I first heard Julianne Baird on CD in the 80's, and I was instantly transfixed by her clear, honeyed voice. She sang English lute songs celebrating woods, flowers, and nymphs. I used to listen lying on the floor, staring at the ceiling and imagining that such a voice, once described as "spring sunlight...translated into sound," must emanate from a druid or fairy or some such enchanted creature wrapped in mist, as radiant and mysterious as Galadriel of Middle Earth.

So it was kind of shock to reach her by cell phone and hear that she had just left a diner near Binghamton.

"They had home-made pies," she said, whizzing up Route 81 on her way to Syracuse for a concert. "Even Amish people were buying them!"

In the ensuing conversation, I found out that Baird's appetite for excellent pie reflects a general hunger for many other pleasures in life, and especially for the life of the mind.

Julianne Baird came to Rochester in the early 1970's to study singing at the Eastman School of Music. "To tell the truth, I was bored," she says.

Having grown up in a family of medieval scholars, she found Eastman's emphasis on vocal projection and technique made her feel like she'd enrolled in a trade school.

"It was like I was learning to be a fabulous diamond-cutter," Baird says, "but it wasn't feeding the curious part of my personality." (Eastman has changed a lot since then, she says.) In her spare time, she'd wander through the school's Sibley Library, looking at books and musical scores. By her second semester she'd changed her major from voice to musicology.

Then she met Eastman musicologist Erich Schwandt. The now-retired professor made Baird his teaching assistant. Instead of sending her to make copies or run mindless errands, Schwandt handed her a score of French songs in archaic Baroque notation from 1730 and asked her to explain it to him because he couldn't understand it.

"It was a kind of a trial by fire," she says.

With Schwandt's encouragement, Baird decoded pages and pages of music covered in idiosyncratic hieroglyphics, such as a cross to indicate places where the singer should add extra notes. She learned to read soprano clef. By the time she left Eastman, she'd developed a specialty in reading and singing early music, or music written before 1750 or thereabouts. Simultaneously, the early music revival became an international phenomenon.

One success followed another, as Baird pursued the dual paths of a performer and academic. She earned a PhD in music history. She recorded more than 100 CDs.

But the soprano didn't limit herself to singing pre-Baroque repertoire. Baird made her New York Philharmonic debut in the orchestral premiere of Steve Reich's "Tehilium," and she appeared in controversial one-singer-to-a-part performance of Bach's "Magnificat" in the composer's church in Leipzig.

In December, she stepped in at the last minute to perform six of Handel's "Nine Arias for Soprano, Violin and Continuo," at the Rose Theatre at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Someone got sick, and Baird happened to be in a room nearby, teaching at the Julliard School. Reviewing for the New York Times, Anthony Tommasini praised the sun-filled, nearly-vibrato-free voice that captivated me years ago. "...There was nothing generic in the purity of her singing, which had body, color and earthy expressivity," he wrote.

When Baird comes to Rochester to perform with Pegasus Early Music, she'll twine her voice with that of oboist Geoffrey Burgess to perform Baroque music written for the blend of soprano and oboe. They'll be supported by Lisa Terry on gamba and cello, James Bobb on harpsichord, and Deborah Fox on theorbo. The program includes Purcell's "Lament from Fairy Queen," Croft's cantata "Celledon," an oboe sonata by Babell, and music by Handel, Keiser, and Pergolesi. Baird will sing in English, German, and Italian.

This will be the first time she'll sing Purcell's "Lament" with the oboe, which she describes as a gentler trumpet. "I love the interplay between the oboe and voice," she says. "The oboe has a full, heartfelt sound. Plangent, if you will."

In preparation for this week's concerts, Pegasus Artistic Director Deborah Fox sent the soprano sheet music printed in modern notation, which is kind of like handing a medieval cartographer a GPS device. Even so, Baird plans to take risks with tempo and ornamentation based on her experiences navigating through centuries-old manuscripts.

As much as Baird feeds on intellectual challenges, she says, singing is an act of joy.

Radio producer Brenda Tremblay hosts RPO concerts on WXXI (Classical 91.5) and blogs at wxxi.org.

A Lady, and Her Echo

Pegasus Early Music w/Julianne Baird

Friday, Feb 6-Saturday, Feb 7, 8 p.m. | Sunday, Feb 9, 4 p.m.

Rochester Academy of Medicine, 1441 East Ave

$10-$22 | 703-3990, pegasusearlymusic.org.