IBO Musicians

THOMAS GERBER is a founding member of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, an early-music, period-instrument ensemble established in 1996, which is ensemble-in-residence at the Christel DeHaan Fine Arts Center of the University of Indianapolis. In 1987 he was a founder of the early music chamber group Ensemble Ouabache, which in 2004 morphed into Ensemble Voltaire. He is currently serving a term as vice president of the Board of Directors of the nonprofit organization IndyBaroque Music, Inc.

Gerber is the keyboardist of the period instrument ensembles Echoing Air, which just returned home to Indianapolis after a concert tour in Florida, and Alchymy Viols, whose first recording, “Deep River,” with countertenor Michael Walker, will be released later this year.

He appears with other early music bands, including Catacoustic Consort, Ars Antiqua Chicago, Callipygian Players, Musik Ekklesia, Pills to Purge Melancholy, Haydn by the Lake, Bourbon Baroque, and Anaphantasia. He is the harpsichordist of the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, and has for the past 14 years participated as harpsichord continuo player in the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s annual “Messiah.”

He serves as harpsichord teacher at Butler University’s JCFA, where in the late 1980s and 1990s he worked as a collaborative pianist and, in the 2000s, as a teacher of music history and graduate review. He was professor of music history and humanities at Marian University as well as music history and early music at the University of Indianapolis.

Gerber holds degrees from Indiana University, Ball State University, and Hillsdale College, where his teachers included Fernando Valenti, Anthony Newman, and Elisabeth Wright. Summers have found him studying and performing at such places as the Aspen Music Festival, the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the Chautauqua Institution, the Ardingly International Music School (UK), and the Accademia Internacional del Verano, Pollença, Mallorca.

He can be heard on the Naxos, Dorian, Concordia, Indy Barock, and Catalpa Classics labels.