As the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra heads tonight into one of the final concerts of its International Chamber Orchestra Festival, it’ll be simultaneously greeting a visiting baroque ensemble, reuniting with artistic partner Nicholas McGegan and welcoming back a Minneapolis-born soloist.

Tonight’s concert at Stillwater’s Trinity Lutheran Church will feature both San Francisco’s period-instrument Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, led by McGegan, and the SPCO. Tenor Thomas Cooley — whose master’s degree is from the University of Minnesota and who spent nearly a decade singing in Germany — will perform not one but two opera prison scenes, one with each orchestra, as well as arias from George Frideric Handel’s  “Semele” and “Jephtha.”

You can see complete programs for tonight’s performance and Friday’s concert at Wayzata Community Church here. Friday’s concert will feature the PBO alone. Both concerts are at 8 p.m.

The SPC0 promises “astonishing virtuosity” from McGegan and the PBO, something the SPCO itself delivered last weekend in an absolutely astonishing performance of the Shostakovich Chamber Symphony in F, Op. 73a. This festival has not only introduced freshness to the season; it’s effectively showcased the virtuosity we have here all the time.

The temps were so low that it would have been understandable had audiences thinned out for the festival’s Week Three. They didn’t — and their responses to the SPCO and the visiting Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment were suitably — and decidedly — warm. Check out the festival blog before it all ends.

RELATED CONTENT: Battle of the bands: SPCO, Bernstein festivals by David Hawley, Jan. 8, 2009