Born in Hamburg in 1963, Joachim Held earned a Diploma for Early Music at the famed Schola Cantorum Basiliensi in 1988. He has taught at the Hamburg Conservatory since 1997 and plays regularly under the direction of Nikolaus Harnoncourt, also working frequently with the popular Italian ensemble Il Giardino Armonico. For this recital, Held has chosen some of the colorful and often highly virtuosic music written for the huge "super lutes" that were made at the end of the sixteenth century.