Alix Evans

Whether singing the soaring chants of Hildegard of Bingen or crafting arrangements of ancient music for historical harps, Alix Evans is dedicated to breathing life back into ancient music.  Early in her artistic career, she was warned away from the music of the middle ages by people who assumed that it would sound too alien to appeal to modern audiences.  Taking that as a challenge, she began to research and recreate the sounds of medieval lays, epics, and polyphonic works.  The experience was a revelation - medieval music proved to be not just aesthetically beautiful, but positively gripping, at once both familiar and captivatingly different.  Alix’s passion is inspiring people through performance of this riveting repertoire, and drawing them into the world of early music through teaching and performance opportunities.

Alix has performed with choirs and ensembles specializing in Early Music across North America.  With the vocal quintet Metal on Pavement, she has performed music from Salomone Rossi to works by living local composers.  As alto section leader in Peabody's NEXT Ensemble (dir. Beth Willer), and as a vocal and harp soloist with the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble (dir. Mark Cudek), she has performed music from the 14th through the 21st centuries.  With the early music ensemble at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she explored approaches to harp accompaniment of troubadour song.  She has performed with choirs specializing in music of the Renaissance in Ottawa, ON and with Illuminare and Brigid’s Circle in Washington DC.

She has produced arrangements for small harp of a number of John Dowland’s lute songs, which were included in the collection “Harpers of the Known World.”  She frequently teaches at events dedicated to life in the middle ages and renaissance on topics such as vocal and harp technique, historical temperaments, and specific artistic cultures, such as troubadours.

During the pandemic, Alix founded “Falsa Musica,” a venue through which avocational singers could gather online while choirs were dark to sing medieval monophonic music - one of the few repertoires that lends itself to group singing over Zoom.  Falsa Music continues to bring singers together across time zones and continents.  Recent recordings include Gregorian chants from the “Song of Songs,” and “Viderunt Omnes,” as well as the ancient Hebrew piyyut  “Ein k’Eloheinu.”  Falsa Musica performs its Gregorian repertoire live over Zoom, and will soon release a recording of Oswald von Wokenstein’s canon “Nu rue mit sorgen.”

Alix has studied at workshops and in private lessons with some of the leading names in medieval music, including Benjamin Bagby, Shira Kammen, Pamela Dellal, and Mauricio Molina.  She holds an MM in historical performance from the Peabody Institute at Johns Hopkins.  She has also studied at Wellesley College and the University of Wisconsin - Madison.