The *Less-Early* Early Christmas from TEMP

Tune in to KMFA 89.5 FM on Thurs. 12-15-16 at 6pm!

I always feel big pangs of nostalgia when our Christmas concerts end; we have so much to accomplish in so few days, it's very bonding (in the good way, not the oh-my-gosh-the-zombies-are-here way) and we're always sad when it's over.

Sara Schneider, host of Ancient Voices, KMFA 89.5 FM

Except that we all have so many other gigs'o'the season, we can't linger in that sentimental feeling. And these last few days I've stayed right in the concert mode by working with KMFA to present a one hour version of the concert for their Listen Local series. (Yes, 12 minutes of wonderful music had to be left behind due to time constraints.) So if you didn't get to come to the concerts or if you would just like to revisit them, then listen this Thursday, December 15, at 6pm to 89.5 FM or catch it on the interwebs at www.kmfa.org. Sara Schneider will be your M.C. for the program, so you know she'll have the best hits lined up!

Download the TEMP An Early Christmas program notes to follow along while listening!

Joyeux Noël!
-Danny

Join us for our next concert, Feb. 18 & 19, 2017!

Today is the first day...

of TEMP's "Year of Christmas," in which we we have a different blog post daily about some aspect of Christmas/music/life through December 25, 2017. Yes, a whole year of musical jokes and little-known-facts along with suitable graphics and musical links. Hold on, my phone is ringing. In the meantime, try to come up with suitable lyrics for the 316th day of Christmas—I'm kind of stuck on that one . . .

Hmmm—according to our webscribe and also our graphics guy, there will, in fact, "not" be a year of Christmas with a daily blog/graphics/jokes/links! And they ’splained it to me real well why, in fact, there will not be a year of Christmas with a daily blog/graphics jokes/links.

So, maybe the best thing is just for us all to treat the rest of the year like we do the Christmas season: Be kind and thoughtful and helpful and loving. And go to lots of TEMP concerts! 

On the 388th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me . . . 

-Danny

An Early Christmas

Friday, December 9, 2016 at 8PM
First English Lutheran Church, 3001 Whitis Avenue

Saturday December 10, 2016 at 8PM
First English Lutheran Church, 3001 Whitis Avenue

Sunday, December 11, 2016 at 3PM
First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive

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.

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

It’s time for another Early Christmas! We explore music and the intangible essence of Christmas from the cultural capitals of Europe from the 13th through 18th centuries. TEMP puts its unique stamp on joyful carols and lullabies from Western Europe and the British Isles, with arrangements for solo voices, small chorus, harp, violin, flute, mandolin, viols, and lute.

The familiar theme of the Nativity from the shepherds’ perspective figures prominently in most early music Christmas repertoire, as does the motif of Mother and Child. We present several works with this focus, including our original arrangement of two Nativity pastorals from 1684 by Marc-Antoine Charpentier and the choral masterpiece for 8 parts, Nesciens mater, by French composer Jean Mouton.

There are lively works from Spain, thoughtful, pensive works from France, and of course, a little taste of Celtic and English influences! Our popular versions of the Carol for St. Stephen’s Day and Gaudete! are featured this year, as well as other Celtic favorites.

Nationally acclaimed historical harpist Therese Honey joins TEMP's troupe of soloists, choir and chamber orchestra.

Enjoy this audio teaser from our CD Noël: An Early Christmas:

Enjoy more audio samples from our other Christmas CDs: Stella splendens and Swete was the Songe.

Join Texas Early Music Project for a splendid and enriching evening of music. Encompassing six hundred years of festive creativity and beauty, this music is sure to delight your ears and warm your heart.

I voted. . .

for TEMP to go on a Pilgrimage to College Station!

But first, thanks to all of who came to the Sephardic concerts last week. We really love doing that rep. . .so many old favorites and some new pieces that will eventually be old favorites! It was terrific to have Peter Maund with us again and new-to-us oud player Josh Peters. And thanks to all for coming to hear us at Congregation Beth Israel; it was a welcoming venue and they were very gracious! 

At any rate, concerning the upcoming pilgrimage to College Station: We are preparing for our annual (since 2010) pilgrimage to St. Thomas Episcopal Church in College Station to present a shorter version of last October's popular concert Medieval Pilgrimage in Iberia. (It was nominated for Best Chamber concert for last season by the Austin Critics Table, btw ...) If you're in the vicinity and want to re-visit the concert or if you missed it the first time around, then check out the info below and come see us!  Or you could recommend it to your friends in College Station and environs.... News about the Christmas concert is coming up ... 

–Danny

Medieval Pilgrimage in Iberia:
Music on the Way to Santiago de Compostela

Sunday, November 13, 2016, 6:00 p.m.

St. Thomas Episcopal Church
906 George Bush Drive, College Station

A company of eight female singers explores the music of pilgrimage in Medieval Spain. This music celebrates the richly transparent timbre of treble voices in unison or in polyphonic settings, making the most of sweet consonances and pungent dissonances.

There was never a more popular time for religious pilgrimage than during the Middle Ages. In those times, people made long and dangerous trips, lasting months or years, in a search for spiritual meaning or fulfillment or as an act of penance.

Several of the most important sites of pilgrimage during the Middle Ages were located in what is now northern Spain, along the route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.  TEMP performs music from the Llibre Vermell, from the monastery at Montserrat in Catalonia, which was intended to be sung by the pilgrims themselves. We also feature music from Ms. Las Huelgas, from  the Cistercian convent in Burgos; Las Cantigas de Santa Maria from the royal court of Alfonso X;  and the Codex Calixtinus from the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Galicia.  All of these places are stops along the route to Santiago de Compostela;  Santiago is Galician for the Latin Sanctus Jacobus, St. James.   Many people continue to make this walking pilgrimage, even today. 

Featured soloists include Jenifer Thyssen, Stephanie Prewitt, Cayla Cardiff, and more, along with the TEMP Medieval orchestra of vielles, harps, oud, psaltery, and gittern.

Whether you are focusing on the music with closed eyes or silently clapping your hands and tapping your feet, the long-lasting beauty of our Medieval Pilgrimage will delight you.  We invite you to join us for this Concert! 

The Concert is supported by generous grants from the Gilbert and Thyra Plass Arts Foundation and the Joe and Florence Ham Charitable Trust and TEMP is happy to be supported by the Texas Commission on the Arts.

Admission is $10/$5 students, at the door

For more information, please contact Bonnie Harris-Reynolds, Organist & Music Director, St. Thomas Episcopal Church

St. Thomas: music@stthomasbcs.org
Phone: (979) 696-1726 or the church office at (979) 696-0452

Veni, Vidi, Mastercard!

Ok, we dodged the worst of a couple of viruses (physical, not virtual) that threatened to make last week even more interesting than it was going to be anyway! Whew, because I would have hated to have missed the party that Meredith put together last Saturday at Wally Workman Gallery! It was fun, a lot of folks donated (and bought) both goods and services (recorder lessons, for example) and good eats and drinks were had by all! Priceless!

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Scott Horton & Meredith Ruduski

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Scott Horton & Daniel Johnson

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Scott Horton, Daniel Johnson, Cayla Cardiff, Jenifer Thyssen, & Stephanie Prewitt

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Bruce Colson, John Walters, Scott Horton, & Daniel Johnson

Many thanks to those who came to the fundraiser and also to those who couldn't come but who made donations that were extremely helpful! Thanks! And thanks to the TEMP musicians & Board members who made it a fun late-afternoon soirée!

We're heading into preparations for the Sephardic concert (see info below!)  and the rest of the season! It's non-stop from now until May ... Calgon, anyone?

-Danny

---

Songs of the Sephardim: Love, Lament, and Loss

Saturday, October 29, 2016 at 8PM
Congregation Beth Israel, 3901 Shoal Creek Boulevard

Sunday, October 30, 2016 at 3PM
St. Martin's Lutheran Church, 606 West 15th Street

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 by purchasing Season Tickets
through Oct. 28!

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

Expelled from Iberia in 1492, the Sephardim created haunting music that reflected their longing for return to Iberia while adapting their traditions and music to their new homelands.

Sephardic music is at once beautiful and haunting, fun and poignant. TEMP’s performances of these songs of love, jealousy, loss, and comedy are one of Austin’s not-to-be-missed events. Most of us are familiar with the effects of love and its cousins, pain and jealousy, but to hear music from the last 500 years deal with this subject in simple, yet excruciating beauty, illustrates how our emotions aren’t so very different from those of the Sephardic exiles.

TEMP’s unique and creative arrangements, soulful vocal solos, and ensemble pieces explore this music, accompanied by the exotic textures of a hybrid Medieval/Middle Eastern instrumental ensemble. The program includes some favorites from the TEMP Sephardic repertoire (La serena, La rosa enflorece, Puncha, puncha, and the erotically charged song Noches, noches) and many newly-arranged songs and dances. Listen to these audio samples from our CD Night and Day: Sephardic Songs of Love and Exile:

International recorder player and world music specialist Nina Stern (New York) joins us for this concert, along with Bay Area’s Peter Maund, specialist in early and ethnic percussion. Houston’s Therese Honey (harp) joins oud player Josh Peters, Scott Horton, John Walters, Kit Robberson, Bruce Colson, and Stephanie Raby in the instrumental ensemble. Our singers are Gitanjali Mathur, Stephanie Prewitt, Jenifer Thyssen, Cayla Cardiff, Gil Zilkha, and Daniel Johnson.

From the passionate, tragic love songs to songs of fantasy and gaiety, this alluring musical genre will capture your imagination and captivate your heart.

We followed the Pathway! What's next?!

Pathways to Bach! That was fun in so many ways, not the least of which was the knowledge that we were finally back where we belong: On “stage” performing great music for you! There were several new performers in our troupe this time and they all did mighty fine. We hope to include them in future projects. And there were many new "audients" there also—and we definitely hope to see them again!

It’s almost two months until the next full concert, but we do have a small but important event on Saturday, October 1.

Come and enjoy the art and ambiance of the intimate Wally Workman Gallery with wine, light hors d'oeuvres, and a little music by TEMP artists while placing your bids on items in the silent auction. It’s on 6th Street, but it’s early enough in the evening (5pm-7pm and there’s an “away” game) that traffic will be relatively light.

I mean, yes, we’re still in Austin and it’s not 1980, but it should be great for a little outing before your evening activities! We hope to see you!

Back to work now, preparing for the Sephardic concert . . . and the Christmas concert!

-Danny

To Purchase Tickets, please visit our Fundraiser page!

Help us slay it this season!

Follow the Yellow Brick Pathway . . .

That Schütz & Buxtehude built!

Howdy! It's been a busy summer. TEMP had a concert of Medieval music at the Mt. Carmel Hermitage Monastery near San Angelo at the end of June and it was really well-received. It was about 80 miles from where I grew up and the afternoon light was unmistakably that of west Texas. This was sandwiched between the Texas Toot workshop in June and the Amherst Early Music Festival/Workshop in July and season preparations in August and ... well, you see where we're going with this: It's already time for concert season!! Our 19th concert season? Could that be true? It takes almost all my fingers and toes to count up the years, so it must be!

We start off with a revised version of our 2005 concert, "Pathways to Bach," which won the Critics Table Award for Best Choral Concert that year.  This year we're doing a different cantata by Dieterich Buxtehude than the one we did in 2005 because Sara Schneider requested it! And it's truly extraordinary; I hope you'll love it! And speaking of Sara Schneider: She will be giving a wonderful pre-concert lecture about 1 hour before concert time both days: "Strange Tones: What Bach Learned from Buxtehude" — don't miss it! 

And be sure to watch the latest broadcast of Meredith Ruduski's Music History Shorts in which she interviews Sara Schneider.

So join us in about 2 weeks! And don't let the start time catch you by surprise on Saturday: lecture at 6pm and concert at 7pm (and lecture at 2pm and concert at 3pm on Sunday!)

Bis bald! (Till soon!)
-Danny

Pathways to Bach

Saturday, September 3, 2016 at 7PM (with pre-concert lecture at 6pm)
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Drive

Sunday, September 4, 2016 at 3PM (with pre-concert lecture at 2pm)
Northwest Hills United Methodist Church, 7050 Village Center Drive

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 by purchasing Season Tickets!

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

Don’t miss the pre-concert lecture by Sara Schneider 1 hour before each concert:
Strange Tones: What Bach learned from Buxtehude

J.S. Bach didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Dieterich Buxtehude heavily influenced Bach; before that, Buxtehude was influenced by Heinrich Schütz, who is considered one of the most important German composers of the 17th century.

Heinrich Schütz, rightly called the ‘father of German music,’ brought Germany into the forefront of the musical world in the mid-17th century, establishing a trend that lasted more than two hundred years. Dieterich Buxtehude was one of the most important composers in Germany at the end of the 17th century and he was a primary influence for J.S. Bach’s sacred cantatas and organ music. For its opening concert of the season, Texas Early Music Project performs some of the most technically and emotionally powerful music by both of these composers, featuring Schütz’s Musikalische Exequien and Buxtehude’s magnificent cantata Herzlich lieb hab’ ich dich, o Herr.

TEMP's season starts with a 26-voice choir and small orchestra performing major works by Schütz & Buxtehude. Featured soloists include Gitanjali Mathur, Jenifer Thyssen, Shari Alise Wilson, Cayla Cardiff, Nina Revering, Erin Calata, Ryland Angel, Stephanie Prewitt, Paul D'Arcy, Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, David Lopez, Thann Scoggin, Peter Walker, Steve Olivares, and Brett Barnes. The period orchestra includes period strings (violins, viola, and cellos) and a continuo band of theorbo, harp, and organ.

Join us for our opening concert! Glorious and revelatory music
by both Schütz and the composer known to J.S. Bach as Buxte-Dude!

Season Subscriptions and Single Tickets are on sale now!

Summertime, and the livin' is . . .

. . . busy!!!

And way too early we've come to the end of our 2015-2016 season: the Eurotour was a whole lot of work and a whole lot of fun. The music of Iberia, England, the Lowlands, France, and Christmas produced a lot of memorable musical moments. We hope you enjoyed it and are eager to join us for the next season and music from Germany, the Middle East, Italy, and ... Christmas! Season subscriptions are already on sale and there's at least 6 reasons to join us as a subscriber! Get your season subscriptions now! Single tickets are also available online!

Meanwhile, we will be busy with the Texas Toot workshop at Concordia University (June 12-18, with faculty concerts June 14 & June 17), TEMP's tour to San Angelo and environs to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Mount Carmel Hermitage (we're performing a shorter version of last October's Medieval Pilgrimage concert), and the annual trek to New England for the Amherst Early Music Workshop for almost all of July. 

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Speaking of the Medieval Pilgrimage concert, it was nominated as one of the top 5 chamber concerts for the season by the Austin Critics' Table. Also, TEMP was nominated as one of the top ensembles, and we're in good company with La Follia Austin Baroque, ensemble viii, Conspirare, and Line Upon Line Percussion Ensemble! The awards are in a couple of weeks, so we'll keep you informed!

We hope to see you in September (Labor Day weekend) at our Pathways to Bach concert. Below are some audio teasers of what you can expect to hear. These pieces and more are on our Pathways to Bach CD.

Have a good summer and say hi if we run into each other at the air-conditioned movies, the air-conditioned grocery store, or the air-conditioned air conditioner store! 

-Danny

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

I would trade my beret for a café au lait

Or is it the other way around?

Ok, Dutch Treat was so much fun! Scary, but fun. All those cognates and words that look like they should be pronounced German style but they definitely shouldn't! Now it's on to Paris. There really is a story about the night train from Amsterdam to Paris—and maybe it'll appear on these pages before the concert...or maybe not! 

Anyway, what with our school concert at the TSVBI and taxes and preparations for next year and the Tallis Scholars [I'm sure you're all going to that!] and grant applications, it's a busy, busy week: So back to work for me!

More soon! 
-Danny

Paris City Limits: Chansons, Dances, and The Birds

Saturday, May 7, 2016 at 8PM
University Presbyterian Church, 2203 San Antonio Street

Sunday, May 8, 2016 at 3PM
First Presbyterian Church, 8001 Mesa Drive

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.

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

What better place to finish our 2015-2016 Eurotour than in Paris? Renowned for its popular music of France from the 16th and 17th centuries, Paris City Limits regales audiences with exciting dances, popular folksongs, dazzling chansons, and heartfelt songs of love and melancholy by the masters and by some relative unknowns!

Click on the birds!

There will be intimate chansons which deal with scenes of daily life: lovesickness, marital arguments, romantic friskiness, and more, and TEMP’s 19-voice chorus will perform large scale motets by masters such as Jean Mouton (Nesciens mater, for 8 parts) and Janequin’s spectacular musical chanson about the birds (Le chant des oyseaux) as well.

Lively dances by Attaignant and others feature our special guest artists Mary Springfels (viola da gamba), Peter Maund (percussion), and exhilarating Breton folk music rounds out the concert (yes, Cayla Cardiff will sing that song) as TEMP explores both the rustic and the sophisticated sides of Parisian and country life in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Our featured singers include countertenor Ryland Angel (New York), mezzo Erin Calata (Seattle), TEMP regulars Jenifer Thyssen, Meredith Ruduski, Cayla Cardiff, Stephanie Prewitt, Jeffrey Jones-Ragona, Thann Scoggin, Gil Zilkha, and more. The instrumental ensemble features our guest artists, as well as harpist Therese Honey, violinist Bruce Colson, our viol consort (Jane Leggiero, Stephanie Raby, John Walters), recorders (Susan Richter & Victor Eijkhout), and lutenist Scott Horton.

Venez, y’all!

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