dance-like and lively," Ballard said.

Ballard plays the viola da gamba. She has directed and coached music at the Peabody Conservatory, Princeton University and the University of Pennsylvania, and serves on the faculty of the summer Oberlin Baroque Institute. She also researches and annotates most of the programs for the consort.

Mark Cudek, playing the cittern, is the founder/director of the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble at Johns Hopkins University and the High School Early Music Program at the Interlochen Arts Camp. He is a recipient of the Early Music America's Thomas Binkley Award for Outstanding Collegium Director and is the director of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival.

Larry Lipkis, playing bass viola da gamba, is composer-in-residence and director of Early Music at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. His compositions have been performed by such renowned symphonies as the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Houston Symphony and he is the music director of the Early Music Week at Pinewoods.

Ronn McFarlane, who plays the lute, has recorded over 20 recordings, including a solo CD of his own compositions. In 1996 he received an honorary Doctor of Music degree from the Shenandoah University for his work in bringing lute music to a worldwide audience.

Mindy Rosenfeld, playing flute, is a member of the San Francisco Philharmonic Baroque Orchestra and frequent guest artist with other West Coast ensembles. She divides her time between family, performing, teaching and organic gardening.

Soprano Danielle Svonavec is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame and currently teaches voice. Besides singing as a guest artist with the Baltimore Consort, she has appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, Pomerium and the South Bend Chamber Orchestra. She is currently serving as cantor for mass at the Basilica of the Sacred Heart at Notre Dame.

The event is sponsored by the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council.

• Teri Tibbett is a freelance writer and musician living in Juneau. She can be reached at teri@tibbett.com.