Guts Baroque

Guts Baroque brings beautiful and unusual music that we love from the 17th and 18th centuries to your ears, illuminating the stories behind the music and its makers and celebrating the warmth and vividness of historically-informed chamber music played on period instruments. A collaboration between Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violinist, and John Ott, scholar, baroque cellist, and viola da gambist, Guts arose naturally out of Ott and Schwartz’s collaborations in the Early Music program at Longy School of Music.

Since graduating in 2015 and 2016, Guts has been busy establishing itself in Southern California and New England, presenting concerts in churches, breweries, gardens, and Groupmuses, as well as running their other ensemble, L’Esprit Baroque. Guts will make its Boston Early Music Festival Fringe debut on June 14th, celebrating more than a year of monthly livestream concerts. They are deeply grateful to have had each other and their shared music at home during this time. Ott and Schwartz also teach a plethora of violin, cello, and viola da gamba students, and have enjoyed bringing historical performance practice awareness to the public school orchestra programs in Irvine, CA. In September, 2020, Guts relocated to southern Maine, where they continue to livestream concerts from their Portland apartment, and eagerly await the day when they can start performing around New England again in person. They can’t wait to share the peerless experience of acoustic live performance with you!