On Monday April 4, 2011, The Texas Tech Early Music Ensemble will present Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum, one of the first extant medieval dramas with music.  This is a rare event that you will not want to miss--mark your calendars NOW!

Join the TTU Early Music Ensemble for a FREE concert of beautiful music by Monteverdi (and some other Italians!) Sunday evening, November 14th at 7 PM at the Legacy Events Center! Presented by the TTU School of Music with additional support from Caprock Early Music.

This academic year also saw the establishment of the Gamma Ut Early Music Student Organization, which is now going to expand to be the Gamma Ut Musicology Student Organization, representing all the ensembles associated with TTU's Musicology department and Vernacular Music Center (home of TTU's World Music, Early Music, Celtic, and Ragtime Ensembles.) Our profound thanks to Gamma Ut's outgoing President Aaron Michaelson for work and time spent above and beyond the call of duty!

We are saying goodbye this year to a couple of seniors and graduate students who are moving onto the next chapter in their musical careers. Aaron Michaelson and Michelle Jones are both leaving to do their student teaching; and Kelli Rohlman is beginning her PhD at the University of Memphis. We wish them all the best, and we will miss them! 

• March 24, noon: A noontime concert with choral music of Thomas Tallis and William Byrd, performed by members of Texas Tech Early Music Ensemble at St. Paul-On-The-Plains Episcopal Church, 16th and X, Lubbock.


• March 28, 8pm: "Pastime and Prayer: A Musical Voyage through 'Olde' England," Legacy Events Center, 14th and O, Lubbock TX


• April 16: some of our instrumentalists are playing in the "Worlds of Dance" concert and "Dancing with Mr Darcy: Jane Austen Evening" fundraising event at the Legacy Events Center;


• April 18: some of our singers are taking part in the "Maritime Celts" concert at the Legacy

Plus school presentations, fundraising activities with our brand new Gamma Ut Early Music Student Organization, and more!!

On January 15th we welcomed Benjamin Bagby and Norbert Rodenkirchen of the world-renowned medieval ensemble Sequentia to the Legacy Events Center in Lubbock, where they performed their program "Fragments for the End of Time." Ben Bagby also guest-lectured at the first meeting of Prof. Mariani's Medieval Music Seminar.

Benjamin Bagby is one of the world's foremost scholar-performers of medieval music. The combination of singing, storytelling, harping, and sheer magic that he brings to his performances are legendary in the world of early music. Norbert Rodenkirchen is a master soloist and improviser on a variety of early flutes. Their concert program was a collection of dramatic, beautiful, and powerful medeival songs and tales exploring apocalyptic visions of the End of Days and the Last Judgement.  The historical instruments used by Bagby and Rodenkirchen included reconstructions of Germanic harps (based on 7th century instruments from Oberflacht, near Stuttgart), an early medieval triangular harp, and copies of medieval transverse flutes (including a flute made from a swan’s bone, based on an 11th century instrument unearthed near Speyer).