UMBC Collegium

The Department of Music presents the UMBC Collegium Musicum under the direction of Lindsay Johnson.

The Closeted, the Converted, and the Steadfast explores Early Modern European composers whose personal religious identities required complex political and social negotiations. The program features a diverse array of musicians: a secretly Jewish composer whose family “converted” and fled the Portuguese Inquisition, a Roman Catholic in Protestant England whose religious identity was an open secret, a famed Italian composer with special permission not to wear the Star of David that would proclaim his Jewishness, a German Lutheran educated by Catholic mentors, and a French Catholic composer drawn to the classical mythologies of Ancient Greece. Come hear their stories and listen to their music.

The UMBC Collegium Musicum explores and performs vocal and instrumental music from Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods, sampling musical repertoires created between 800 and 1750. Under the direction of Lindsay Johnson, the Collegium plays on historical instruments from the Department of Music’s collection — recorder, crumhorn, racket, cornetto, shawm, harp, guitar, drum, chamber organ, harpsichord, and Baroque violin, viola, cello, and gambas on loan from the Viola da Gamba Society of America.