For additional information, contact Jennifer Gillaspie, Special Events Coordinator, at 713.874.6593 or email jgillaspie@catholiccharities.org

2900 Louisiana Street, Houston TX 77006

Ars Lyrica, a 2011 Grammy nominated vocal and instrumental ensemble, performs Baroque and early Classical music on period instruments. Based in Houston, Ars Lyrica serves the local area and tours within Texas and nationally. Its programming favors exceptional works from the 17th and 18th centuries that deserve a broader public.

Founded in 1998 by harpsichordist and musicologist Matthew Dirst and incorporated in 2003 as a 501(c)(3) organization, Ars Lyrica Houston (ALH) offers a yearly series of programs at Houston’s Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, where it is the resident period–instrument ensemble, and also performs regularly at other Houston–area and statewide venues. The ensemble has also toured nationally and has been featured at meetings and conventions of the American Musicological Society, the American Guild of Organists, and other national organizations.

ALH relies on a core group of Houston–area artists and works frequently with guest artists and collaborating ensembles on large–scale programs. Its distinctive programming draws on a rich repertory of chamber and dramatic music for voices and instruments and often examines music’s relationship to larger cultural phenomenon.

Ars Lyrica’s thematically–based programs, according to the Houston Chronicle, “set the agenda for imaginative period-instrument programming in Houston.“ Under Dirst’s direction, ALH has introduced Houston audiences to a number of important Baroque composers, including Alessandro Scarlatti, Marc–Antoine Charpentier, and Johann Adolph Hasse. Ars Lyrica’s numerous Houston premières include Jacopo Peri’s Euridice (the earliest surviving opera), G. F. Handel’s Il Trionfo del Tempo (in its American première), John Blow’s Venus and Adonis (the first English opera) and Claudio Monteverdi’s monumental Vespers of 1610. Ars Lyrica is likewise committed to the continued exploration of later Baroque masterworks, including major works by Bach and Handel, in innovative dramatizations that give new life to even the most familiar scores.