Zorro!

The swashbuckling hero Zorro, fencing away the evil oppressors of colonial California, gallops off the screen, followed by his worst enemies.  His ride is accompanied by traditional Spanish folk tunes and other live music.  At least it was accompanied that way today at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art.

The action of the movie was exiting, but even more exciting was the music, provided by the band Hesperus.  The band plays all sorts of instruments, from viola de gamba (a six stringed, fretted cello) to Renaissance violin (lighter weight and shorter than a modern violin) to single-drone bagpipe.  The music made the movie so much more compelling as the hero performed his dramatic, death-defying stunts.

While the performance itself was great, my favorite part was after the show when I spent some time talking to the musicians.  The violinist offered to let me actually play the special violin, a reconstruction of an instrument made during the Renaissance.  While it was very difficult to play because of its different size, it was tremendous fun to see how instruments have changed throughout the centuries.