Today's blog is guest written by Garry Carke, a UK native who has recently relocated to our fair city.

Chicago, as I'm sure most readers of this site are aware, is a great city! Last summer I had the good fortune to move here. I am a baroque violinist from the UK but had been living in Washington, D.C. since September 2004, initially coming as a Vilar Fellow at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. I live downtown and adore it. It's great being able to get to walk along the lake and I love being close by the museums, galleries, theatres, and restaurants; and of course, I love being close to the concert halls. Okay, so it can get a little chilly at times, but who cares when there is so much enjoyable culture to partake of with the many new friends I am making.

One thing did perplex me however: why no regular period instrument orchestra? Soon after my arrival I had the good fortune to meet, and perform with, some fine period instrumentalists -  David Schrader, Craig Trompeter, David Douglass, Jerry Fuller, Marty Davids - but no regular period instrument orchestra!

"But", I hear many of you yell, "what about Music of the Baroque?". And, having attended several of their performances this year I know from experience what a fine musical organization they are. Beautifully crafted music performed to the very highest standards, but in the main, performed on ‘modern' instruments. Now, I may have been a professional period player all my working life, and I have no problems with performing music from any period on whatever instruments you like, but I do have a mission in life: to present the music I love to as wide an audience as possible and show just how alive, vibrant, and fresh it is today as I'm sure it was in the 17^th and 18^th centuries. Gone are the days when we had stodgy, dull performances, that might have been historically accurate, but that had no soul or emotion. Today the ‘early music' scene  is full of energized, dynamic performances from ensembles like the Venice Baroque Orchestra (whose performance I was bummed to miss the other week as I had to be out of town), Les Arts Florissants, and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Yes, we're still aiming for historical correctness, but we're also aiming to make our audiences leave with a feeling of inspired joy at the freshness of this wonderful music. We want audiences to hear it as if for the first time, we want to remove the layers that have been applied over the centuries and to bring back the full palette of the music's original colors.

I decided to take up the baroque violin after hearing Simon Standage perform Vivaldi's Four Seasons with the English Concert. A girlfriend had dragged me along, and the energy, the freshness, the clarity, and the sheer exuberance of the performance changed my life.

Now we're aiming to change yours.

In May, Baroque Band, Chicago's period instrument orchestra, will make its debut with three concerts: May 22, at the Music Institute of Chicago's Nichols Hall, Evanston; May 23, in the Grainger Ballroom, Symphony Center; May 24 at St Thomas the Apostle Church, Hyde Park. That week we'll also be announcing our first full season with concerts throughout the area in 2007 - 08 as well as some exciting partnerships we are developing. We hope that you'll join us at these events and also visit us online.  As we approach our launch concerts we'll keep you up to date with our news, we'll add information about the music we perform, the instruments we use, and why we use them. You'll also have the opportunity to ask those questions about historical performance practice you've always wanted to know but were afraid to ask and we'll carry on telling you why Chicago is a great place to be!