Amherst Early Music

Rainer Beckmann is a graduate of the Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands, where he studied recorder with Heiko ter Schegget, Baldrick Deerenberg, and Marion Verbruggen. He is a first prize winner at the Holland Open Recorder Festival Competition and the Performance Contest of the Dutch Concert Agency. As a founding member of Il Flauto Giocoso and the Landini Consort, he has performed in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, and Israel. In Brazil, he has taught recorder and music history at the State University of Ceará and collaborated with the ensembles Ad Libitum and Syntagma that specialize in Early Music, as well as Brazilian popular and traditional music. Recent engagements include performances and recordings with the Ridotto Ensemble, Tempesta di Mare, the New Amsterdam Recorder Trio, Early Music New York, and the American Society of Ancient Instruments. Mr. Beckmann is the director of the Greater Philadelphia Area Recorder Academy and a recorder teacher at Oak Lane Day School.

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

Lucy Cross has been a familiar faculty figure at early music workshops for decades. Well-known first as a lutenist with the New York Pro Musica, then with her own prize-winning ensemble the Elizabethan Enterprise and more recently in the opera pit at the Metropolitan and New York City Operas, she is a revered presence in the world of Renaissance lute music and song. In the academic sphere, she is an international authority on medieval music theory. With a Masters degree from Yale and a Ph.D. from Columbia, she has taught and directed collegia at Columbia, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence, SUNY Stony Brook, the Manhattan School of Music and UC Riverside. C.F. Peters has published her new edition of Guillaume de Machaut's Mass. She recently appeared on Good Morning America and Late Night with David Letterman, accompanying Renee Fleming.

Marie Dalby performs on viola da gamba throughout Connecticut and the greater New York area. She is a member of the New York Consort of Viols and also collaborates with singers on a regular basis. She teaches viol at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT, as well as to the Yale Collegium Consort. She is also a 'cellist and sings in the Yale Schola Cantorum, a 24-voice specialist chamber choir. She is currently pursuing a master's degree in medieval church history at the Yale Divinity School, through their Institute of Sacred Music, Worship and the Arts.

Eric Haas received a M.M. degree in early music performance from the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied recorder with John Tyson and baroque flute with Sandra Miller. He has taught at New England Conservatory, Tufts University and Wheaton College, as well as numerous early music workshops. Eric has performed with La Sonnerie and Duo Pentimento, and has appeared with the Ocean State Chamber Orchestra and Emmanuel Music. He has served as music director of the Boston Recorder Society for more than 15 years and is currently on the staff of the von Huene Workshop, Inc. (the Early Music Shop of New England).

Valerie Horst, is Director Emerita of the Amherst Early Music Festival, a former vice president of the American Recorder Society, and former President of Early Music America. Holder of an MFA in Historical Performance from Sarah Lawrence College, she is a long-time member of the faculty of Mannes College of Music, as well as Music Director of the Miami Chapter of the American Recorder Society. Since retiring from the Amherst Early Music directorship, Ms. Horst divides her time between buffing her nails, reading whodunits, and throwing bonbons to the poodle.

Tami Morse, harpsichordist, is increasingly sought after as a soloist and chamber musician in the United States. She has performed with ensembles such as Foundling, the Long Island Baroque Ensemble, North Shore Pro Musica, Stony Brook Opera, Plymouth Symphony Orchestra, Orchestra Canton, Ensemble 212 and the Big Apple Baroque Band. She has recently completed a tour in Taiwan as a member of Inegale, and as a founding member of the group Flying Forms, described by Philip Setzer of the Emerson String Quartet as "one of the best and most interesting chamber groups specializing in original practice of Baroque music," she has many upcoming recording projects and performances in various chamber music series and universities throughout the United States.

Tami is a candidate for the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Stony Brook University studying with the acclaimed harpsichordist and teacher Arthur Haas. She has also studied with Edward Parmentier at the University of Michigan where she received a Master of Music degree in harpsichord performance and was named an Angell Scholar. In addition to her studies in the United States, Tami was awarded the prestigious DAAD grant, which she used to study in Germany at the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne with Ketil Haugsand. She has participated in masterclasses with Joseph Carver, Dana Maiben, Michael Sand, David Simpson, Andreas Scheier, William Christie, Lisa Crawford, Kenneth Weiss and Terence Charlston.

As artistic director of the newly formed Early Music Concert Series at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church in Islip, New York, Tami is dedicated to making early music accessible to today's audiences and laying a foundation for its study and performance in the New York area.

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.

Pat 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. An ARS certified teacher, she teaches recorder, early music, and English country dance in North Carolina and at workshops around the country, and has a passion for playing from facsimiles of early 15th-century music.

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.

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.

Han Tol is one of the most active recorder players in the world of early music. He plays about 90 concerts a year all over the world with several groups and as a soloist and conductor with the German "Balthasar Neumann Ensemble". He is also in great demand as a teacher for masterclasses throughout Europe and the USA and as a guest teacher at conservatories in places such as Vienna, Salzburg, Kopenhagen, Frankfurt, Geneva, St. Petersburg, Baltimore, Bloomington and Tokyo. Han Tol is professor at the "Hochschule für Künste" in Bremen, Germany. One can hear Han Tol's colorful and virtuosic playing on about 30 cd recordings by Teldec, Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, Aeolus, Carus, OPUS 111, EMI and Globe.
Han Tol takes a selection of his large collection of rare and valuable instruments along on his travels. One of these gems is an ivory instrument built around 1700 by the outstanding instrument maker, Johann Benedikt Gahn from Nuremberg.