This list of residency activities, connected to specific concert programs, is the core of our outreach offerings

HESPERUS’ mission is to educate as well as entertain, and workshops, master class, informances and lecture demos have been a part of the group’s offerings for more than three decades. HESPERUS members have presented award-winning educational programs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American History Museum, at Long Beach, California’s annual Smithsonian week, at the Carmel Bach Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, at a host of colleges and universities from Maine to Hawaii, and for twenty years throughout the Washington, DC area for the Washington Performing Arts’ Concerts in Schools program.

To present to the public, through concert presentations, 1) the aspect of performance of historic musics that is constructed through ideas of history and culture, and 2) a performative approach to early music based on improvisation and cross-cultural influence.
To interact with members of the local community to make music of the past come alive.

HESPERUS can offer a variety of sessions with students of all ages as well as community members, musicians and non-musicians alike: lecture-demonstrations, open rehearsals, instrument demonstrations, seminars, school assemblies, and various hands-on workshops.
We can present program-specific or general residency activities. Program-specific activities are suggested below.

HESPERUS Director Tina Chancey supervises the residency activities. Dr. Chancey has a PhD in Musicology from The Union Institute, an M.A. in Performance from Queens College, and an M.A. in Musicology from New York University. Under her guidance, HESPERUS was the first group awarded the first winner of the Logan Chamber Music Award for Outstanding Educational Programming. In 2008 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Early Music America for her Educational programs.

American Roots: Music from the arrival of the Pilgrims to the founding of the Republic
3 players: Tina Chancey, fiddle, viol; Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano; Grant Herreid, lutes, early guitar, tenor singer
Possible sessions: 

• Lecture/demo: Colonial or Renaissance? Musical transformations of a pioneer culture
• Workshop: Dance and song in the 17th century: What’s a Play Party?
• Improvisation workshop: The Broadside ballad as audio newspaper: Create your own!
• Lecture: The Celtic Connection: the Scots-Irish in the American Colonies

Celtic Roots: Scots-Irish traditional music from the earliest written sources
3 players: Tina Chancey, fiddle, viol; Grant Herreid, lutes, early guitar; Elke Baker, Scottish fiddle
Possible sessions: 

• Lecture/demo: Scottish, Irish, English or American? A saga of musical borrowing
• Workshop in Scottish fiddle styles
• Workshop: The oral tradition: a game of musical telephone
• Workshop: Divisions on a ground, from Greensleeves to Heart and Soul

 Luminous Spirit: The chant of Hildegard von Bingen
3 players: Tina Chancey, vielle, rebec kamenc, lyra; Ruth Cunningham, recorders, harp, soprano; Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano
Possible sessions: 

• Lecture: Hildegard von Bingen, mystic, mathematician, artist and musician
• Lecture/demo: Chant and instruments, a new approach
• Workshop for singers: Singing chant

Spain in the New World: the confluence of European, Native American, and Black musics in New Spain
4 players: Tina Chancey, viola da gamba, baroque violin; Tom Zajac, recorders; Grant Herreid, lutes, vihuela, renaissance guitar; Rosa Lamoreaux, soprano
With possible guests: Andes Manta: Andean musicians
Possible sessions:

• Lecture/demo: Native American and Black influences in the music of New Spain
• Workshop: singing in dialects (Old Spanish, Quechua, Nahuatl, Chilidugu, Mixtec)
• Lecture/demo: Arranging early/traditional music

For No Good Reason at All: A fusion of European medieval music with American traditional old time, blues and swing
4 players: Tina Chancey, viola da gamba, vielle, rebec kamenc, lyra, recorder; Bruce Hutton, vocals, vintage banjoes, guitars, mandolin, lap dulcimers, mouth bow; Zan McLeod, guitar, bazouki; Molly Andrews, vocals, lap dulcimer
Possible sessions:

• Lecture/demo: Ballads, from Old Time to just plain old
• Lecture/demo: Humor in traditional American music
• Open rehearsal/demo: Creating a fusion, the creative process
• Workshop: Performing for children, a segment of school performance with discussion on techniques for performing for children, geared toward performing musicians

For Robin Hood Activities, see separate sheet.