With high-quality artistry and world-class performances, GRAMMY-nominated ensemble Ars Lyrica Houston presents a diverse array of music from the 17th and 18th centuries.
“a stunning mix of music and history” — Houston Chronicle MISSION
Ars Lyrica Houston performs a wide range of Baroque and early Classical era music on instruments that recreate the original sounds of this vibrant repertoire. Its diverse programming, which features neglected gems alongside familiar masterworks, creates a contemporary context for the dramatic potential, emotional resonance, and expressive power of early music. VISION
By making music from the 17th and 18th centuries resonate anew through performances, recordings, and education initiatives, Ars Lyrica seeks to establish Houston as an international destination for period-instrument performance and appreciation of this timeless repertoire. ABOUT
Ars Lyrica Houston (ALH) specializes in music from the Baroque era, the “golden age” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as performed on period instruments and with sensitivity to historical style and context. Founded in Houston in 1998 by harpsichordist and conductor Matthew Dirst and incorporated in 2003 as a 501(c)(3) organization, this Grammy-nominated ensemble provides audiences with world-class performances of a wide range of dramatic, sacred, and chamber works. The early music ensemble-in-residence at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, Ars Lyrica uses period instruments because they produce a sweeter, more intimate sound than their modern equivalents and are better suited to the performance of Baroque music especially. In keeping with the flexible nature of performance during the Baroque age, ALH presents a wide range of music for voices and instruments on its downtown subscription series and in the surrounding area. Ars Lyrica’s thematically-based programs and contemporary dramatizations of Baroque stage works “set the agenda for imaginative period-instrument programming in Houston,” according to the Houston Chronicle, and the ensemble plays regularly at international festivals, including the 2014 Berkeley Early Music Festival & Exhibition, one of the most prestigious festivals of its kind. Under Dirst’s direction ALH brings major artists to Houston on a regular basis and has introduced local and national audiences to important Baroque masterworks. Ars Lyrica’s numerous Houston premières include Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (the first surviving opera), G. Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo e della Verità (in its first American performance), John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (the first English opera) and Claudio Monteverdi’s monumental 1610 Vespers. ALH collaborates regularly with other local organizations on the annual Houston Early Music Festival and has been featured at national meetings and conventions of the American Musicological Society, the American Bach Society, the American Guild of Organists, the Society for 17th-Century Music, and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies. In addition to its concert and recording activities, Ars Lyrica offers a variety of outreach programs that enrich the concert experience and build new audiences for classical music. These include educational programs that reach over 10,000 primary and secondary school students annually, performances at nontraditional venues, lectures, university collaborations, and hands-on training in period instruments and performance practices.
