Thomas Binkley was an American lutenist and early music

Early music

Early music is generally understood as comprising all music from the earliest times up to the Renaissance. However, today this term has come to include "any music for which a historically appropriate style of performance must be reconstructed on the basis of surviving scores, treatises,...

 scholar.

Thomas Eden Binkley studied at the University of Illinois (BM. 1956, PhD. 1959) and the University of Munich (1957–58). He taught at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis

Schola Cantorum Basiliensis

Schola Cantorum Basiliensis is a music academy and research institution located in Basel, Switzerland, and focusing on early music and historically informed performance....

 in Basel (1973–77). He was then founding director of the Indiana University

Indiana University

Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...

 School of Music Early Music Institute at Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington, Indiana

Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the southern region of the U.S. state of Indiana. The population was 80,405 at the 2010 census....

 from 1979 till his death from cancer at the age of 63.
For twenty years (1960–1980) he led the Studio der Frühen Musik

Studio der frühen Musik

Studio der frühen Musik was an early music group active from 1960–1980 and based in Munich.The leader of the group was Thomas Binkley, and the activity of the group coincided with the years he was teaching at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis...

 in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 with Andrea von Ramm (1928-99) and Sterling Jones, producing an extensive discography of medieval music

Medieval music

Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...

.

Binkley was effectively house artist for EMI Electrola in the first years of the EMI Reflexe series in Germany.