Sweet Silent Thought: English Lute Songs
Sunday, October 4, 2026 | 3:00pm
Brunton Auditorium, Mount Allison University
Lucas Harris
Lucas Harris leads a busy freelancer’s life as a lutenist, conductor, continuo player, teacher, lecturer, coach, and researcher. His collection of over twenty plucked-string instruments includes various Renaissance & Baroque lutes/guitars as well as a theorbo, cittern, bandora, an 1831 Guadagnini guitar, an 18th-century English guittar, and a PRS electric guitar with a Floyd-Rose tremolo bar.
Lucas discovered the lute during his undergraduate studies at Pomona College, where he graduated summa cum laude. He then studied early music at the Civica scuola di musica di Milano and at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen before beginning his freelancing career in New York City. For the past two decades he bases his activities in Toronto, where he serves as the regular lutenist for Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. He is a founding member of the Toronto Continuo Collective, the Vesuvius Ensemble (dedicated to Southern Italian folk music), as well as the Lute Legends Collective (an association of specialists in ancient plucked string traditions from different cultures). Lucas plays with many ensembles in Canada and the USA and has worked in recent years with the Helicon Foundation, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, The Newberry Consort, Les Délices, and Jordi Savall / Le Concert des Nations.
He is also a regular guest artist for Early Music Vancouver, and will be assistant director for EMV’s production of Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 2026 in addition to developing an EMV concert featuring Dowland’s Lachrymae alongside songs about the therapeutic power of music. Lucas teaches graduate students at the University of Toronto and Case Western Reserve University, and is also on faculty at several workshops including the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institutes, Oberlin Conservatory’s Baroque Performance Institute, and the Canadian Renaissance Music Summer School. Also a choral conductor, Lucas has been the Artistic Director of the Toronto Chamber Choir since 2014 and has developed and conducted over forty themed concert programs for the TCC. He has also been a guest director for the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, the Ohio State University Opera Program, Les voix baroques, Atalante, and the Toronto Consort. Lucas’s longstanding interest in women composers has resulted in many projects including the reconstruction of 12 solo-voice motets by Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (the edition is now available for free download at the Web Library for Seventeenth-Century Music).
Paulina Francisco
Paulina Francisco’s “vivacious soprano was a ray of sunshine” (The Guardian). Hailed for her “agility, impact, and vibrant projection” (ClassyKey) which “preserves a finesse of delivery allowing one to savor the ornamentation and agility” (Olyrix), Paulina enjoys an international career of singing, in demand as a soloist, collaborator, and project curator.
Paulina is a winner of the 11th edition of Le Jardin des Voix with Les Arts Florissants and a soloist in their internationally-celebrated production of Henry Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, with staging and choreography by Mourad Merzouki. In March 2025, she debuted at the London Handel Festival singing the role of L’Allegro in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato with Jonathan Cohen and Arcangelo. In the 2023-2024 season Paulina was a Young Artist with Opera Lafayette, making her Kennedy Center debut in the role of Thalie in Mouret’s Les Fêtes de Thalie under the direction of Christophe Rousset - which was received as “delightfully insouciant” (The Washington Post) and “like a rainbow-haired Cyndi Lauper” (Washington Classical Review). Additional role credits include Semele in John Eccles’ Semele with American Baroque Opera Company and Esther in G.F. Handel’s Esther with Opera Lafayette.
A published scholar and inquisitive singer, Paulina enjoys curating chamber programs of music from the 16th-18th centuries. In the 2024-2025 season, she curated Exultemus for Tenet Vocal Artists in New York City. The program explored the influx of Italian musicians and style in Polish courts during the 17th century. Canoro pianto et affetti, a program for the 2023-2024 season of the Washington Bach Consort, unveiled the musical world of 17th-century women through songs for solo voice.
In recent seasons Paulina has worked with conductors William Christie, Christophe Rousset, Jonathan Cohen, Paul Agnew, Bernard Labadie, Jeanette Sorrell, and Lionel Meunier, and with ensembles throughout North America and Europe, including Vox Luminis, Barok Bruggen, Tenet Vocal Artists, Bach Akademie Charlotte, Washington Bach Consort, Apollo’s Fire, Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, La Chapelle de Québec, and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. She was a finalist in the 2025 Handel Aria Competition (United States) and the 2022 Aria Borealis Bodø Chamber Music Competition (Norway).
Paulina has studied voice, historical performance, and music research at McGill University, Indiana University, the University of Southern California, and Carroll University.