My first instrument was the guitar. There were a couple of boys in my class in primary school and we decided that we liked the Beatles, so we would learn to play the guitar, and there was someone who was doing the drums. 

The Theorbo

Theorboist Tommie Andersson performing with the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Photo © Keith Saunders.

I had guitar lessons, and things went really well. I played in a couple of bands at the time, so it was a good thing to do.

In high school I started to have lessons from a classical guitar teacher. I played transcriptions from lute music because there’s so much lute music. And the tunings between the Renaissance lute and the classical guitar are very similar, so you can easily play the same music. Basically you just tune down one string a semitone and you’re there. 

Then, of course, I wondered what would the music sound like on the real instrument it was written for. So I ordered a lute from a Swedish maker in my last year at high school, and taught myself basically.

I had a very...