Since its founding in 1996 vocal ensemble LIBER (formerly Liber unUsualis) has soared to prominence for its warm, compelling, and assured performances of Medieval and early-Renaissance music. The ensemble’s mastery of medieval vocal technique and its inventive programming have drawn enthusiastic audiences throughout the United States and Europe. Led by artistic directors Melanie Germond and William Hudson, the critically-acclaimed ensemble continues to draw on the most recent developments in early music scholarship to bring ancient music to life.

Writing from one of America’s most important early music centers, The Boston Globe has praised LIBER for its “deeply moving” performances and its “hair-trigger sensitivity to what the words had to say.” These are the very qualities that have won for the group the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society (2009), First Prize at the International Young Artist’s Presentation–Early Music (Belgium, 2002), the Professional Development Award from Early Music America (2002) and semifinalist status at New York’s prestigious Concert Artists Guild Competition in 1999.

In addition to these honors, the ensemble’s debut CD recording “Unrequited” was an unqualified artistic success, being voted one of the “Best of 2004” by Goldberg magazine, and hailed as “a most impressive recording” by Gramophone. Their second CD, “Flyleaves”, on the Passacaille label, has also drawn rave reviews. Of this recording American Record Guide wrote: “The singing is responsible, tasteful, and unfailingly artistic, with lovely balancing and blending of voices.... This plucky little ensemble is a treasure to nurture.” Their recording of the program "Crowned with Laurels": music from fourteenth-century Italy on texts by poets such as Petrarch, Sacchetti, and Boccaccio, will be released in 2010.

LIBER has had an extraordinarily active concert schedule, performing extensively throughout the United States and abroad at many of the major European music festivals, including the Tage Alter Musik Regensburg (Germany), York Early Music Festival (England), Galway Early Music Festival (Ireland), Festival van Vlaanderen (Belgium), Latvia's International Festival of Early Music, Viljandi Early Music Festival (Estonia), La Caixa Forum (Spain), and Rencontres de Musique Médiévale du Thoronet (France). In the U.S. the trio has been heard at the Amherst Early Music Festival, Phoenix Early Music society, Cambridge Society for Early Music, San Francisco Early Music Society, Seattle Early Music Guild International Series, San Diego Early Music Society International Series, Milwaukee’s Early Music Now, and Early Music Columbus, among other engagements.