Ascoli Ensemble

Past Events

MIT Community Performance
October 12, 2011
Lobby 10

Chapel Concert
October 13, 2011

Class Visits
Introduction to Western Music
October 12, 2011

Class Visit to Early Music Seminar
October 13, 2011

Michael Cuthbert, Associate Professor in the MIT Department of Music and Theater Arts

The Ascoli Ensemble The Netherlands-based vocal ensemble focused on bringing to light rare and unknown pieces of medieval music, with a particular emphasis on music from the years 1350 to 1450. Each singer is both a specialist of early music performance and a scholar, contributing to the ensemble’s musicological work of deciphering, transcribing and interpreting medieval manuscript sources. Artistic director Sasha Zamler-Carhart is a Professor of Medieval Music and Latin at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague.

The Ascoli Ensemble performs two concerts during their residency at MIT. The first concert features monodic pieces and relatively simple polyphony. The second concert, at MIT’s ethereal chapel designed by Eero Saarinen, explores more complex polyphony.

The Ascoli Ensemble is a six-singer vocal ensemble specializing in rare music of the Middle Ages. The ensemble gained international fame in 2009 for their reconstruction and world premiere concert of the Ascoli Piceno fragments, a newly discovered source of 14th-century polyphony after which the ensemble is named.

Learn more about the Ascoli Ensemble.

Presented by the Visiting Artists Program, Music and Theater Arts, Fonds Podiumkunsten, Performing Arts Fund NL, and Istituto Superiore di Studi Medievali “Cecco d’Ascoli.”

Issue Project Room: Ergodos + Ekmeles + Ascoli Ensemble

Seen and Heard International: Three Vocal Ensembles in Music Spanning a Millennium

Ekmeles: Tuning – Vertical vs. Horizontal

The Fenway News Online: MIT Visiting Artists Program and the Music and Theater Arts Section Announce Two Concerts by the Ascoli Ensemble