Ronn McFarlane

Life

Ronn McFarlane is an American lutenist and composer, born in 1953 in West Virginia and raised in Maryland. After playing guitar in rock and blues bands as a teenager, he studied classical guitar at Shenandoah Conservatory and later trained at the Peabody Conservatory under Paul O’Dette, Roger Harmon, and Pat O’Brien. He switched his focus to lute in 1978 and, the following year, became a founding member of the Baltimore Consort, with which he has toured and recorded for over four decades. McFarlane taught lute at Peabody from 1984 to 1995 and received an honorary doctorate of music from Shenandoah in 1996. He later formed the ensemble Ayreheart and continues to compose new music for lute alongside his Renaissance repertoire.

Impact

As one of the principal interpreters of Renaissance lute music in North America, Ronn McFarlane has done more than almost any other American player to bring the instrument into the musical mainstream, through decades of touring and over twenty-five recordings for Dorian/Sono Luminus. His original compositions for lute, including the Grammy-nominated Indigo Road, have expanded the instrument’s modern repertoire beyond historical performance. Through the Baltimore Consort and his years teaching at Peabody, he has shaped a generation of American early-music performers.