It's May, it's May, the lusty mont…oh, what?

Oh yeh, it’s still April. Cruelest month, and all. Sorry. On the other hand, it’s April 25 and your taxes are done or done’ish. Also, it means that it’s Pam Corn’s birthday! Yes, OUR Pam Corn, TEMP Treasurer and Board member! Join me in wishing her a Happy Birthday and in thanking her for all that she and Corn & Corn, L.L.P. do for TEMP! And my sister: It’s her birthday, too! What an auspicious day!!

So, we are preparing for our May concert of Medieval music from Germany, the Texas Toot workshop in June, the Amherst Early Music Workshop in July, and also the upcoming season, which we will keep to ourselves a little longer. Season tickets for 2019-2020 will be available at the May concert, so bring your calendar and grab those tickets while they’re hot!

Learn more about the May concert below and enjoy this audio sample from our 2012 concert “Living Waters: Works by Hildegard von Bingen” and recorded on our Sacred CD:

Hildegard’s music is unique and rare. Come for the 30-minute, pre-concert lecture by Sara Schneider, too, 1 hour before each performance.

More soon, featuring an exciting interview from this year’s SXSW! No more clues!
-Danny

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Mystic, Scientist, Scholar, Nun:
Music of Hildegard von Bingen

Saturday, May 11, 2019, at  7:30 pm
St. Louis King of France Catholic Church Chapel, 7601 Burnet Road, Austin, TX
Sunday, May 12, 2019, 3:00 pm
St. John’s United Methodist Church, 2140 Allandale Road, Austin, TX

Admission $30 general; $25 seniors (60+); $5 students (at the door only)
Tickets available in advance online or by cash, check, or credit card at the door.

Take advantage of preferred seating and other perks by sponsoring a concert!

For more information, call 512-377-6961 and leave a message,
or email info@early-music.org.

TEMP’s 2003 performance of Hildegard von Bingen’s liturgical drama Ordo virtutum won the Austin Critics Table award for Best Chamber Concert of the season. Now we return to the beautifully sophisticated and powerful music of the 12th-century German abbess with a performance of several of her compelling antiphons and sequences, performed by 15 women singers. KMFA’s Sara Schneider, host of the nationally syndicated program Early Music Now, will present a 30-minute lecture one hour before each concert.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a composer, a writer of theological, botanical, and medical texts, a Christian mystic, and an abbess. She has become increasingly important in recent decades due to renewed interest in her visions, music, and holistic healing teachings. She has long been venerated within the Catholic Church, and she was canonized as Saint Hildegard in October 2012. For Hildegard, music was the sacred means through which we become tuned to celestial unity while we remain linked to the lowly vibrations of life on Earth. The melodies of her chants highlight the emotions of the texts through soaring melodic arches, creating an ecstatic aural atmosphere that is unique to her compositions. She compiled all her music into a cycle called Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum (The Symphony of the Harmony of the Heavenly Revelations), which includes antiphons, sequences, and hymns set to her own texts.

Featured soloists include Jenifer Thyssen, Meredith Ruduski, Gitanjali Mathur, Jenny Houghton, Laura Mercado-Wright, Cayla Cardiff, Shari Alise Wilson, and others. We will also present a few instrumental pieces by composers contemporary to Hildegard’s time, featuring a small instrumental ensemble of vielles, hurdy-gurdy, gittern, and psalteries, led by featured guest Mary Springfels.

Extraordinarily creative and remarkably relevant, Hildegard’s music resonates through the centuries. Please join us for a concert of rare beauty by an exceptional genius.

Click on the image above to buy tickets now!

When April Showers Come In May . . .

Keep 'em Coming!

Photo: Alastair Muir

Just a quick update from us at TEMP Central, now that it’s my least favorite time of the year: the end of the concert season. It was fun to stay in Italy for the whole season—thanks for joining us—but the delights of France, England, Spain, and the Lowlands are begging for our attention next season.

We couldn’t have managed, of course, without our donors. You contributed to the La Pellegrina Indiegogo campaign, our general operating needs, Amplify Austin, and we simply couldn’t exist without you! Thanks so much! Donations are gratefully accepted on our website or by mail at:

Texas Early Music Project
2005 San Gabriel, Suite 204
Austin, TX 78705

We’re already making repertoire and artistic plans for next season’s Postcards from the Past: A TEMP Eurotour. You can see our itinerary on our 2015-2016 Season page. Season subscriptions AND single tickets are on sale now. Season subscriptions represent a 10% savings off regular prices and subscribers get to sit in the preferred seating areas. And new this year: Donors who contribute $500 or more will be able to join the season subscribers in the preferred seating area. We listened!

In the meantime, since I have no laurels upon which to rest, the Summer Toot workshop is coming right up, at breakneck speed, June 7-13, and then it will be time for the Amherst Early Music Festival.

Don’t’ forget about us in the meantime! We’ll see you in September for our multimedia season opener, Convivencia Re-Envisioned: The Three Worlds of Renaissance Spain. Below are some audio teasers of what you can expect to hear. These pieces and more are on our Convivencia CD.

That about does it!

Thanks again! Happy travels, few travails.
-Danny

Danny's Dispatch from the Amherst Early Music Festival

Greetings, TEMP-ites! I'm in New London, CT for the Amherst Early Music Festival and, looking at the weather in Texas, I was feeling a bit guilty, what with the temperature being in the mid-70s last week and dropping at night... but it warmed up substantially for a few days and we had the same kind of rain that's being soaking Austin. Summer has its way with us no matter where we are....

All of that takes a backseat to the energy, excitement, and profound musicality that we've enjoyed at the workshop. San Francisco’s Farallon Recorder Quartet (with Annette Bauer, a frequent TEMP guest artist) opened the concert series last week and charmed us all. The Baroque Academy Faculty concert was an eye-opener and ear-pleaser with some music and composers I had never heard of; knocked my socks off!

The Baroque Academy opera Der geduldige Socrates (The Patience of Socrates) by Telemann revealed a side of Telemann I had only dabbled with.  I've performed and taught his secular cantatas, but knew nothing about the opera.  It has some very nice arias, which were sung by some really good students. Quite fine!

Saturday was crazy with 6 concerts.  My Baroque Academy ensemble of 3 singers and continuo, hailing from Connecticut, Arizona, and Winnipeg, performed Schütz and did very well!  On the faculty concert, I performed 2 of my favorite things with some of my favorite people: "Da Jakob nu das kleid Ansah" by Senfl which I first learned as a junior in college, and "Anima mea liquefacta es" by Schütz, which has been a favorite for decades; TEMP regular Cayla Cardiff and TEMP guest Temmo Korisheli were some of the stars of the all-workshop Collegium's performance of "Musikalische Exequien".

The second week of concerts started with an exquisitely beautiful concert of viol and lute music, performed by Italy's Vittorio Ghielmi and Luca Pianca. Life-changing performances of Forqueray, Marais, and others, including a sonata by Andras Lidl who was previously unknown to me.  Simply amazing.

In the midst of this are classes, rehearsals, administrative duties, and an expected lack of sleep. Still, it's wonderful and I love it; this is my 32nd Amherst Early Music festival; I'm hoping for at least two more handfuls of them....

And, somehow at the same time, there is planning the upcoming TEMP season, working on the season brochure with TEMP Board president Wendy Brockett, who is here also, and scouting for some new guest artists to join us for concerts in Austin.

Off to the next event - more soon! Danny