The traditional music of Scotland, Ireland and Sweden is beautiful, evocative and haunting. Performed on Celtic harp and viola da gamba, it is exquisite. On Saturday, Aug. 23 at 7 p.m. the Lincoln Theater will present Sue Richards and Carolyn Surrick who have spent the last 25 years recording and touring together with Ensemble Galilei — a shared music, a shared expression of their craft.

Richards is a four-time US National Scottish Harp Champion and Surrick, one of the country’s most accomplished performers on the viola da gamba, bring virtuosity, humor, fine musicianship, and heart to every performance.

Richards is a traditional musician and collector of tunes. She won the American National Scottish Harp Championship four times and is a Scottish Harp Society of America (SHSA) Distinguished Judge. Richards has performed at Celtic Connections and the Edinburgh International Harp Festival in Scotland, and toured Norway and Sweden with the Harpa ensemble. She has played for Presidents Clinton and Bush, Queen Elizabeth of England, and sat in with The Chieftains Irish band.

Richards has served as president of SHSA and the Washington, D.C., Folk Harp Society. She is currently teaching and directing the harp program at the Ohio Scottish Arts School (OSAS) and has taught at the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Alaska, Summerkeys Music School in Maine, and most of the major harp festivals in the US. She has written many original tunes and several books of arrangements, and has a long list of recordings to her credit.

Surrick received a bachelor’s degree in music from UCSC and an MA in musicology from George Washington University. She founded Ensemble Galilei in 1990 and in this extraordinarily democratic organization her official title has always been "Navigatrix” — which refers to her uncanny ability to keep the group on the road and bring new projects to fruition.

Surrick has worked with The Hubble Space Telescope Institute to create A Universe of Dreams, partnered with The National Geographic Society on First Person: Stories from the Edge of the World, and now oversees Ensemble Galilei’s collaboration with the Metropolitan Museum of Art, First Person: Seeing America. She was in the film, the Pelican Brief, she has recorded for Dorian, Maggie’s Music, Telarc, NPR Classics, and Sono Luminus and she teaches workshops and seminars on the business of music.

Most recently, her playing has taken her, with Richards and Ginger Hildebrand, to The Walter Reed Army Medical Center to play for wounded warriors. The warriors and their families are the inspiration for her book of poetry, “Between War and Here.”

Tickets for the concert are $15/adults, $13/LT members and free for youth 18 and under. Tickets can be purchased in advance through the theater box office at 207-563-3424, or purchased at the door.

The Lincoln Theater is located at 2 Theater Street in downtown Damariscotta.