On Sunday, January 20th at 4:00 p.m., USF music professor John Robison will present a program of 
solo music for the Renaissance lute, the Baroque theorbo, and the Baroque archlute; he will be 
joined by guest artist Maggie Coleman for some English and Italian lute songs.  The first portion of the 
concert will be devoted to lute music written between c. 1580 and 1620, the period towards the end 
of the Renaissance when lute music becomes particularly complex in style.  This part of the program 
will feature music for the highly distinctive ten-course late Renaissance lute, including music by 
various composers from England, Germany Italy, and the Netherlands. For this portion of the program 
Dr. Robison will be performing on a ten-course lute with nineteen strings, an instrument that was 
especially popular with early seventeenth-century composers.  Several Elizabethan lute songs will be 
included on the program, along with seventeenth-century Italian songs performed with either a large 
fourteen-course theorbo or with the archlute.  The final portion of the program will feature Dr. Robison 
performing on the Baroque theorbo and archlute, both of them large instruments with two necks and 
fourteen courses that were immensely popular during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. 
 The demanding theorbo and archlute portion of the program will include toccatas, ballettos, 
correntes, and variations by early seventeenth-century Italian masters (Alessandro Piccinini, Pietro 
Paolo Melii, Giovanni Kapsberger), as well as a sonata by one of the last composers for the archlute, 
the early eighteenth-century master Giovanni Zamboni. 

	The most active lutenist in the state of Florida, John Robison received his doctoral degree 
in early music from Stanford University in 1975, where he studied with George Houle, Imogene 
Horsley, William Mahrt, Stanley Buetens, and Leonard Ratner.  Dr. Robison joined the music faculty 
at the University of South Florida in 1977, where he is currently a Professor of Musicology and 
Director of Early Music Ensembles in the School of Music.  A versatile musician who performs 
regularly on plucked string, bowed string, and woodwind instruments, he has done numerous solo 
Renaissance lute recitals over the past thirty-nine years, and also performs regularly on the viola da 
gamba, Renaissance/Baroque recorders, Renaissance double reeds (shawm, rackett, curtal), 
Baroque oboe, and modern oboe/english horn.  As a performer and as a scholar he has appeared 
throughout the United States, Canada, England, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, Australia, China 
and South Korea.  An active researcher, he often selects the repertory for his lute recitals from 
European lute manuscripts that he examines in person.  His articles and books have been published 
in the United States, Europe and Asia, and he has received numerous grants for his work on 
Renaissance/Baroque music and for his research on contemporary intercultural composers.  His 
research interests include Renaissance lute music, German Renaissance composers, early 
performance practices, and the seventeenth-century fugue.  He also specializes in the music of 
contemporary African and Asian composers (Egypt, Nigeria, Azerbaijan, India, China, South Korea), 
and his long-awaited book on Korean Women Composers and Their Music was published in 2012. 
And in addition, he has never once been arrested for luting!!!