The Minnesingers have returned from their 10-day trip to Croatia with a new show for Vineyard audiences. On Saturday, May 4, at 7 p.m. and Sunday, May 5 at 3 p.m. they will perform their spring show Roots, which celebrates the African-American contribution of composers and performers, at the performing arts center at the regional high school.

Have you made plans yet for the April school vacation? The Minnesingers have — they are headed to Croatia to perform five concerts.

Fresh from their triumphal concert tours of Paris and Prague, you might almost expect the Minnesingers back on Island to be busy calling their agents from moviestudio trailers. But no, they’re still the great, glowing, unprepossessing kids they’ve always been, and they put all their talent, all their joy into this past weekend’s performances on their home stage at the performing arts center at Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School.

In the spring of 1967, Tom Mills, the high school choral and orchestral director at the time, hand-picked a select group of student singers who began meeting to sing madrigals and sacred music. When thinking of possible names for the group someone floated the idea, Tom Grape and His Bunch. Thankfully, Barbara Lopes, then a freshman in high school, had a better idea: The Minnesingers, in tribute to a performance troupe of “lovers of song” who traveled throughout Germany in the 12th to 14th centuries.