Coming up in Philly music: Tempesta di Mare presents a musical menagerie of Baroque and Renaissance

You don’t have to call a repairman when you encounter a broken consort. In the Renaissance and Baroque periods, a broken consort was an instrumental group that mixed different kinds of instruments. Tempesta di Mare’s next concert will feature a consort that is about as broken as it can get. The instruments include a wooden Baroque flute, a short-necked Baroque violin, a viol, two lutes, and two less familiar items: the cittern and the bandora. Their tone colors will blend and clash in English songs and instrumental music created during the Renaissance and the early Baroque. The vocals will be provided by an international early-music star, soprano Julianne Baird.

The broken consort acquired a special name because many Renaissance and Baroque instruments came in families that ranged from ultra-low basses to the highest upper reaches. Musicians could form a “consort of recorders” or a “consort of vios” (the viols being the older cousins of the violin family). A broken consort was the equivalent of a modern pickup group — a band that employs any instruments that happen to be available.

The most exotic item in the Tempesta consort, the cittern, is an offshoot of the English guitar. It’s strung with wires — unlike most instruments from its period — and it has a flat back, like a modern banjo, instead of the bulging back that distinguishes the lute. The bandora is a bass cittern. The cittern at this concert will be played by a guest specialist, Mark Cudek, a veteran performer who chairs the early-music program at the Peabody Institute in Baltimore.

The Tempesta di Mare Chamber players will present Broken Consort: Music From Elizabethan And Restoration Era London on February 1 at 8pm at the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill (8855 Germantown Avenue), February 2 at 8pm at Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral (23 South 38th Street), and February 3 at 3pm at Christ Church Christiana Hundred (505 Buck Road, Wilmington, DE). Tickets are $39 preferred, $25 general admission, or free for full-time students with ID. They’re available at www.tempestadimare.org and at the door.

Most of the older buildings used for concerts have been retrofitted for accessibility, but the system often involves alternate entrances. For precise information about access, call the site office.