Jordan Sramek
Founder / Artistic Director
Photo credit: Michael Haug
Jordan Sramek (tenor) founded The Rose Ensemble in 1996 and served as Artistic Director until the final performance in 2020. Now working in the U.S. and Europe, Jordan enjoys a career as musician, choral clinician, and founder of Rose Publications. He studied early vocal performance and harpsichord at the College of St. Scholastica which in 2016 awarded him a Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL). He is highly respected for his meticulous research of music rarely heard in the concert hall and has championed vocal repertoire from Renaissance Poland and Spain, medieval Bohemia and Ireland, Baroque Malta, Sweden, and Russia, as well as early music from Hawaii and across the Americas.
Jordan’s 25+ years as a performing musician and musicologist have brought him to some of the world’s most important libraries and centers for learning and research, resulting in invitations for lectures, competition juries, workshops, and masterclasses at universities, festivals, and conferences across the globe.
He has served as international guest clinician at the World Symposium on Choral Music (Barcelona), Festival d'Ile de France (Paris), Certamen Coral de Tolosa (Spain), The Hebrew University (Jerusalem), and St. Quirinus Cathedral, Neuss (Germany). U.S. engagements include Cornell University, Princeton University, St. John’s University, Carleton College, the University of Michigan, and the Society for Biblical Literature. Jordan has served as faculty at the San Francisco Early Music Society and the Madison Early Music Festival, and he has been a featured conference presenter at Chorus America, the American Choral Directors Association, and Early Music America.
Jordan’s many honors include a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Performing Musicians, a Jerome Foundation Travel/Study Grant, and the 2010 Chorus America Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal. In 2018, The Rose Ensemble, under Jordan’s leadership, was the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg Award for Lifetime Achievement in Early Music Outreach. Each holiday season, Jordan can be heard on American Public Media, WFMT-Chicago, and the European Broadcasting Union, in The Rose Ensemble's international radio broadcasts, which he creates in partnership with his long-time friend and colleague, Tom Crann (MPR).
Jordan showed enduring commitment to outreach, ensuring free, meaningful, contextual access to his work, especially to those with less access to quality vocal music. Through his efforts, The Rose Ensemble for years performed free of charge at dozens of senior homes, public schools, libraries and community centers. His creation of interactive programming in Minnesota-based senior communities and nursing homes is exemplary.
Before administrative closure in 2022, The Rose Ensemble worked to catalog and archive Jordan Sramek's life’s work to date. The magnitude of his distinguished artistry and research is now clearer than ever: he created 89 original programs for his beloved Rose Ensemble, each representing several months (and in many cases, years) of painstaking, meticulous work. At the live performances, Jordan himself gave the pre-concert lectures, providing enlightening context to the audience regarding even the most complex subject matter, all with his signature engaging, light-hearted approach. Even his free public sing-alongs were jam-packed!
