Kerr Educational Outreach Fund

"I knew nothing about early music before I went to my first TEMP concert. I assumed that there was piano there. Since I play the piano, all I know is classical music, the violins and the pianos. After 5 concerts, I come to know early music, its style and its instruments. I especially love how TEMP divides different concert into different regions—it just makes the whole program more exotic and more interesting to hear." —Coco Chu, Kerr Scholar, 2016

TEMP’s educational outreach is dedicated to bringing an appreciation of early music to as widely diverse an audience as possible. The primary resource supporting TEMP’s educational programs is the Kerr Educational Outreach Fund (KEO Fund).

Established in 2013 as the Susan Anderson Kerr Scholarship, the fund initially provided season subscriptions for select students to attend TEMP’s regular concert season performances.

More recently, the KEO Fund’s focus has broadened to include a variety of education concerts and programs within Austin and Central Texas. Examples of programs the fund supports:

• Viol and recorder enrichment program for students at Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired

• Collaborative programming with college and universities

• Concerts and talks at schools

• Concerts and talks for seniors

• Free and discounted tickets for students and teachers to TEMP concerts

We’re always looking for more opportunities to introduce teachers, students, and…well, anyone, to their musical roots! To get more information about KEO Fund, please call (512)377-6961 and leave a message, or email us.

Support the Kerr Education Outreach Fund

By donating to this program, you are helping bring early music to communities that otherwise might not have the opportunity.

Giving Levels

$5000 and up — Summa cum Laude
$2500 to $4999 —Magna cum Laude
$1000 to $2499 — Cum Laude
$500 to $999 — Dean’s List
$100 to $499 — Honor Roll

No amount is too small! Give your gift today!

(Please select “Kerr Educational Outreach Fund” at checkout.)

If you prefer to donate by mail, please make checks payable to "Texas Early Music Project" and put “Educational Outreach” or “KEO Fund” in the memo.

Mail to:

Texas Early Music Project
PO Box 301675
Austin, TX 78703

Free Online Coursera Course:
Coexistence in Medieval Spain: Jews, Christians, and Muslims

We are delighted to announce this new, free online course offering taught by Dr. Roger L. Martínez-Dávila. With enrollment offered on a monthly basis, this course incorporates music from our Convivencia CD as students explore Jewish, Christian, and Muslim intercultural relations in Iberia from the Visigothic era (6th century CE) until the creation of Queen Isabel I and King Ferdinand II in Catholic Spain (late 15th century). We evaluate the many identities of the peninsula known as Christian Hispania, Jewish Sefarad, and Islamic al-Andalus. We trace the origins and trajectory of conflict between these communities (the Muslim conquest of Spain, Christian Reconquista, prohibitions blocking intermixing of peoples, and expulsions). We aim to understand conflicts within communities as well, such as the tensions between Christian Arian Visigoths and native Catholic Iberians or the fundamentalist North African Almohad Dynasty that rejected the Spanish Umayyad Caliphate’s preference for religious tolerance. We delve into an appreciation of collaboration and coexistence among these communities. We explore the unique role of the Jewish community who Muslims and Christians depended upon as political and cultural intermediaries as well as their intellectual collaborators. We find the history of how peoples attempted to create and manage viable diverse communities. As we study this history, the Honors Track will employ an investigative process (“The Historian’s Craft”) that involves viewing, reading, analyzing, and reflecting on events, peoples, places, and artifacts.

Read more about this course in The Times of Israel article, "Old Tensions Come to Life as Medieval Spanish Synagogue Goes Online.

In addition to our Convivencia CD,  see also our related recordings, La Rosa: Sephardic Love Songs c. 1400–1600 and Night and Day: Sephardic Songs of Love and Exile.

Free Online Coursera Course:
Deciphering Secrets: The Illuminated Manuscripts
of Medieval Europe

We are delighted to announce that our Convivencia CD has been recommended as supplemental material for the free, online Coursera course, Deciphering Secrets: The Illuminated Manuscripts of Medieval Europe, taught by Dr. Roger L. Martínez-Dávila and Dr. Ana B. Sanchez-Prieto. See the intro video for the course below. TEMP's music is featured in the Week #5 video, "Digital Narration of the 'La Mota' Case Study."

Perhaps no other relic of the European Middle Ages captures our imagination more than illuminated medieval manuscripts, or those documents decorated with images and colored pigments. Serving as windows unto a lost world of kings, ladies, faith, war, and culture, they communicate complex visual and textual narratives of Europe’s collective cultural heritage and patrimony. In this fashion, illuminated manuscripts are dynamic messages from our communal past that are still relevant today in fields like graphic design and typography. In this seven-week course, students will explore the material creation, content, and historical context of illuminated medieval European manuscripts. Students will acquire an introductory knowledge of their distinguishing characteristics, their cataloguing and periodization (when they were created), the methods utilized to produce them, and their historical context and value.

In addition to our Convivencia CD, see also our related recordings, La Rosa: Sephardic Love Songs c. 1400–1600 and Night and Day: Sephardic Songs of Love and Exile.