Jakob Lindberg

Jakob Lindberg is one of the world’s foremost lutenists, with a large catalog of recordings that have often brought to light obscure music. Also playing other members of the guitar family, he has directed Baroque operas from his instrument.
Lindberg was born in the Stockholm suburb of Djursholm on October 16, 1952. As a youth, he loved the music of The Beatles and decided to take guitar lessons. His guitar teacher introduced him to the lute, and he continued on to study as an undergraduate at Stockholm University. Lindberg played both the guitar and lute, but further studies at the Royal College of Music in London with teacher Diana Poulton oriented him toward the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music on period instruments. His Wigmore Hall debut in London came in 1978 and inaugurated an international career as a touring soloist that has taken him around Europe and the U.S. and as far afield as Japan and Mexico. In 1979, Lindberg succeeded Poulton as an instructor at the Royal College of Music. Lindberg’s recording career began in 1984 with the album Faire, Sweet & Cruell: Elizabethan Songs, recorded with soprano Christina Hogman and released by the BIS label. He has remained on BIS almost without exception for his career since. In 1983, Lindberg appeared as a lutenist in the Doctor Who episode “The King’s Demons.”
In his recitals, Lindberg sometimes uses a lute by Augsburg builder Sixtus Rauwolf, one of the oldest lutes currently in use. In addition to solo recitals, Lindberg’s activities have extended into lute consort music, often with his own Dowland Consort, founded in 1985. He has played continuo parts with leading Baroque ensembles, generally on archlute or theorbo, with such major English early music groups as The English Concert, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Academy of Ancient Music. Lindberg is in demand as an accompanist from such singers as Nigel Rogers, Ian Partridge, and Anne Sofie von Otter, and he has directed opera productions from the chitarrone at the Royal Swedish Opera in Stockholm. He is especially well known for his comprehensive catalog of recordings, which numbered well over 100 by the early 2020s. They include the first recording of Dowland's complete solo lute music in 1995, as well as little-known court music from Sweden’s golden age. Lindberg has often recorded Bach’s comparatively neglected lute music, and in 2021, he released the album Bach on the Rauwolf Lute. ~ James Manheim