On Monday, February 13th at 7:30 p.m., USF music professor John Robison will present a program of solo music for the Renaissance lute 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 from British 
manuscript sources by composers Robert Johnson and Daniel Bacheler.  Late Renaissance music from Italy (Alfonso Ferrabosco I), Germany (Elias Mertel, Matthaeus Reymann), and the Netherlands 
(Nicholas Vallet) will also be represented on the program.  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 by Thomas Campion and John Dowland will be included on the program, along with early seventeenth-century 
Italian songs by Giulio Caccini performed with a large fourteen-course theorbo.  The final portion of the program will feature Dr. Robison performing on the Baroque archlute, a large instrument with two 
necks and fourteen courses that was immensely popular during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.  The demanding archlute portion of the program will include toccatas, ballettos, and 
correntes 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 program will conclude with a secular cantata by the late seventeenth-century composer Alessandro Stradella.  All types of solo instrumental popular 
during the Renaissance/Baroque will be included on the program, including preludes, stylized dance music, variations, and fantasias.  The program, which will be held in the School of Music recital hall, 
is free and open to the public.  

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-six 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 has a book devoted to Korean women composers scheduled for publication in 2012.  A scholarly edition of the complete works of German Renaissance composer Jacob Meiland is also expected to 
appear in 2012.  In addition, he was the program chair for the 2011 international conference of the College Music Society.

Guest artist/soprano Maggie Coleman is a native of Puerto Rico, where she studied at the Conservatorio de Musica before earning her B.M. degree in vocal performance from Iowa State 
University.  A resident of Tampa since 1987, she is the soloist and section leader at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, and has appeared as a soloist for the Sarasota Choral Society, Tampa Bay 
Performing Arts Center, Master Chorale, Oratorio Society of Tampa, and the Mostly Pops Orchestra.  Also a cantor at Nativity Catholic Church, she has performed supporting roles with Tampa Bay Opera, 
and leading roles with the Spanish Lyric Theater.