USF music professor John Robison will present a program of solo music for the Renaissance lute and the Baroque archlute.  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.  The latter portion of the program will feature Dr. Robison in his debut on the Baroque archlute, a large instrument with two necks and fourteen courses (twenty-eight strings) that was immensely popular during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.  The archlute portion of the program will include toccatas, ballettos, and correntes by early seventeenth-century Italian masters (Alessandro Piccinini, Giovanni Kapsberger), as well as a sonata by one of the last composers for the archlute, the early eighteenth-century master Giovanni Zamboni.  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 Barness 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 an Associate 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 2011.  A scholarly 

edition of the complete works of German Renaissance composer Jacob Meiland is also expected to appear in 2011.  In addition, he is also the program chair for the 2011 international conference of the 

College Music Society.