Artistic Director Joan Parsley and Ensemble Musical Offering.

Ensemble Musical Offering at Madison's Chazen Art Museum.

In its early years, Ensemble Musical Offering had a special emphasis in presenting early keyboard music and, under its original name, Historical Keyboard Society of Wisconsin, showcased such international early music luminaries as fortepianists Steven Lubin and Malcolm Bilson, as well as harpsichordists Ton Koopman and Gustav Leonhardt. The Mozartean Players, Castle Trio, Boston Museum Trio, Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, Musica Antiqua Koln, and the New Mozart Ensemble of London dazzled Milwaukee stages and were a prelude to a special relationship forged between Artistic Director Joan Parsley and conductor Christopher Hogwood, fortepianist Robert Levin and the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra. With this, Beethoven: The Second Style Period festival was born in 1994 and received critical acclaim in Milwaukee and throughout the Midwest for the re-creation of Beethoven’s famous 1808 Akademie and Beethoven in Vienna exhibition.  However, all during this time, some of the best early music professionals were also engaging in special projects with Artistic Director/harpsichordist Joan Parsley and Ensemble Musical Offering was further cultivated.

Ensemble Musical Offering, now a producing organization, known for a short time as Milwaukee Baroque, was officially formed in 1998 as Milwaukee's Midwest Bande for Early Music.  Today, two generations of elite artists perform on original instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries. Over the years, the Ensemble  has had the great fortune to work with such early music icons as recorder players Marion Verbruggen and Clea Galhano, Baroque violinists Stanley Ritchie and Marilyn McDonald, soprano Maria Jette and countertenor Jeffrey Dooley. Featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Ensemble brought the music and world of J.S. Bach to The Cathedral Church of All Saints through its multi-year American Bach Project (1999-2003). Other seasons were devoted to Mozart's Nature, Mozart's World, Spain and Its New World Empire, In Harmony, At Home with Biedermeier and The Vivaldi Project.

Both the Milwaukee Art Museum and Marquette University's Haggerty Museum of Art provided the showcases for community outreach activities focused on Mozart and Beethoven, namely through the exhibitions Fashions and Furnishings in the Age of Mozart (MAM -1991) and Beethoven in Vienna (Haggerty Art Museum – 1994).

Violist William Bauer with a student new to early music.

Milwaukee's Walker's Point Center for the Arts, the West Bend Art Museum, libraries, public and private schools and higher learning institutions throughout the State of Wisconsin have hosted Ensemble Musical Offering's quality early music performances and educational activities. In June 2000, the Ensemble was the recipient of the national Early Music Brings History Alive award given by Early Music America, the national networking association for early music. The Ensemble has been a valued affiliate of the Milwaukee Symphony's arts and community education program, Project ACE,as well as an associate member of Milwaukee’s United Performing Arts Fund.

Ensemble Musical Offering has consistently been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, Wisconsin Humanities Council, Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin, the National Endowment for the Arts as well as other government agencies and private foundations. In 2011, The Ensemble is pleased to announce additional funding through the Theodore and Anna Grollmann Fund as part of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and the Herbert T. Kohl Charities.