Biography
Thomas Binkley, an American lutenist and musicologist devoted to early music, also built a substantial career as a recording artist, appearing on more than fifty albums that earned multiple awards. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1931 alongside an older brother, he grew up with a mother who served as librarian at the University of Colorado while maintaining her own accomplishments as a pianist, and a father who worked as historian, author, and educator across faculty posts at Stanford, Harvard, and Columbia. His first musical experiences came as a trombonist in the school band, followed during adolescence by performances in a local dance band and informal folk-guitar sessions with his sibling. After finishing high school he relocated to New York, taking a sequence of unrelated positions that included night guard at a hospital, taxi driver, and bottle washer in a milk factory. A brief stint in the marines ended with an honorable discharge after an elbow injury that ultimately redirected his path: unable to continue on trombone, he returned to the guitar and soon encountered the lute. Lessons with his childhood friend Joseph Iadone strengthened his commitment, prompting him at age twenty to enroll at the University of Illinois, where he studied with Dragan Plamenac and Claude Palisca and received his degree with honors in 1954. He spent the following year in graduate study at the University of Munich, then returned to Illinois for doctoral work that remained incomplete, as did the Munich program. By 1959 he had settled again in Munich and co-founded the ensemble Studio der Frühen Musik together with Nigel Rogers, Sterling Jones, and Andrea von Ramm. The group gave him scope to refine his skills as arranger and lute accompanist while maintaining a demanding tour schedule, producing more than forty recordings, and collecting several European prizes. Performances in North Africa introduced him to instruments and practices that had stayed constant for centuries; he incorporated those sonorities into the ensemble’s work, forging an original blend of textures and timbres. The members parted ways in 1976 after failing to reconcile differing views on artistic direction. Binkley then moved to California to pursue homesteading and, in 1978, joined the faculty at Stanford University. The next year he established the Early Music Institute at Indiana University and remained its director until retiring in 1995.
Albums
