Texas Early Music Project

Go Spurs 🪽 🏀

Thank you so much to everyone who bought tickets to and supported our 2025-2026 artistic season, Love Letters from Texas Early Music Project ❤️‍🔥🌹

It was truly special to share this music with you, and to continue performing Early Music in the Austin community! Your unwavering support in our fall and spring fundraisers also allowed us to give raises to our musicians, much needed since the pandemic. Thank you so much!

✨✨✨It’s the last days to vote ✨✨✨ for TEXAS EARLY MUSIC PROJECT Best of Austin Readers Poll!!

Show your love for TEMP by selecting us for Best Classical Musician or Ensemble ❤️🌹 Link in bio or stories to access the ballot ~~

Happy Mother’s Day from Texas Early Music Project, whether your child is a baby, a full-grown human, or, in the case of many Italian Baroque portrait sitters…. a dog! 🐕❤️‍🔥 Thank you to all mothers out there sustaining & giving deep love!

It’s here! ❤️🎻🪈🪉🩷 The Austin Chronicle’s Best of Austin 2026 is open and live for FINALS VOTING!

Texas Early Music Project is nominated in the Classical Musician or Ensemble Category. Voting in the finalist round runs May 7-18th until 11:59pm. You can also leave a note when you vote! Tell the Austin Chronicle what you love about TEMP and it might be published in their June 19th Best of Austin issue. Not only is voting fun, but it gets the word out about our Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical offerings for those new to the music ~

Link in our bio or stories to vote 🗳️

Happy Earth Day 🍊🐦‍⬛ It’s always a good day to play early music & sing under the shade of a beautiful fruit tree ~ Musicians have taken their inspiration from nature since time immemorial. While TEMP often performs in churches, the outdoors are also a devotional space in their own right 🤎

We can’t wait to see everyone at the Purcell show tomorrow night, 7:30pm! Redeemer Presbyterian! You can still purchase tickets at the link in our bio, or visit early-music.org ⏳🕯️

Last chance to purchase tickets! PURCELL. HENRY PURCELL: A license to trill 🌹💜

Saturday, April 18th at 7:30pm
Sunday, April 19th at 3:00pm
Redeemer Presbyterian Church, Austin 78722

English opera owes its existence to French masques of the early-17th century, which were “anglicized” by British playwrights and composers and quickly became popular with the English court. Although the theaters in England were closed during the period of the English Commonwealth (1649–1660), they quickly revived and flourished after the Restoration (c. 1660). John Blow composed the first English-language opera (Venus and Adonis) in about 1682, but it is Henry Purcell (1659–1695) who gave the real momentum and art to this genre in England. Today, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas is the best-known English opera of the era.

Come hear the Texas Early Music Project perform some of Purcell’s most beloved works this weekend at Redeemer Presbyterian Church! Link in bio, or visit early-music.org ~

Image: Henry Purcell’s “O solitude” with annotation claiming that the piece is in Purcell’s hand, in Songs and Duets of Dr. Blow and Henry Purcell [1669-1700], Library of Congress.

Rare collage of Henry Purcell portraits, featuring one that does not belong. Can you guess which man is merely posing??? Also, come hear our Purcell concerts next Saturday, April 18th & Sunday, April 19th at Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin 💜 Link in bio to purchase tickets, or visit early-music.org

Musician Spotlight: Joel Nesvadba 🌹

This week, we talk to TEMP’s very own baritone, Joel Nesvadba! Joel first started singing with TEMP over 20 years ago ~

“I’m from Fort Worth, Texas. Then moved to Austin to go to UT, and in 2008 I moved to Los Angeles to study early music at USC. I moved back to Austin in 2021 to work for the Austin Symphony Orchestra, and I’m so happy to be back in Austin!”

Joel says that “special” is one of the first words he always uses to describe TEMP to other people, and that Danny fosters a great community of amazing and kind musicians. “Equally special is Danny’s concert programming,” he adds.

We asked him to tell us a little about his master’s thesis, too: “‘The Authenticity of Song: Rhetoric and Performance Practice in the Music of the Troubadours’ analyzes troubadour songs through the lens of the Five Canons of Rhetoric. I intended for it to function as a manual for how to perform troubadour songs and discuss issues of authenticity in modern performances of medieval music.”