Teaching

Along with his extensive concertizing, Robert Mealy is deeply committed to education. He has taught and lectured on period performance practices, historical techniques, rhetoric, and improvisation at Columbia, Brown, Yale, Rutgers, Oberlin, and UC Berkeley. His talk at Columbia in celebration of Corelli's anniversary may be found online here.

Mr. Mealy is a Lecturer at Yale College, where he directs the Yale Collegium. He has worked intensively with both undergraduate and graduate instrumentalists and vocalists for the last five years, creating programs ranging from medieval through modern, all drawn from the riches of the Beinecke Library. In April 2006, the Collegium revived a tradition begun by its founder, Paul Hindemith, and presented its music at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. This year, the Collegium has explored music of the trouvères and the rich musical traditions of 18c America; in the spring, the Collegium will focus on the Beinecke’s rich holdings in 17c German literature and music.

Mr. Mealy’s undergraduate and graduate players also perform regularly with the Yale Schola Cantorum. Their projects have resulted in sold-out performances in both New Haven and New York, including a recent week-long intensive Bach project with Helmuth Rilling. Several of these live performances have since appeared as critically-acclaimed cds: Biber’s Vesperae and Bertali’s Missa Resurrectionis. Soon to follow will be a live concert cd of Bach's Johannes-Passion in the 1725 version. He has also organized fully-staged productions of baroque opera at Yale, notably Handel’s Giulio Cesare and Purcell’s Dido.

Beginning next year, Mr. Mealy will offer a course in musical rhetoric for instrumentalists at Yale, exploring the vivid and passionate musical language of the 17th and 18th centuries. He will also be closely with a new Early Opera Initiative at Yale, serving as music director for productions of stage works by Monteverdi, Cavalli, and others.

Since 1995 he has directed the Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, based at The Memorial Church in Harvard Yard—one of the only undergraduate baroque orchestras in America. The orchestra has collaborated with distinguished early music figures such as William Christie, Christopher Hogwood, Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrott, and Joel Cohen, and has collectively improvised with Bobby McFerrin to a packed audience at Sanders Theater. Last year the orchestra performed Bach harpsichord concerti with Ton Koopman and Mozart piano concerti with Robert Levin, and worked intensively with French baroque specialist William Christie. This year has already featured a concert of new music for old instruments (including works specially composed for the concert by Harvard graduates and undergraduates) and an inaugural concert of the new Klopp chamber organ at the Memorial Church; in the spring, the orchestra will perform Handel’s Alexander’s Feast with the University Choir.

Mr. Mealy also serves as advisor to the Harvard Early Music Society, which has produced a fully-staged Baroque opera annually for the last ten years. Since its inception, the Society has produced Monteverdi’s Orfeo and Poppaea, Cavalli’s Giasone and Orontea, Handel’s Acis and Galatea, Purcell’s Fairy Queen and Dido and Aeneas, Bonocini’s Triumphs of Camilla, and Charpentier’s Actéon and Les Plaisirs de Versailles. (Mr. Mealy music-directed this last production, which earned an invitation to perform at Versailles.) According to the Boston Globe, “this group bears watching: it is serious, funny, and smart.”

In 2004, for his work with both Harvard and Yale, Mr. Mealy received Early Music America’s Binkley Award for outstanding collegium direction at the university level.

Mr. Mealy also teaches regularly at early music workshops across the country, including the annual summer workshops of the San Francisco Early Music Society, the Madison Early Music Festival, and the Amherst Early Music Festival.