Schola Antiqua of Chicago

Schola Antiqua of Chicago is a professional American early music ensemble based in Chicago, Illinois. The group specializes in vocal music before the year 1600 and is the 2012 winner of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, an award that recognizes "outstanding contributions to historical performing practices." In 2006-7, Schola Antiqua served as Artist in Residence at the University of Chicago, and the group currently holds an artistic residency at the Lumen Christi Institute. Schola Antiqua of Chicago performs mainly in Chicago but has also presented concerts around the United States. The choir is under the artistic direction of Michael Alan Anderson from the Eastman School of Music.

Founded in 2000, Schola Antiqua of Chicago states that its mission is to provide audiences with the highest standards of research, performance, and education involving many under-served repertories in the pre-modern canon of western vocal music. Led by scholars in the field of early music, the organization develops programs with works that are not only seldom heard, but often newly transcribed for performance. Frequently, the ensemble presents pieces that have been the subject of academic scholarship in the field of early music.

Calvin M. Bower, Professor Emeritus of the University of Notre Dame and currently a researcher at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, was the Artistic Director of Schola Antiqua from its inception until 2008. Bower specializes in the history of the medieval sequence. Consequently, Schola Antiqua's programs in the early years often included Notker’s sequences and other monophonic settings. The ensemble’s second Artistic Director, Michael Alan Anderson, more broadly researches the role of plainchant and polyphony in devotion, ritual, and political cultures of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Some of Anderson's research agenda is likewise embedded in the ensemble’s past and current programming. He is the winner of Chorus America's Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal for his work with Schola Antiqua.

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