About the Schola
Since its founding in 2001, the Schola Antiqua has received invitations to perform at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, the University of Chicago, the University Notre Dame, the Chicago Cultural Center, and Chicago's Newberry Library. In 2005, the Schola recorded the accompanying CD for a book by Northwestern University professor emeritus Theodore Karp entitled Introduction to the Post-Tridentine Mass Proper, 1590-1890 and published in 2006 by the American Institute of Musicology. The Schola recorded a similar CD for a book released by Notre Dame Press in 2007 on the history of the medieval sequence, written by the former director of the Schola, Calvin M. Bower. The Schola continues to perform and record on a regular basis.
The mission of the Schola is to promote an understanding of early liturgical music through: (1) performance of musical repertory presented in the highest standards of professional musicianship; (2) research into the primary sources of the repertory, namely medieval manuscripts dating from the ninth through the fifteenth centuries, and preparation of scholarly editions of the music appropriate to performance by the group; and (3) education concerning this significant body of musical repertory through innovative programming and publications.
The Schola is a registered not-for-profit organization.
About the Artistic Director
Michael Alan Anderson was named Artistic Director of Schola Antiqua of Chicago in 2008, following the retirement of its founding Artistic Director, Calvin M. Bower, a medieval musicologist and emeritus faculty member from the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Anderson is a founding member of the ensemble and currently serves on the faculty of the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester as an Assistant Professor of Musicology, specializing in music of the late Middle Ages.
As a conductor, Dr. Anderson was the Assistant Director of the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel Choir from 2001-2005 and the University Chorus at the University of Chicago. He was the student conductor of the all-male Notre Dame Glee Club and has appeared with the ensemble as a guest conductor in recent years. As a church musician, he has directed children’s choirs in Chicago and South Bend, Indiana. Besides his performances with Schola Antiqua of Chicago, Dr. Anderson sang baritone with the Chicago Symphony Chorus for three concert seasons, under the batons of Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Krzysztof Penderecki, Zubin Mehta, Christoph Eschenbach, Mstislav Rostropovich, and others in venues from Orchestra Hall and the Ravinia Festival in Chicago to Carnegie Hall and the Berlin Philharmonic. In addition to numerous engagements as a professional church musician in Chicago, he has received invitations to sing with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Seraphic Fire (Miami), the St. Cecilia Consort (Chicago).
Dr. Anderson received his Ph.D. in the History and Theory of Music at the University of Chicago with a dissertation on symbolism in late medieval music for John the Baptist and St. Anne. He specializes in a wide range of issues related to western liturgical music from the central Middle Ages through the early sixteenth century. Awards include the Alvin H. Johnson American Musicological Society 50 Dissertation-Year Fellowship, the Whiting Foundation Fellowship (University of Chicago), the Grace Frank Grant (Medieval Academy of America), and several travel and research grants. His essay on the hymn cycle of the manuscript Bologna Q 15 was published in Studi musicali in 2006, and he edited an essay that appeared in the proceedings of a conference on Obadiah the Proselyte in 2004. Anderson has also presented papers at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), the Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference, the national and local chapter meetings of the American Musicological Society, the International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo), and the Forum for Music and Christianity. At the Eastman School of Music, he has taught surveys on music before 1750 and several graduate seminar-type courses on music from the Middle Ages to the present.
About the Staff
Julie P. Brubaker has served as the Executive Director and Board Member of the Schola Antiqua since its inception in 2001. Ms. Brubaker has an impressive background in Non-Profit Leadership, and has served as a non-profit management consultant at Deloitte & Touche as well as the Director of Information Technology at the Field Museum in Chicago. Currently, Ms. Brubaker is the head of Brubaker Consulting, an executive technology and strategy consulting firm dedicated to Non-Profits, Museums, and Universities.
Matthew Charles Dean has served as Manager and Board Member of the Schola Antiqua of Chicago since 2005, after joining the ensemble in 2002. A founding member of Golosá Russian Choir, Dean toured and conducted ethnographic recordings in Germany and southern Siberia, performed with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, and sung at the Ravinia Festival and University of Chicago Folk Festival. He has been a featured vocalist and early music instrumentalist with the St. Cecilia Consort, Chicago Choral Artists, and McKenna Ensemble, and at many Chicagoland parishes including St. John Cantius, St. Clement, St. Peter’s in the Loop, and First United Church of Oak Park. In 2008, he sang the title role of Carissimi’s Jephte at the Chicago Humanities Festival in partnership with the Oriana Singers. Dean is soloist-in-residence at the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, where his performances have ranged from the bass role of Jesus in the Bach St. John Passion to tenor soloist for Handel’s Messiah and the world premiere of Sven-David Sandström’s cantata, Wachet Auf (2009).
At the University of Chicago, his alma mater, Dean is Associate Director for Organization Research, with a special focus on arts initiatives. He has facilitated the University’s composer commissioning program, which has brought new choral works by William Bolcom, Marta Ptaszynska, and Sven-David Sandström to Rockefeller Chapel and its magnificently-restored E.M. Skinner pipe organ. Dean’s academic background is in anthropology and art history, with concentrations in the religious architecture of Spain and the Colonial New World, museum studies, and folklore. He serves as board member and advisor to Harran Productions Foundation dedicated to fostering interreligious dialogue and mutual understanding through explorations of sacred sound.
