Thursday, April 30, 5:15 p.m.

The University of New Mexico Early Music Ensemble, directed by Colleen Sheinberg

"Musical Visions in the Medieval World"

Medieval composers have given us visions of sin and worldly vices, visions of beauty, and visions of the divine and the hereafter. This concert will present music from a variety of medieval sources, including the Cantigas de Santa María, the Llibre Vermell, and the Roman de Fauvel, as well as songs by visionary composers Hildegard of Bingen and English hermit St. Godric. The UNM Early Music Ensemble is a class in which students learn to play period instruments in order to better understand how music from earlier times would have sounded to contemporary listeners. This concert marks the fourth time the ensemble has performed as part of the Medieval Spring Lecture Series.

Performers

• Mandy Brown—voice, flute, recorders, percussion
  
• Bill Burns—voice, recorders, dulcimer, percussion
  
• Yuval Carmi—voice, recorders, percussion
  
• Gwen Easterday—voice, organ, hurdy gurdy, harp, percussion
  
• Zack Kear—voice, harp, organ, recorders, saz, percussion
  
• Elena Maietta—voice, vielle, viola da gamba, percussion
  
• Rikk Murphy—voice, vielle, recorder, viola da gamba, percussion
  
• Don Partridge—voice, recorders, percussion
  
• Colleen Sheinberg—voice, recorders, vielle, viola da gamba, percussion
  
• Krystal Tuning—voice, rebec, vielle, percussion
  
• Kathy Wimmer—voice, harp, saz, recorder
  

Colleen Sheinberg is a lecturer in early music performance at the University of New Mexico Department of Music, where she has been involved in directing the UNM Early Music Ensemble since 1995. In addition to coaching the Early Music Ensemble, Ms. Sheinberg is also a founding member and director of the acclaimed professional early music group, Música Antigua de Albuquerque. Música Antigua performs regularly in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and has given guest performances throughout the state. The group has also performed by invitation on the PSALM concert series in Houston and on the Early Music Now! series in Milwaukee and was the recipient of the Albuquerque Arts Alliance's 2002 Bravo Award for Excellence in Music. Ms. Sheinberg has recorded three CDs with Música Antigua (including two on the Dorian label of New York): A Rose of Swych Virtu, The Sport of Love, and Music to the Max: Music at the Court of Maximilian I.

Barbara Newman

"Love Was His Meaning: A Dramatic Performance Based on the Writings of Julian of Norwich"

Julian of Norwich (1342–ca. 1416) is medieval England's most famous visionary and the first known female author in the English language. She recorded the fruit of her visions, the Revelation of Love, after living for years as an anchoress in a cell attached to the church of St. Julian at Norwich in eastern England. Her book reveals her to be a profound and daring theologian—writing of the Trinity in domestic terms, for example, and comparing Jesus to a mother who is wise, loving, and merciful. Barbara Newman will bring Julian's career and influence to life through a multimedia performance that will offer an extraordinary climax to this year's lecture series. She will present readings from the Revelation interspersed with other medieval texts, liturgical chants, images from Julian's visual and artistic world, and modern poems about the mystic, in order to convey an in-depth portrait of the woman to whom Christ promised, as she lay dying in May 1373, that "all shall be well, and thou shalt see thyself that all manner of thing shall be well." Professor Newman will be assisted by actors Bill Burns and Kathy Wimmer, and by a plainchant choir featuring members of Música Antigua de Albuquerque: Hovey Dean Corbin, Jr., Dennis Davies-Wilson, Ruth Helgeson, David McGuire, and Colleen Sheinberg.

Barbara Newman is Professor of English, Religion, and Classics and John Evans Professor of Latin at Northwestern University. She is widely recognized as an international expert on female religious figures of the Middle Ages and their mystical and visionary experience. She has held Fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, and is a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her many influential books include Sister of Wisdom: St. Hildegard's Theology of the Feminine (1987); From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature (1995); Voice of the Living Light: Hildegard of Bingen and Her World (1998); and God and the Goddesses: Vision, Poetry, and Belief in the Middle Ages (2003). The last-mentioned title recently received the Medieval Academy of America's Charles H. Haskins Medal, which recognizes especially significant and innovative publications in the field of Medieval Studies.