Mercure Galant, an early music ensemble, will perform Leclair, Locatelli, Boccherini and a selection of early Italian trio sonatas at Grace Episcopal Church, Friday, March 2, 7 p.m.

Mercure Galant, began in 2009 by baroque violin-harpsichord duo Olga and Fred Hauptman, has performed in various formations. This year Mercure Galant is combining the talents of Hauptman with Marka Young on the baroque violin, Laura Kramer on the baroque cello and John Lenti on the lutenist and baroque guitarist.  Young returns to Lopez with great anticipation: her father, Steve Young, is a longtime Lopezian and she fondly remembers summers on the south end of the island when she was a child.

The program is a mixture of very early baroque sonatas with later baroque and early classical trios by composers who were famous for their playing and composing talents. The program starts with a suave and beautiful trio sonata by the violin virtuoso Jean-Marie Leclair (1697–1764), who is nicknamed the “French Bach,” because of the complexity and depth of his music. A set of some of the earliest Italian trio sonatas follows the Leclair. Marco Uccellini (1603 or 1610-1680), Giovanni Paolo Cima (c. 1570-1622) and Biagio Marini (1594-1663) all forced the violin to new technical heights and contributed to the formulation of the first sonata form, a series of very slow to very fast musical ideas, all strung together into one movement. Pietro Antonio Locatelli’s “Trio #8” from 1744 will end the first half of the program. This late baroque work shows the development of violin technique with its brilliant bow work and the dramatic long lines of its slow movements.

After a short intermission the program will continue with a short and sweet work by Christoph Willibald Ritter von Gluck (1714-1787), who is more well-known as

the composer of such operas as Orpheo and Euridice. Young will perform the entertaining and sometimes ridiculous “Sonata Representiva” from 1669 by Heinrich Biber (1644-1704), in which the violin and accompanying continuo imitate the sounds of animals in nature and on a farm. The program will conclude with the dramatic and rollicking sounds of Luigi Boccherini’s (1743-1805) Terzetto. Boccherini was an Italian virtuoso cellist who also wrote for guitar and strings.

Donations are accepted.