Schola Antiqua is a Chicago-based professional early music collective, which prepares and performs insightful programs of pre-modern music. A group that executes ancient repertories with “sensitivity and style” (Early Music America), Schola Antiqua takes pride in providing the highest standards of performance, informed by research on historical musics from the European Renaissance and earlier. Founded in 2000, the organization has received invitations to perform from a remarkable array of institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Morgan Library & Museum, the Newberry Library, plus other festivals, universities, and concert series across the country. The ensemble is currently Artist-in-Residence at the Lumen Christi Institute and formerly a resident artist at the University of Chicago.
In 2012, Schola Antiqua received the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for outstanding contributions to historical performing practice. Its connections to the academic community can be seen in collaborations with scholars from around the United States. The ensemble has recorded music accompanying Theodore Karp’s Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper, 1590-1890 (American Institute of Musicology, 2005) and Margot Fassler’s Music in the Medieval West (W.W. Norton, 2013). It has further provided live and recorded music in connection with major art exhibitions around the United States.
Schola Antiqua has released four commercial CDs on the Naxos of America and Discantus labels. Much of this music had not seen a modern recording. The group’s music has aired on the national broadcasts of With Heart and Voice, Harmonia, and Millennium of Music, and has been widely reviewed. Culture Catch named Schola Antiqua’s 2014 recording Missa Conceptio tua (Naxos) one of the year’s best classical albums of that year. BBC Music Magazine placed the ensemble’s “Tiding True” concerts among the top 20 recommended music performances in the United States for December 2012, and the group was nominated for “Best Classical Group” of 2020 by the Chicago Reader.
