Faculty
Faculty Bios
Recorder
Tom Beets was born in Heusden-Zolder, Belgium, in 1983. At an early age he started to play the recorder enthusiastically. He has finished his recorder studies at the Lemmensinstitute in Leuven (B) with Bart Spanhove and Bart Coen and is specialising at the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya (Sp) with Pedro Memelsdorff.Apart from the usual baroque repertoire his interest/focus lies on music history and medieval music performance. Concerts and concours, both solo as in various ensembles, have led him to every part of Europe. Tom is a member of various Dutch ensembles and took masterclasses with Kees Boeke, Fumiharu Yoshimine, Marion Verbruggen and Andrew-Lawrence King as personal highlights. From 2007 on, he travels around the world with the Flanders Recorder Quartet.
Letitia (Tish) Berlin teaches recorder and coaches ensembles in California and at workshops around the country, including the Amherst Early Music Festival, and the Port Townsend early music workshop. She is the director of the Hidden Valley Recorder Elderhostel (Carmel Valley, CA) and co-director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Music Discovery Workshop for young children. Ms. Berlin performs regularly with the Farallon Recorder Quartet and the recorder duo Tibia. She has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. Recordings include works by Ludwig Senfl with the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Ladino love songs with Yatan Atan on the New Albion label and the second edition of the Disc Continuo play-along CD on the Katastrophe label. Ms. Berlin received a Master of Arts in early music performance practices from Case Western Reserve University and a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her mentors and teachers have included Inga Morgan, Saskia Coolen, Marion Verbruggen, Carol Marsh and Ross Duffin. Berlin is the President of the board of the American Recorder Society.
Frances Blaker earned pedagogy and performance degrees in recorder from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen. She performs as a soloist and in ensembles including Vermillian Trio and Farallon Recorder Quartet. She is the author of "The Recorder Player's Companion" and the "Opening Measures" column in American Recorder Magazine.Frances can be heard on the Disc Continuo series of play-along recordings. She has taught at several Fall and Summer Toots and is on the Executive Advisory Board of Amherst Early Music.
Deborah Booth plays Renaissance, Baroque, and modern flutes and recorders. Her training in flute performance was taken at Cincinnati Conservatory, the University of Kentucky, the Mannes School of Music - Historical Performance Program, and she has studied with Marion Verbruggen, Sandra Miller, Thomas Nyfenger, and other noted teachers in Amsterdam and New York. Ms. Booth played in several orchestras, including the Louisville Orchestra and the North Carolina Symphony. Performances include the Handel & Haydn Society, the Orchestra of St. Lukes, recorder soloist with the Ciompi Quartet, Gotham City Baroque Orchestra, Bach Vespers Period Ensemble, The Long Island Baroque Ensemble, The Ivory Consort, Christmas Revels, The Big Apple Baroque Band, Boston Early Music Festival, and Ensemble BREVE. The Times reviewed her performances as "technically precise and musically expressive." Recent recordings include a CD as flute and recorder soloist with the American Boy Choir ("American Songfest"), as well as soundtrack for the television show Blues Clues on recorder and krummhorns. Ms. Booth teaches at Greenwich Academy, directs the Princeton Recorder Academy, and has taught an played each summer at the Amherst Early Music Festival and numerous other summer festivals such as Pinewoods Early Music Week. In September of 2003 the Recorder Orchestra of New York (RONY) appointed Ms. Booth as their conductor.Website: www.flute-recorder-deborahbooth.com
Saskia Coolen studied recorder at the Amsterdam conservatoire with Kees Boeke and Walter van Hauwe. After this study she followed her inetersts in the Viol (Viola da Gamba) and musicology. Saskia Coolen was for many years a member of La Fontegara Amsterdam and gave regular concerts with ensembles such as the Freiburger Barockorchester, The Kings Consort and Tragicomedia. She recorded a number of CDs on the Globe label. For some time, Saskia Coolen has been a member of the recorder ensemble Brisk and Camerata Trajectina. In 1994 she established the ensemble Senario, which specializes in baroque chamber music in which the recorder takes a leading role. She was a teacher at the Hilversume Conservatoire and gives countless masterclasses throughout the world, particularly in the USA.
Adam Gilbert - See under Renaissance Reeds
Rotem Gilbert, recorder and double reeds. Rotem is a native of Haifa, Israel. As a member of Piffaro, she has toured the United States, performed in festivals in Europe and South America, and collaborated with The King's Noyse, Capilla Flamenca, and The Concord Ensemble. Rotem has appeared with ARTEK ensemble, Fala Musica, La Caccia Alta, Chatham Baroque, Pittsburgh Camerata, and the Pittsburgh Opera. She is a founding member of Ciaramella. Rotem pursued undergraduate studies on recorder with Nina Stern at the Mannes College of Music, and holds a solo diploma in recorder from the Scuola Civica di Musica of Milan, where she studied with Pedro Memelsdorff. Rotem holds a Doctorate in Musical Arts (DMA) from Case Western Reserve University. Rotem can be heard on Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana labels, Dorian, and Naxos labels.
Joan Kimball - See under Renaissance Reeds
Na'ama Lion - See under Recorder
Recorderist and teacher Natalie Michaud joined the Baroque music society Les Idées heureuses in 1990as co-artistic director. While in this ensemble, which is now in its 20th season, her contribution has been characterized by her poetic and colorful programming: "Promenade in Naples" (May 2000) featuring soprano Karina Gauvin, received an Opus Prize for best Baroque music concert of the year from the Conseil Québécois de la musique. Renaissance music concerts such as "Chansonnier pour une presque reine – music around 1500" (October 2001) and "Quattrocento amoureux – musique of the Fifteenth Century" (April 2002) show the approach Ms. Michaud has taken towards earlier repertoire. Contemporary music also remains important in her activities: in 1991, she was selected by the American Recorder Society to perform the Canadian première of a quintet for recorder and strings written by Ezra Laderman. Since then, Canadian composers such as Martin Arnold and John Rea have written works for her.Natalie Michaud teaches recorder and chamber music at McGill University and at the Music Conservatory of McGill. She is well-known in summer music academies such as CAMMAC and Amherst Early Music. She has recorded numerous concerts for Canadian Radio, as well as CDs on Atma, Dorian and Analekta labels. Her most recent recordings with Les Idées heureuses are Christoph Graupner's Ouverture and Concerto for recorder and strings. Photo by Didier Bertrand.
Mauricio Molina - See under Percussion
Debra Nagy - See under Renaissance Reeds
Patricia Petersen holds an MFA in Early Music Performance from Sarah
Lawrence College. A Director Emerita of Amherst Early Music, she is a
regular faculty member at Amherst's and many other workshops. She performs
on recorder and other early winds, and has appeared with the Charleston
Symphony Orchestra. She has coached early music ensembles at Wake Forest
University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She founded
and directed the small vocal ensemble Fortuna, recorded on the Titanic
label, and conducted the Amherst Festival Choir on a CD of the music of
Heinrich Isaac. An ARS certified teacher, she teaches recorder, early music,
and English country dance in North Carolina and at workshops around the
country. She currently serves on the board of the Country Dance and Song
Society. Her passions range from playing from facsimiles of early
15th-century music to English country dancing to playing old-timey music on
banjo-uke.
Wendy Powers is a historical musicologist specializing in music of the late 15th and early 16th centuries, particularly in Italy and France. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1994, submitting a dissertation on The Music Manuscript Fondo Magliabechi XIX.178 of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Florence: A Study in the Changing Role of the Chanson in Late Fifteenth-Century Florence, and is currently working on an edition of the complete works of the French composer Hesdin (d. 1538) for Broude Brothers. Prof. Powers has played and taught recorder in New York City for many years, and is co-director and faculty member of the Amherst Early Music Festival at Connecticut College. She is the former book review editor of American Recorder magazine, to which she has contributed articles and reviews. She has written about musical instruments for the Metropolitan Museum of Art Timeline of Art History (www.metmuseum.org). With Patricia Ann Neely, she co-directed Sag Harbor Early Music, a small spring concert series on Long Island, and she has sat for more than a decade on the Board of Directors of the New York City series Music Before 1800. Prof. Powers is the former Director of Development and Program Officer at the New York Council for the Humanities. She is teaching as an adjunct and co-directing the Collegium Musicum (with Susan Hellauer) at Queens College of the City University of New York.
Flutist, recorder player and Artistic Director and founder of Tempesta di Mare Gwyn Roberts has been a featured soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Recitar Cantando of Tokyo, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. American Record Guide has called her "a world-class virtuoso", and the Washington Post remarked, "with her sparkling technique and sensitive attention to musicality, she infused the music with operatic drama." Her recording of Veracini Recorder Sonatas earned a five star rating from BBC Music Magazine. As co-director of Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra Tempesta di Mare, she leads the ensemble in frequent performances from Oregon to Prague, records for Chandos (UK), and appears frequently on NPR's Performance Today. Recordings include, Deutsche Grammaphon, Dorian, Sony Classics, Vox, PolyGram, PGM, Newport Classics, and Radio France. Ms. Roberts is Director of Early Music at the University of Pennsylvania and is on faculty at Peabody Conservatory. She studied recorder with Marion Verbruggen and Leo Meilink and baroque flute with Marten Root at Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands.
Bart Spanhove is a member of the Flanders Recorder Quartet, or "Vier op ’n Rij". He has written a book about the techniques used in ensemble playing, "The Finishing Touch of Ensemble playing", which has been published in Japanese, German and Chinese. He is currently holds a research fellowship at the Lemmensinstituut Leuven, where he gives recorder lessons, to research the recorder music of the Flemish composer Frans Geysen. His findings will be published in 2008. Next to his concert activities, Bart Spanhove also gives a large number of master classes.
Nina Stern is one of North America’s leading
performers of the recorder and classical clarinet. In recent
years she is also hailed as an innovator in teaching
school-age children to be fine young musicians. A native
New Yorker, Ms. Stern studied with Jeanette van
Wingerden and Hans-Rudolf Stalder at the Schola
Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she
received a Soloist’s Degree. From Basel, she moved to
Milan, Italy where she was offered a teaching position at
the Civica Scuola di Musica. Ms. Stern performs
regularly as soloist or principal player with prestigious
ensembles such as New York City Opera, The New York Philharmonic, The New York
Collegium, Concert Royal, Philharmonia Baroque, American Classical Orchestra and
Boston Baroque, She has also appeared with Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, L’Orchestra
della Scala (Milan), I Solisti Veneti, Hesperion XX and Tafelmusik. Her numerous
festival appearances have included performances under leading conductors such as
Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, Claudio Scimone, Kurt Masur, Lorin Maazel,
Jane Glover, Bruno Weil, Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrot and Jordi Savall. She has
recorded for Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Sony Classics, Newport Classics, Wildboar, Telarc
and Smithsonian labels.Ms. Stern is currently on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music where she directed the Historical Performance Program from 1989 to 1996. She has taught at the Five Colleges in Western Massachusetts and was twice a Visiting Professor at Oberlin Conservatory. Ms. Stern has been on the faculties of numerous workshops throughout the United States and in Europe.
Ms. Stern also serves as Director of Education for the New York Collegium, where she is co-founder of a successful hands-on music teaching project in inner city public school classrooms. This project involves instruction to entire classrooms on recorder and percussion, as well intensive after school instruction that includes classical guitar. The Washington Post applauded this program as a model in its “innovation in the classroom” series (11/9/03). For this important work Ms. Stern was awarded an Endicott Fellowship in 2003 and was honored in 2005 with the “Early Music Brings History Alive” Award, bestowed by Early Music America. Recently, Ms. Stern recently developed a classroom teacher-training course (“Flutes and Drums Around the World) for the Amherst Early Music Festival and will initiate a recorder course for the visually impaired at The Lighthouse in New York City in the fall of 2006. - Website
Joris Van Goethem, Recorder & Baroque Flute.
As one of the original members of Flanders Recorder Quartet he has performed extensively throughout Europe, Japan, South America, the United States, Taiwan, Singapore, South Africa and Korea.
He made numerous recordings for radio and television and record companies as Aeolus, Deutsche Grammophon, Harmonia Mundi, EMI, Opus 111, Ricercar.
He has given seminars and masterclasses in all corners of the globe and has been tutor at various summercourses.
His arrangements found their way to Hollywood (Tin Cup with Kevin Costner) and are also published with Heinrichshofen, Ascolta and De Haske.
Paul Van Loey is a recorder virtuoso. Historical performance practice of renaissance and baroque music is very important to him, but as a member of the Flanders Recorder Quartet he also plays a great deal of contemporary music. Many compositions have already been specially written for this quartet which can be heard all over Europe, the United States, South America, South Africa and Japan. Their CDs on a variety of labels, including Opus 111, have met with very high approval ratings.Paul Van Loey is also much in demand as a soloist and has played with various other early music ensembles and orchestras, including Musica Antiqua Köln.
Reine–Marie Verhagen studied recorder with Walter van Hauwe at the then "Amsterdamsch Conservatorium". She finished her studies in 1976 and almost immediately began her teaching career at a diverse number of music colleges (including Enschede and Utrecht). Since 1988 she has been principal recorder teacher and teacher of verbon ADden technique at the royal conservatoire in The Hague. She is also active abroad (Europe, Japan and the USA) both as a teacher and performer (with the harpsichordist Tini Mathot she forms the basis of the Corelli-ensemble), has been jury member during the open Dutch recorder days in Utrecht (SONBU) and for the "Stichting Jong Muziektalent Nederland" (Dutch foundation for young musical talent). Since 1983, she has also taken part in many recordings and concerts with "The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra" directed by Ton Koopman (Bach’s cantatas, Brandenburg concertos, as well as works by Händel, Purcell and Charpentier). Modern music is always part of her repertoire, from Japanese composers to Steve Reich.
Tom Zajac performs on the sackbut, recorder, bagpipes, and other instruments with the Renaissance wind band, Piffaro; occasionally performs with his own group, Ex Umbris. Appeared with many other early music groups in the US, toured extensively, appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the US. With Ex Umbris, performed 14th-century music at the 5th Millennium Council event in the Clinton White House, 18th-century music for Ric Burn's "New York: A Documentary Film"; played hurdy gurdy for the American Ballet Theater, bagpipe for an internationally broadcast Gatorade commercial, and shawm for the NYC Gay Men's Chorus in his Carnegie Hall debut. In Dec. 2002 he played serpent in a PDQ Bach concert at Lincoln Center and the new Kimmel Center in Philadelphia. He teaches at Wellesley College and at recorder and early music workshops throughout the US.
Sarah Cunningham began her viol studies in 1969 in Boston where as a young player she was described as "one of the most satisfying players of anything in the area." She then went on to work with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 1981 she moved to London where she was active as a soloist and chamber musician and won world-wide recognition for her eloquent, expressive and communicative playing. She was a founder-member, with baroque violinist Monica Huggett, of the acclaimed Trio Sonnerie, with which she has made many recordings and toured on three continents.In 1992 she was invited by flautist James Galway to collaborate on his recordings of Bach's chamber music for flute. Since then, in addition to two recordings for BMG Classics, she has performed with him in several highly successful American and European tours. As a soloist she has appeared at Festivals from Helsinki to London to Boston to Vancouver. Her CD of solo viol music, entitled Play this Passionate, was released in 1992 by Virgin Classics, coinciding with the re-release of her CD of music by Marin Marais on ASV. A second unaccompanied CD, Spirit of Gambo, was released in 1997 on the Swedish label, Seagull Records. These two solo recordings will be released this year as a double CD by Virgin/EMI.
Sarah is Artistic Director of the East Cork Early Music Festival and she has been the motivating force behind its organisation since the begining even though she herself is living in West Cork!
Since moving to West Cork, Ireland, in 1999, Sarah Cunningham has been in demand as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Ireland, appearing in Belfast, Sligo, Cork, Waterford, and Dublin, and on Lyric FM as artist of the week. In 2000-01 she toured in South America, Spain, Turkey, and Japan.
She held the professorship in viola da gamba at the Hochschule fuer Kuenste, Bremen from 1990-2000. She now teaches privately in London and Ireland, and gives courses and masterclasses in Sweden, Germany, Spain, Ireland, and the USA.
Sarah has a special interest in free improvisation: her five-year collaboration with dancer Tara Brandel has led to performances in West Cork and at the Model Arts Centre in Sligo. She has also worked with vocalist Nicole Sumner and with story-teller Laura Simms. Currently she is writing an historical novel set in 6th century Ireland.
Robert Eisenstein, violin, viol, recorder, founding member and program director of the Folger Consort, with which he has toured nationally, recorded extensively and for which he has composed program notes and lectured frequently on its wide ranging repertoire from the middle ages to the baroque. In addition to his work with the Consort, he is the director of the Five College Early Music Program in western Massachusetts, where he teaches music history, performs regularly on viola da gamba, violin, and medieval fiddle, and coordinates and directs student performances of medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. He is an active participant in Five College Medieval Studies and recently served as a Music Director for the Five College Opera Project production of the first opera by a woman composer, Francesca Caccini's La Liberazione di Ruggiero. He has a particular interest in the use of computer technology in the service of music and enjoys teaching a course at Mount Holyoke College called Fun with Music and Technology. He has performed with many ensembles including the Washington Bach Consort, the Newberry Consort, the National Symphony, Western Wind, and recently at Tanglewood, Amherst Early Music, and other summer festivals. He studied viola da gamba with Judith Davidoff and Richard Taruskin.
Heather Miller Lardin is a double bassist and viol player, appearing frequently with period instrument ensembles including Brandywine Baroque, The Publick Musick, and NYS Baroque. She received her Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance Practice from Cornell University and is a graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music. She is the artistic director of NYS Baroque.
Erica Rubis has performed in the US with Ensemble Musical Offering, Ensemble Ouabache, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Lyra Concert, and in Europe at the Utrecht Early Music Festival. She is currently focusing on 17th-century French and English music with Julie Elhard in their viol duo, Violes Egales (featured at the 2006 Conclave). Their CD, La Rhetorique de la Dans, features music by Marais and Ste. Colombe. Erica holds a BA in Music (cello and piano) from St.Olaf College, after which she enthusiastically embraced early music, acquiring a Performer's Certificate in viol at The Hague Royal Conservatory (Anneke Pols) and studying with Wieland Kuijken and Wendy Gellespie (MM in Early Music Performance at Indiana University).
Gail Ann Schroeder graduated in 1980 from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Music degree in Music History. She furthured her performance studies on the viola da gamba at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with Wieland Kuijken, where she obtained the First Prize in 1983 and the Higher Diploma, with distinction, in 1986. She has performed extensively as soloist and with various ensembles including the Huelgas Ensemble, Capilla Flamenca, Combattimento Consort Amsterdam and the Leipzig Barockorchester. She has participated in numerous radio and television productions, and on CD recordings for such lables as DHM, Sony Classical, Ricercar and Erato. From 1988-2002 she was assistant to Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels where she taught viola da gamba, didactics of viola da gamba and was director of the viol consort. Currently living in North Carolina, she is now teaching privately and free-lancing on viola da gamba and lirone.
Mary Springfels remembers hearing New York Pro Musica perform early music for the first time when she was 14 years old. She said she immediately fell in love with it and began learning early music instruments in college. She began playing viola da gamba and related early music instruments professionally in 1968. She has been Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library since 1982.
Besides founding and directing the Newberry Consort, Springfels has performed and recorded extensively with such ensembles as the New York Pro Musica, the Waverly Consort, Concert Royal, Sequentia, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Musica Sacra, the Marlborough Festival, the New York City Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater, where she has served as an artistic advisor.
In Chicago Springfels has also served as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. She has taught and performed in summer festivals throughout the US, among them the San Francisco, Madison, and Amherst Early Music Festivals, and the Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. In 2004 she delivered the keynote address to the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition for Early Music America.
Over the past few years, Springfels has become very active in baroque opera, and she has performed with organizations such as the New York City Opera and Central City Opera. She will continue this involvement as well as providing lectures.
Rainer Zipperling was first instructed by his father and then studied at the Conservatory in Den Haag (Violoncello with Anner Bylsma and Viola da Gamba with Wieland Kuijken).
Now he is active as freelance cello and gamba player. Besides being member of Camerata Köln he plays cello with the "Petite Bande" and "Orchester des 18. Jahrhunderts" (18th Century Orchestra). He regularly plays with "La Stagione", Frankfurt/Main, and "Ricercare Ensemble".
He also holds a chair for viola da gamba and violoncello at the Musikhochschule Frankfurt/Main and teaches the subject viola da gamba at the Musikhochschule Köln.
Ron Cook has been performing on historical harps for more than thirty
years. He is a founding member and past president of the Historical
Harp Society. He has taught at the Society’s annual Historical Harp
Workshop and contributed numerous articles and presentations to the
Society’s Bulletin and its annual Historical Harp Conference. He is
also a past officer and director of the American Recorder Society and
currently the president-elect of Early Music America. He performs
regularly on historical harp, recorder, and other historical wind and
stringed instruments. For thirty years he has directed The Early
Interval, a medieval and Renaissance consort performing both vocal and
instrumental music. He has taught recorder and regularly lectures on
early music topics at Capital University.
Cheryl Ann Fulton, America’s premier performer of historical harps, has had an internationally successful performing, recording, teaching and scholarly research career since 1986. She is one of the few harpists in the world to play triple harp, medieval harp, and contemporary lever harps. Her solo performance for the 2002 World Harp Congress in Geneva affirmed her rank as one of the world’s leading harpists. Her solo recital, performed at the John F. Kennedy Center, featured five historical harps on one program, of which the Washington Post said, “Fulton drew from all of them a serene and delicate sound.... remarkable instruments which Fulton played with total skill and reverent affection.” A versatile recording artist, she can be heard on over thirty albums and soundtracks broadly ranging from medieval, baroque, orchestral, and contemporary music to Celtic music and film scores. A leading scholar in the field of historical harps, Dr. Fulton, a Fulbright scholar and recipient of the Burton E. Adams Prize for Academic Research, is a contributing scholar for the new edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and A Performers Guide to Medieval Music (IU Press, 2000). She has become a renowned and highly sought after teacher of her masterful and expressive Touch & Tone Technique. She has a full private studio in her San Francisco Bay Area home. She performed and taught in 2005 for the HarpCon in Big Sky, Montana, for Amherst Early Music, and for the Lo Gai Saber medieval music workshop in Coaraze, France.
Judy Kadar, under the auspices of Amherst Early Music, founded and directed the First Annual Historical Harp Conference and Workshop in 1984. She directed this event through 1991 when the American Historical Harp Society was formed. She is also one of the founding members of the International Historical Harp Society. She studied harp at Mannes with Lucile Lawrence, holds a M.F.A. in the Performance of Medieval and Renaissance Music from Sarah Lawrence College, and has been in demand as faculty at early music workshops since the late 70's. She lives in Berlin, Germany, where she teaches harp, historical harp, and ensembles in medieval and renaissance music. She has had multiple theater engagements with renowned German directors, co-directs the medieval and renaissance music ensemble "Collage," and frequently concertizes throughout Europe. In 2006, Collage presented a very successful new multi-media production of the Roman de Fauvel called "How the Donkeys Got Power." This was made possible through a grant from the Hauptstadt-Kulturfond (capital city cultural fund of Berlin). Collage holds an annual concert series at Zitadelle Spandau and has released the following recordings: Blozen (a sampler from Neidhart von Reuental through Claude Gervaise), Musik aus Drei Richtungen (Music from three Spheres: Sephardic, Arabic, and medieval music), and Die Juedin von Toledo (Sephardic music and the Cantigas de Santa Maria). Ms. Kadar is also a member of the duo "Jiddisches und Juedisches."
The historical musicologist and percussionist Mauricio Molina is dedicated to the reconstruction of medieval Mediterranean music. As part of his research he studies literary and iconographical sources of the period, analyzes instruments from museum collections, and conducts fieldwork in Europe, North Africa, and Latin America. Mauricio is the director of the medieval music ensemble Sendebar and collaborates with different early and traditional music ensembles in Europe and the United States. He has been invited to give lectures, publish articles, and conduct workshops about medieval music and historical and traditional frame drums at universities, music festivals, and museums. His dissertation, “Frame Drums in the Medieval Iberian Peninsula,” received the Higini Angles prize in 2006.Mr. Molina has taught recorder and percussion in New York public schools for the Boys Choir of Harlem, the Carnegie Hall Education Outreach Program, and the New York Collegium. He has taught recorder and percussion for teachers at the University of Bridgeport.
Violinist and conductor Dana Maiben, hailed by the Boston Globe for her "supremely joyous artistry," has earned international recognition for her performances of the 17th-century solo violin and ensemble repertory. She was a founder member of the groundbreaking ensemble for 17th century music, Concerto Castello, whose debut recording, Affetti Musicali, was nominated for a Deutsche Schallplatten Preise, and for whom she designed and co-directed the 1985 Schuetz anniversary celebration concert for the Boston Early Music Festival. Colin Tilney, writing in Continuo Magazine, cited her as “high priestess of the Italian 17th century solo.” In 2003 Maiben launched a new ensemble for 17th century music, Concerto Incognito.Miss Maiben is founding music director of the new ensemble Foundling, a baroque orchestra and women’s advocacy project based Providence, Rhode Island. She plays principal violin for Arcadia Players, Apollo Ensemble, and Ensemble Abendmusik, and has served as concertmaster of the New York Collegium under the direction of Christophe Rousset, Martin Gester, Paul Goodwin, and Andrew Parrott. Maiben frequently performs with her principal teacher, violinist Jaap Schroeder, with Arcadia Players Trio, and in duo with fortepianist Monika Jakuc. Recording credits include projects for Centaur, Dorian, EMI, and Hyperion.
Dana Maiben lived and worked in Rochester, New York from 1978-1988, where she taught at the Eastman School of Music, and served as founding music director of the Genesee Baroque Players, and as co-founder of the Genesee Early Music Guild. More recently she has been a frequent guest performer with the Rochester Bach Festival and Publick Musick. Since 1989 Maiben has served on the faculty of the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she teaches violin and medieval, renaissance, baroque, and classical performance practice, coaches chamber music, and occasionally directs opera. Her own opera,Look and Long, based on the play by Gertrude Stein, was presented in staged workshop at Smith College in 1998.
Deborah Booth - See under Recorder
Na'ama Lion has performed solo and chamber music recitals in Israel, Europe and the United States. She has performed with several orchestras and ensembles, including the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra, Boston Baroque, and Sequentia, an ensemble for medieval music. Ms. Lion is a founding member of the chamber music ensemble Kammerton and the group New Quartet, which specializes in new compositions for baroque instruments. She holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Boston University and a Soloist Diploma from the Arnhem Conservatory in the Netherlands, where her studies were supported by a scholarship from the government of the Netherlands. Her teachers have included Wilbert Hazelzet, Carla Kemme-Mahler and Christopher Krueger. She is currently on the faculty of the Longy School of Music, the Brookline Music School and Mather House, Harvard University. Ms. Lion has recorded for Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.
Gwyn Roberts - See under Recorder
One of today's leading performers on Baroque and early Classical flutes, Seattle native Janet See, who trained at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, has been principal flautist with the English Baroque Soloists. She has also been co-principal flautist with the Orchestre Revolutionaire et Romantique under John Eliot Gardiner and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra under Nicholas McGegan, with whom she made a highly acclaimed recording of Vivaldi concertos for Harmonia mundi. As a soloist and with chamber ensembles, she has performed throughout Europe and North America and recorded for Archive, EMI, Erato, Hyperion, and Titanic. Her interpretations of the complete flute sonatas by Bach can be heard on the Harmonia mundi USA label.
Marilyn Boenau, Baroque bassoon, has performed and recorded with most of the leading Baroque orchestras in North America, including Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Handel & Haydn Society, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Apollo's Fire, Tafelmusik, and Opera Lafayette. In Europe she has worked with The Harp Consort, Collegium Vocale, and Freiburg Baroque. In May 2005 she performed at the Handel Festspiele in Göttingen, Germany. She is the bassoon soloist with Music Pacifica on the Dorian CD La Notte, which includes several Vivaldi chamber concertos. Her playing has been called "breathtaking" by the Portland Oregonian. Marilyn holds a Soloist's Diploma from the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, where she studied recorder, shawm, curtal, and bassoon with Michel Piguet and Walter Stiftner. She has performed Renaissance music with the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble, Blue Heron Renaissance Choir, and the Folger Consort. In addition to her performing career, Marilyn is the executive director of Amherst Early Music, Inc.
Adam Gilbert, music history, recorder and historical double reeds, is currently the director of the early music program at USC's Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles. Adam grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. The first graduate of the Early Music program at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, he has performed as a member of New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, the Waverly Consort and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has appeared with ensembles such as Calliope, ARTEK, New York Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble, The Court Dance Company of New York, the Folger Consort, Concert Royal, The Bach Ensemble, Chatham Baroque, Newberry Consort, Canto (Colombia) and La Caccia Alta (Belgium) among others. He is also a founding member of ensemble Ciaramella, which performs concerts of fifteenth-century music in The United States, Israel and Belgium, and has recorded on the Naxos label. Adam studied recorder at Rotterdams Conservatorium and studied in Leuven, Belgium from 1998 to 2000 as a recipient of the Fulbright and Belgian American Education Foundation Grants working on his dissertation “Elaboration in Heinrich Isaac’s Three-Voice Mass Sections and Untexted Compositions.” He completed his PhD at Case Western Reserve University in 2003, and taught for two years as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. Adam can be heard on Dorian, Deutsche Grammophon’s Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana and Lyrichord labels. His research specialties include allusion in fifteenth-century song and Mass, pastourelles and their symbolism, improvisation, compositional processes and embellishment from 1400–1700. He lectures, gives master classes internationally and is an adjunct faculty of Tilburg Conservatorium in Holland. ~ website (USC) * website (Ciaramella)
Rotem Gilbert - See under Recorder
Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the Renaissance wind ensemble Piffaro, turned to early music performance full time after a number of years as an educator. She is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private students and coaches recorder ensembles as well as a newly formed Renaissance bagpipe band. She has also performed with New York's Ensemble for Early Music, The Philadelphia Classical Symphony, The Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and with numerous instrumental and vocal ensembles in the Philadelphia area. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro on Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, and Dorian, she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical and Vox Amadeus.
Debra Nagy, praised for her “dazzling technique and soulful expressiveness” (Rocky Mountain News), is in demand as a soloist and collaborative musician on both coasts, performing with baroque ensembles and orchestras in San Francisco (American Bach Soloists), Los Angeles (Musica Angelica), Portland (Portland Baroque Orchestra and Trinity Consort), Seattle (Seattle Baroque Orchestra), Cleveland (Apollo’s Fire), Philadelphia (Tempesta di Mare) and New York (Clarion Society and Ensemble Rebel). She has also appeared at many international early music festivals including the Boston & Berkeley Early Music Festivals, Regensburg (Germany), and Laus Polyphoniae (Belgium). A first-prize winner in the American Bach Soloists (ABS) Young Artist Competition, Debra has performed concertos by Bach and Vivaldi with ABS, the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, and the San Francisco Bach Choir. She is also the founder of Les Délices, a Cleveland-based ensemble dedicated to chamber music of the French Baroque. Debra has a second specialty in fifteenth century music, performing on shawms, recorders and voice as a member of Ciaramella, in addition to joining Piffaro, the Newberry Consort, and the Blue Heron Renaissance Choir as a frequent guest artist.
Debra recently received her Doctor of Musical Arts in Early Music from Case Western Reserve University, where she directs the singers and instrumentalists of the Collegium Musicum in programs spanning the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries. Her research projects at Case included an edition of unique pieces from the Chansonnier Nivelle de la Chaussée (c. 1465), an analysis of the synthesis of instrumental virtuosity and vocal aesthetics in the works and performing career of Ludwig August Lebrun (for which she received Case’s Adel Heinrich Musicology Prize), and a reevaluation of the late-seventeenth century airs and brunettes repertory as a source of solo music for woodwinds. Dedicated to developing her scholarly interests, Debra has presented lecture recitals for the Society for Seventeenth Century Music, and is currently preparing her edition of unica from the Nivelle Chansonnier for publication. In addition, Debra spent 2002-2003 researching Renaissance double reed instruments in Brussels on a Belgian American Educational Foundation Grant while studying baroque oboe at the Conservatory of Amsterdam as a student of Alfredo Bernardini. Debra received her undergraduate and master's degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, where she studied with James Caldwell and Gonzalo Ruiz.
Debra’s wide ranging discography includes a disc of fifteenth-century German instrumental and vocal music with Ciaramella (Naxos), “Stolen Gold” for amplified baroque and tape – a work written for Debra by composer Anna Rubin (Capstone Records), collaborations with vielle player Shira Kammen (“Mistral” on Bright Angel Records), Handel’s Acis and Galatea with the Montreal-based ensemble Les Boréades (ATMA), sacred music of Vivaldi with Toronto’s Aradia Ensemble (Naxos), Masses of Joseph Haydn with Ensemble Rebel (Hänssler Classics), and Lutheran Masses of J.S. Bach with the Washington Bach Consort (Loft Recordings). Recording projects for 2007 include Brandenburg Concertos with the American Bach Soloists, a disc of instrumental music by Johann Friedrich Fasch with Philadelphia's Tempesta di Mare, and Lully's Psyché with the Boston Early Music Festival. Debra looks forward to concerto performances with Seattle Baroque, and the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, and a debut recording with Les Délices during the 2007-2008 season. She has had live performances featured on CBC Radio Canada, Klara (Belgium), NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR (New York City) and WGBH Boston.
Website: www.debranagy.com
Daniel Stillman, shawm, sackbut, co-founded
and directs the Boston Shawm & Sackbut Ensemble. As
a player of Renaissance wind instruments, he has
performed with the Gabrieli Consort, Taverner
Players, Apollo’s Fire, Folger Consort, La Nef (Montréal),
Trinity Consort, the Boston Camerata, Waverly Consort and the
avant-garde ensemble Roger Miller’s Exquisite Corpse.
As a player of historical trombone, he has performed
with the Smithsonian Chamber
Orchestra, Washington Bach Consort, Arcadia Players, Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society, and
the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. Dan
teaches at Tufts, the Five College Early
Music Program, and the Longy School of Music.
Washington McClain is the current principal oboist of l'Ensemble Arion (Montreal) and Apollo's Fire Baroque Orchestra (Cleveland, Ohio). He has performed with many baroque orchestras in the United States and in Canada.Mr. McClain teaches at Indiana University in Bloomington. He has done recordings for Sony Classical Vivarte, ATMA Records, Analekta Records, and Centaur Records.
Michael McCraw is cited in the newest edition of "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians" as one of the most important early bassoon players and pedagogues of our time. A pioneer in the field of baroque performance with original instruments, he began his career in New York City as a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra.Mr. McCraw has played with such ensembles as Musica Antiqua Koeln, Concentus Musicus Wien, London Baroque, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and Camerata Koeln. From 1991 through 2002, he was principal bassoonist of the Tafelmusik Orchestra.
Mr. McCraw has taught at festivals and workshops all over the world and was a faculty member of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. His recordings number more than 140 and include a highly acclaimed CD of Vivaldi bassoon concerti with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra. Mr. McCraw serves as musical director of the baroque double reed workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and as the director of the Early Music Institute at Indiana University.
Kiri Tollaksen enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. Equally skilled on trumpet and cornetto (a wind instrument used primarily in 17th century Western Europe), Kiri has been praised for her "stunning technique, and extreme musicality," (Journal of the International Trumpet Guild). She has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe with numerous groups such as Apollo's Fire, The Folger Consort, Piffaro, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, New York Collegium, Concerto Palatino, La Fenice, the Huelgas Ensemble, the Catacoustic Consort and Seattle Baroque Orchestra. She has performed both at the Boston Early Music Festival, and at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and she is a regular member of the quartets La Gente d'Orfeo and Anaphantasia, both based in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
As a professional trumpet player, Kiri performs with the River Raisin Ragtime Revue in Tecumseh, Michigan, and freelances throughout Michigan. Since 2000, she has been trumpet soloist at Historic Mariner's Church in Detroit, Michigan (this church has reached national recognition for its annual memorial for the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Mariner's is referred to in Gordon Lightfoot's ballad). From 1996-2005, she played the Eb soprano saxhorn with the Dodworth Saxhorn Band (a re-creation of a 19th century community brass band, based in Ann Arbor). Kiri is featured on the Dodworth's latest CD, "Home Sweet Home." From 1995-2004, Kiri was a member of the Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Gustav Meier.
Kiri is currently Adjunct Lecturer in Music at the Early Music Institute at Indiana University. She also maintains a teaching studio in Ann Arbor, and has taught cornetto at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Kiri holds performing degrees in trumpet from Eastman, Yale, and a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. Her discography includes recordings with the Huelgas Ensemble, Apollo's Fire, Piffaro, The New York Collegium, La Gente d'Orfeo, the River Raisin Ragtime Revue and the Dodworth Saxhorn Band.
Website: www.kiritollaksen.com
Wim Becu was born in Berchem (Belgium). His first musical mentors, Koen Becu and Bruno Boey, introduced him to a hitherto unfamiliar world of "early music". This would later have a profound influence upon his musical development. In 1982, after completing his studies at the Royal Conservatories of Antwerp and The Hague, he began to collaborate with the Huelgas Ensemble. Thanks to his inexhaustible enthusiasm for studying and learning to play the many historic "trombones", he is now active in numerous renowned ensembles and orchestras. His repertoire covers late mediaeval to romantic music. He has made more than 100 CD recordings, and participated in numerous concerts together with his colleagues from Concerto Palatino. As an educator hes enjoys sharing his experience with his students in Antwerpen and at the Musikhochschulen of Aachen and Trossingen. He has given master classes and courses in Belgium, Germany, Spain, the United States, and at the CNS de Lyon.
Ross Brownlee began his musical training as a singer at the age of six with Donald Hadfield, in the All Saints' Men and Boys' Choir. Having found that music was one of the greatest joys of life, Ross continued his studies in Trombone Performance, graduating from Northern Illinois University with a Bachelor in Music Performance.After a few years of freelance work in Winnipeg, his great Early Music adventure began unfolding at McGill University in Montréal. Douglas Kirk, Ross' friend and mentor, snatched him from his orchestral pursuits and put a sackbut (the precursor of the modern trombone) in his hands! He played with the McGill Noyse, with members of the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble and with members of the Amherst International Early Music Festival, where he is now on faculty for the summer music workshop.
Ross hopes to introduce the haunting and beautiful sounds of the sackbut and cornetto to enthusiastic Winnipeg audiences. Ross is currently teaching instrumental music at St. John's-Ravenscourt School whilst madly renovating his old and needy home.
Tom Zajac - See under Recorder
Douglas Freundlich launched his lute career in the 1970s with The Greenwood Consort, winning the Erwin Bodky Award and Musical America’s "Young Artist of the Year". He has performed with many leading ensembles over the years, including the Boston Symphony, Boston Baroque, Emmanuel Music, The Musicians of Swanne Alley, Ex Machina, Capriole, Renaissonics, Hesperus, and the Revels.Doug is a founding member of the Venere Lute Quartet, which has received rave reviews from Amadeus (Milan), Early Music America, Goldberg, and Renaissance Magazines. The Quartet's recordings, Sweet Division and Palestrina's Lute, are available through the Lute Society of America (www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~lsa/index.html).
Doug's current season included an Italian tour with the VLQ, as well as tours and recording projects with Renaissonics, The Fanfare Consort, and Capella Alamire, and Hesperus. Doug teaches lute at the Longy School of Music, where he also directed the Early Music Program in the 1980s. Other lute teaching has included Lute Society of America Seminars, Mountain Collegium, Amherst Early Music, and Brandeis University.
Doug has commissioned many new works for the lute, and he edited the lute music of Betsy Warren for Wiscasset Press. He also cross-trains as a violone player and bebop bassist, catalogs early music manuscripts at Harvard, and teaches a course on music cognition at Tufts University. Recordings: TelArc, Titanic, Sine Qua Non, Revels, Radian Arts, LSA.
Nigel North was initially inspired into music, at age 7, by the early 60's instrumental pop group "The Shadows". Nigel studied classical music through the violin and guitar, eventually discovering his real path in life, the lute, when he was 15. Basically self taught on the lute, he has (for over 30 years) developed a unique musical life which embraces activities as a teacher, accompanist, soloist, director and writer. Nigel also enjoys accompanying singers and is an enthusiastic teacher. For over 20 years he was Professor of Lute at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London; from 1993-1999 he was Professor at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and since January 1999 Nigel North has been Professor of Lute at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University, Bloomington in the USA. ~ website
Phillip Rukavina has performed widely as a lute and vihuela soloist, ensemble performer and as a continuo lutenist. He studied lute with Hopkinson Smith at the Academie Musical in Villecroze, France and in Basel, Switzerland. He was the Director of the Lute Society of America’s summer program at the Amherst Early Music Festival in 2005, and regularly serves on the faculty of the Lute Society of America’s Seminars at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He has released two solo recordings on the Alpha Omega label, including Fiori Italiani and Ala spagnola. Phillip has toured the United States and Italy playing the bass lute with the Venere Lute Quartet, of which he is a founding member. He appears on Sweet Division (2003), and Palestrina’s Lute (2007), two critically acclaimed compact discs featuring the Venere Lute Quartet, released by the Lute Society of America. Phillip has been a frequent guest instrumentalist with the Rose Ensemble and appears on their recent CD release, Celebremos el Niño. Phillip has performed with numerous instrumental ensembles, including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New World Symphony and appears on several recordings issued on the Lyrichord Discs Early Music label with the ensemble Minstrelsy! Phillip teaches lute privately at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota. ~ Website
Arthur Haas is renowned throughout Europe and America as a peerless pedagogue and performer of Baroque and contemporary music. After receiving top prize in the 1975 Paris harpsichord competition, Mr. Haas remained in Paris from 1975 to 1983, performing in most major French early music festivals including le Festival Estival de Paris, Mai Musical de Bordeaux, and the Saintes Early Music Festival. Praised by Le Monde for his interpretation of French keyboard music, Professor Haas has recorded duo-harpsichhord music of Gaspard LeRoux with William Christie, solo CDs of music by D'Anglebert, Forqueray, and harpsichord music of the English Restoration. Prof. Haas is a member of the Aulos Ensemble and Musical Assembly, and has toured with such leading Baroque musicians as Marion Verbruggen, Julianne Baird, Stephen Preston, and Laurence Dreyfus. Much in demand as a teacher, Prof. Haas is a faculty member of summer early music music institutes in Berkeley, Amherst, and the Longy School of Music; he has also taught at the Eastman School and at Stanford University.
Peter Sykes has appeared in recital at conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, the Organ Historical Society, American Institute of Organbuilders, International Society of Organbuilders, at the Library of Congress, Boston Early Music Festival, Aston Magna Festival, New England Bach Festival, Portland Chamber Music Festival, New Hampshire Music Festival, and with Ensemble Project Ars Nova, The King’s Noyse, Musica Antiqua Köln, and throughout the United States, including an appearance in Boston’s Jordan Hall as a featured soloist (Bach's Fifth Brandenburg Concerto) in the Bank of Boston Emerging Artists Celebrity Series. He is frequently heard on the nationally syndicated radio program “Pipedreams.” Recent appearances include an all-Bach inaugural recital on a new organ built by Fritz Noack for the Langholtskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland, Bach’s Goldberg Variations for the Renaissance and Baroque Society in Pittsburgh, Manuel de Falla's Harpsichord Concerto with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, and the Schumann Piano Quintet on original instruments with the Van Swieten Quartet. In March 2004 he was given the honor of performing the dedication recital on the newly restored 1800 Tannenberg two-manual organ in Old Salem, North Carolina, featured on the nationally broadcast televsion show “CBS Sunday Morning.” He was a member of the continuo team for the Boston Early Music Festival opera productions of Cavalli's Ercole Amante, Lully's Thésée, and Conradi’s Ariadne, and appears regularly in concert and on recordings with Boston Baroque. With Christa Rakich he created "Tuesdays With Sebastian," an independent two-year benefit concert series in which he and Ms. Rakich performed the entire keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the organ and harpsichord in thirty-four recitals in five Boston area locations in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 concert seasons. He has premiered new works by Dan Locklair, James Woodman, and Joel Martinson, and has performed well over twenty dedication recitals for new or rebuilt organs.
His solo recordings include J.S. Bach’s complete Leipzig Chorales recorded on the Noack organ of the Langholtskirkja in Reykjavik, From The Heartland - Two Nordlie Organs in South Dakota, Harpsichord Music of Couperin and Rameau, A Nantucket Organ Tour, MAXimum Reger: Favorite Organ Works, and Modern Organ Music, a disc of music by Hindemith, Heiller, Pinkham, Woodman, and Icelandic composers on the Noack organ in the Neskirkja in Reykjavik. His bestselling recording of his organ transcription of Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets was named Best of 1996 by Audio Review, a “Super CD” by Absolute Sound in 1999, and garnered accolades in every review. He appears on the Cambridge Bach Ensemble recording The Muses of Zion, performing organ works of Tunder and Buxtehude on the Fisk meantone organ of Wellesley College, the Music from Aston Magna recording of the oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth, in which he performs the first known organ concerto movement of Handel, a recording of the organ concerto Cymbale of Julian Wachner, and the Grammy-nominated Boston Baroque recordings of Handel’s Messiah, Bach's B-Minor Mass, and Monteverdi’s Vespers. His most recent solo recording, now available on the Raven label, is the dedication recital on the Tannenberg organ in Old Salem.
He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Gabriel Chodos, Blanche Winogron, Mireille Lagacé, Robert Schuneman, and Yuko Hayashi, and Concordia University in Montreal, where he studied with Bernard Lagacé. In 1978 he was winner of the Chadwick Medal from the New England Conservatory for outstanding undergraduate achievement; in the same year, he was a winner of the school’s annual concerto competition, playing the Harpsichord Concerto of Frank Martin. In 1983 he was the winner of the Boston Chapter American Guild of Organists Young Artists Competition; in 1986, winner of the Second International Harpsichord Competition sponsored by the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society. He was the 1993 laureate of the Erwin Bodky Award for excellence in early music performance. In May 2005 he received the Outstanding Alumni award from the New England Conservatory for career achievement since graduation.
He is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, Director of Music at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, and a member of the faculties of the Longy School of Music and the New England Conservatory. He has served as adjudicator for competitions sponsored by the American Guild of Organists, the Royal Canadian College of Organists, and the Bach International Harpsichord Festival, is a member of the board of the Cambridge Society for Early Music, and is a founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society.
Website: www.petersykes.com
Alexander Weimann - See under Dance and Theater
With specializations in harpsichord, continuo, and instrumental and vocal chamber music, Webb Wiggins, who teaches harpsichord at the Oberlin Conservatory, has been a faculty member of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the Amherst Early Music Festival. Wiggins coordinated the Early Music Program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music at the Johns Hopkins University, where he was a member of the faculty from 1986 until 2005, and where he served as musical director of baroque operas in the Peabody opera department. He has also taught harpsichord at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, and George Mason University, and was assistant to the director of the chamber music program at the Smithsonian Institution from 1985 to 1989, where he maintains an active performance and teaching relationship.Wiggins has performed extensively throughout the United States, the Netherlands, Taiwan and New Zealand as a soloist and with such ensembles as Apollo’s Fire, Hesperus, Pomerium, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, the Baltimore Consort, the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra, the Folger Consort, Tempesta di Mare, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra.
He earned a bachelor of music degree from Stetson University in 1967 and a master of music degree from the Eastman School of Music in 1968. He also studied at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.
Julianne Baird, soprano, has been hailed as "one of the most extraordinary voices in the service of early music that this generation has produced. She possesses a natural musicianship which engenders singing of supreme expressive beauty." She maintains a busy concert schedule of solo recitals and performances of baroque opera and
oratorio.
Ms. Baird has also appeared as soloist with many major symphony orchestras including the Cleveland Orchestra under Christoph von Dohnanyi, the Brooklyn Philharmonic under Lukas Foss, the New York Philharmonic under Zubin Mehta and, in the 2000-2001 season, the Philadelphia Orchestra. James R. Oestreich, in his comprehensive survey of New York's seasonal performances of Handel's Messiah for the N.Y. Times, recently concluded with special praise for Julianne Baird's interpretative skills: "in that respect, Ms. Baird remains the model".
Recent performances include appearances at the International Lufthansa Festival in London in solo cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach and at Tanglewood's Ozawa Hall in the Mozart Requiem, Bach’s Magnificat in Bach’s own Thomaskirche in Leipzig, and at the International Wroclaw Festival of Song in Warsaw in September. In April, 2002 she is scheduled to appear in Symphony Hall, Chicago in Haydn’s Creation and in May in the Kennedy Center.
With over 100 recordings to her credit on Decca, Deutsche Gramophone, Newport Classics and Dorian, Julianne Baird is considered one of America’s most recorded women. In addition to her major roles in the acclaimed series of Handel operatic and oratorio premieres, she has a new solo album titled "Glorious Handel." The New York Philharmonic's recent commemorative box set to it’s century of recordings includes her recording of Reich’s "Tehillim". Other new recordings include "Dance on a Moonbeam", featuring Julianne Baird, Meryl Streep, and Frederica von Stade and “Passionate Pavanes.’ Deidamia--the last opera of George Frederic--with Julianne Baird in which she sings the title role.
Julianne Baird is an active teacher and scholar, with degrees from the Eastman School and a Diploma from the Salzburg Mozarteum in performance. She also earned a PhD in music history from Stanford University. Her publications include "Introduction to the Art of Singing", from Cambridge University Press. Recognized internationally as one of the few who can both demonstrate the full range of the singer's art and explain it - Dr. Baird is regularly asked to provide master classes at universities and music schools throughout North America. She also reaches large audiences through regional and national broadcasts including a recent featured interview on Terry Gross' internationally syndicated "Fresh Air". She is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University.
Website: juliannebaird.camden.rutgers.edu
Emily Eagen works internationally as both a performer and teacher, specializing in early and contemporary repertoire. Beginning her singing-acting training with the Wesley Balk Institute in Minnesota, Emily holds degrees from Macalester College, the University of Wisconsin, and The Royal Conservatory of the Hague; has performed as a soloist with numerous ensembles including The Residential Orchestra of the Hague (Netherlands) and L’Arpeggiata (France); and works as a faculty member and performer at the Amherst Early Music Festival and the Augusta Heritage Center in West Virginia. Also a songwriter and award-winning whistler, Emily is currently working on a recording with gambist Loren Ludwig of original works and folk arrangements for voice, whistling, and electric viola da gamba.
Award-winning director, international performer, and recording artist Daniel Johnson has been the artistic director of the Texas Early Music Project since its inception in 1987. Johnson has performed and toured both as a soloist and ensemble member in such groups as the New York Ensemble for Early Music, Sotto Voce (San Francisco), and Musa Iberica. He can be heard on various recordings for Koch International, Foné Records (Rome), Amherst Festival Productions, and the Texas Early Music Project label.Johnson was the director of the UT Early Music Ensemble, one of the largest and most active in the U.S., from 1986-2003. In 1998, he was awarded Early Music America's Thomas Binkley Award for university ensemble directors. He is also the recipient of the 1997 Quattelbaum Award at the College of Charleston. Johnson teaches master classes in performance practice and also serves on the faculty, staff, and the Executive Advisory Board of the Amherst Early Music Festival. He has been on the faculty of the Texas Early Music Workshop [aka Texas Toot] since 1994 and has been its director since 2002.
Tenor Eric Mentzel has enjoyed an international career as a concert soloist, working with such conductors as Andrew Parrott, Howard Arman, Paul van Nevel, and Jean Tubery. He has appeared at major festivals and premiere concert venues across Europe, including the Holland Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Brussels Palais de Beaux Arts, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham; concert tours have taken him as far as Japan and Australia. He is also known for his close collaboration with the most highly regarded ensembles in the early music field, such as Sequentia, the Ferrara Ensemble, and the Huelgas Ensemble. He has appeared on more than 40 CDs for Sony, Decca, BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Arcana, Opus 111, Raumklang, Naxos, and Capriccio, and his recordings have been awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Grammy), the Diapason d'Or de l'Annee, and the Choc de Musique (French recording awards). In 1998 he founded Vox Resonat—an ensemble devoted to the performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music—which has recorded two CDs for the Marc Aurel Edition label.Eric Mentzel is frequently invited to teach workshops and master classes in Europe and North America. He is a guest teacher at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, and is on the faculty of the Medieval Music Summer Course at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, and the Vancouver Early Music Programme in Vancouver, British Columbia. In recent years he has conducted workshops in Siena, Italy; Berlin, Germany; and Melbourne, Australia. He is currently Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Regarded for over two decades as one of the world’s finest countertenors, Drew Minter grew up as a boy treble in the Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. He continued his education at Indiana University and the Musik Hochschule of Vienna. Minter has appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others. A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland. He has sung with many of the world's leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM's Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Minter is a founding member of the Newberry Consort and sings and plays early harps regularly with TREFOIL, My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, ARTEK, and the Folger Consort. Mr. Minter has made over 50 recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Decca/London, Newport Classics, Hungaroton and others. He appears in two films: as Tolomeo in Peter Sellars’s “Giulio Cesare,” and as the Devil in “In the Symphony of the World; a Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.” He writes regularly for Opera News.
Drew Minter is also a lauded stage director. He began as director of the operas at the Göttingen Händel Festival for five years, directing period baroque productions. Since then he has directed productions in many styles for the Opéra de Marseilles, Caramoor, the Boston Early Music Festival, Lake George Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Handel and Haydn, Boston’s Opera Aperta, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Boston University’s Opera Institute, Amherst Early Music, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, the Five Colleges in Northampton, Tempesta di Mare and Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire. This past year he was named artistic director of Boston Midsummer Opera, which presented its first season in August 2006.
In addition to numerous workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Mr. Minter teaches voice at Vassar College, where he also directs the Vassar Opera Workshop and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers. He has taught since 1989 at the Amherst Early Music Institute. He sings between thirty and fifty concerts each season with a variety of early music groups.
Website: www.drewminter.com
Originally a trumpet player from Portland, Grant Herreid is now a versatile musician/director/teacher on the early music scene. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer he performs frequently on winds, strings and voice with Hesperus and Piffaro, and he plays theorbo and lute with New York City Opera and the baroque ensemble Artek. He teaches at Mannes College of Music and directs the New York Continuo Collective.Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, including 'Il Caffe d'Amore', a pastiche of early 17th century Italian songs and arias, and the 15th century English 'Holly and Ivy: A Mid-Winter Feast of Fools'. For the Amherst Early Music Festival he has created and directed 'A Day At The Faire', an Elizabethan rustic music-drama; an early 17th century production of Guarini's 'Il Pastor Fido'; and 'The Ballet of the Twelve Nations: Prelude to the Thirty Years War', an early 17th century German production featuring alchemy and intrigue. But mostly he devotes his time to exploring the art of the cantastorie and other esoteric unwritten traditions of early Renaissance music with the group Ex Umbris.
Danny Johnson - See under Voice
Kaspar D. Mainz has appeared in more than 250 theatrical performances in Germany, Austria, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. He is the Artistic Director of Deliciae Theatrales, a group that specializes in theater, dance and music performances for children. He has taught at Salzburg University, University of Leipzig, Salzburg Mozarteum, and University of Graz. Mr. Mainz has offered workshops in historical dance in Europe and the United States.
Drew Minter - See under Voice
Dorothy Olsson has had training in both music and dance; she received her Masters of Music of Musicology from Manhattan School of Music and her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at New York University, with a dissertation on early 20th-century dance. She has presented numerous workshops, choreographies and performances of historical dance, and written books and articles about historical dance. Dr. Olsson was an Assistant Professor of Dance Education at New York University for ten years. She is the director of New York Historical Dance Company.
Lawrence Rosenwald is the Anne Pierce Rogers Professor of American
Literature at Wellesley College, where he has been teaching since 1980.
He has written extensively on American literary multilingualism, on
translation, on nonviolence, and on diaries, and has done numerous
translations from several languages. He has performed and recorded with
Schola Antiqua, Pomerium, Christmas Revels, and Jubal's Lyre, has written
and performed numerous verse scripts for early music theater pieces all
across the United States, and has been coaching singers on language and
text at the Amherst Early Music Festival since 1984.
In recent years Alexander Weimann has established a reputation as one of the leading harpsichordists and ensemble leaders of his generation. He has performed throughout Europe, Canada and the United States, and has appeared at prominent festivals and concerts in Berkeley, Boston, Tanglewood, Washington, Montreal, London, Paris, Madrid, Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Ludwigsburg, Schleswig-Holstein, Graz, Innsbruck, Salzburg, Vienna, Utrecht, etc. He is a regular member of Tragicomedia and also appears as frequent guest artist with Cantus Cölln, Ensemble 415, Freiburger Orchestra, and Tafelmusik, among others.Mr. Weimann was born in Munich, Germany, where he studied musicology, theatre, theory, medieval Latin, organ, church music, and jazz piano from 1985 to 1990. In 1997, his group Le Nuove Musiche won first prize in the early music competition Concorso Premio Bonporti in Rovereto, Italy. From 1990 to 1995, he taught music theory at Münchner Musikhochschule, and since 1998, he has given classes in harpsichord, chamber music and performance practice at the Lunds University in Malmø, Sweden, the Hochschule für Musik in Bremen, Germany, and also at several American festivals and universities, including Berkeley, Boston, and Dartmouth. Mr. Weimann currently lives in Berlin and Montreal.
Tom Zajac - See under Recorder
Valerie Horst - See under Recorder
Patricia Petersen - See under Recorder
Robert Eisenstein - See under Viol
Webb Wiggins - See under Harpsichord