lute

Anouar Brahem (Arabic: أنور ابراهم) is a Tunisian oud (middle eastern lute) player and composer who is widely regarded as an innovator in his field. Performing for primarily a jazz audience, he fuses arabic classical music, folk music and jazz and has been recording since at least 1991 after becoming prominent in his own country in the late 1980s. Brahem began studying the oud at age 10 under the tutelage of Ali Sitri at the National Conservatory of Music in Tunis. In 1987, after six years in Paris, he spent two years as the director of the Ensemble Musical De Ia Ville De Tunis.

Jozef van Wissem probably plays and composes for the most unlikely instruments in the world of contemporary improvised music: the Renaissance and Baroque lute. He has accomplished the strange feat of bridging the idiom of seventeenth century lute literature and twenty-first century free improv of the silent type. Although Van Wissem uses subtle electronic sound manipulation, he has largely stayed faithful to the particular timbre, resonance and playing technique of the lute.

Christina Pluhar (born 1965, in Gratz, Austria) is an Austrian-born harpist, lutenist and theorbist, specialized in medieval and baroque music. In 2000 she founded the ensemble L'Arpeggiata. http://www.christinapluhar.com