Texas

Harris County

Houston

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Mission

Embracing a historically informed perspective, Ars Lyrica Houston seeks to harness the continued vitality and expressive power of classical music to engage, educate, and entertain diverse audiences in Houston and around the world.


Vision

Ars Lyrica seeks to establish Houston as an international destination city for imaginative, world-class performances of early music, including fully-staged Baroque operas. 

About

Ars Lyrica Houston specializes in music from the Baroque era, the “golden age” of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as performed on period instruments with careful attention 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.

ALH offers a downtown subscription series and multiple outreach programs in community venues and schools while cultivating a dedicated core of local period-instrument specialists and singers. Ars Lyrica also makes commercial recordings that bring international attention to Houston’s thriving early music scene. Employing local instrumentalists and singers alongside guest artists, ALH has cultivated a growing pool of early music specialists and a broad audience demographic in the Houston area. Its impact also stretches beyond Houston, enhancing the city’s cultural standing: international recognition of Ars Lyrica recordings and performances, including reviews in leading publications and a Grammy nomination for Best Opera 2011, affirm the organization’s mission and programming priorities. ALH has also appeared at major international early music festivals and at annual conventions and meetings that bring to Houston leading scholars and musicians from around the world.  
 
Ars Lyrica has grown steadily to support more ambitious programming, of a type that few American organizations regularly present. ALH has introduced local audiences to ballets by Claudio Monteverdi, chamber operas by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, comic intermezzi by Domenico Scarlatti, and major though little-known works by Bach and Handel. Its oratorio series has so far included three modern world premieres, the first oratorio composed in the Americas, both of Handel’s Italian oratorios, and six of Handel’s English oratorios, the latter in collaboration with leading Texas choirs. During the 2018/19 season, ALH inaugurated its new biennial Baroque opera series with a widely praised production of Handel’s Agrippina. Its online audience has increased dramatically over the last three seasons through an active social media presence. Subscription programs are also available via live-feed streaming on our YouTube channel.

Houston, United States

Ars Lyrica Houston

Orchestra

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2024

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include virtual contributors

2025

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J.S. Bach, “Gesegnete Christen” duet from Erwünschtes Freudenlicht, BWV 184/2
from the broadcast of Comfort & Joy
December 18, 2020 at 7:30 pm

This festive holiday program includes seasonal favorites alongside seldom-heard gems of the Baroque era, all with abundant vocal and instrumental display. 

Scarlatti’s celebrated cantata, written for a festive 1711 Christmas Eve entertainment in Rome, proclaims a universal message of hope and expectation. Vivaldi’s most inventive psalm setting, along with a tuneful Telemann concerto and some lively French noëls, complete this multi-national holiday gift for the Ars Lyrica family.

Camille Ortiz, soprano
Cecilia Duarte, mezzo-soprano
Colin St-Martin, traverso
Stephanie Noori, violin
Maria Lin, violin
Yvonne Smith, viola
Eric Smith, cello
Arash Noori, theorbo & guitar
Jesús Pacheco Mánuel, percussion
Matthew Dirst, harpsichord & artistic director

Video and audio by BEND Productions, LLC

Special thanks to St Philip Presbyterian Church for hosting our Fall 2020 broadcast programs.

J.S. Bach, “Gesegnete Christen” duet from Erwünschtes Freudenlicht, BWV 184/2

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