Winter Weekend

Workshop!

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Martha McGaughey, viola da gamba, studied in Basel with Jordi Savall and in Brussels with Wieland Kuijken. For many years she was a member of the Paris-based Five Centuries Ensemble, known for its performances of both early and contemporary music. Ms McGaughey was a founding member of Musical Assembly, whose recording of the chamber music of Francois Couperin has received critical acclaim, as well as of New York's Empire Viols. She has toured with the Waverly Consort, performed with Concert Royal and the Aulos Ensemble, and appears regularly with the Brooklyn-based Capella Oratoriana and the Long Island Baroque Ensemble. Ms. McGaughey has also collaborated with the British viol consort, Phantasm, in several concerts and a CD of the consort music of William Byrd. She has recorded for the Fonit Cetra and Erato labels in Italy and France, as well as for EMI. Ms. McGaughey has taught at the Ecole Nationale de Musique Angoul ê me in (France), at the Eastman School of Music and at Stanford University. Since 1986 she has been on the faculty at The Mannes College of Music in New York. She has twice been a Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, San Diego, and teaches regularly at Amherst Early Music as well as at the San Francisco Early Music Society summer workshops. Ms. McGaughey's bass viol was made in Paris in 1983 by Guy Derat, after a seven-string instrument in the instrument museum in Geneva by Michel Colichon.

Emlyn Ngai leads a broad and distinguished career as both a modern and historical violinist. As a member of the Adaskin String Trio, he has concertized extensively throughout Canada and the United States, including performances at Merkin Concert Hall, the Corcoran Gallery, Pittsburgh’s Frick Art and Historical Center, and the Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival. The Trio’s concerts have been recorded for broadcast by CBC Radio, Radio-Canada, and National Public Radio. With a repertoire that spans classical masterpieces to present-day commissions, the trio collaborates with a variety of artists, including guitarist Eliot Fisk, pianists Jaime Parker and Sally Pinkas, and concert accordion virtuoso Joseph Petric.

As a historical violinist, Ngai has been a longtime member of Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra. He is Concertmaster of Philadelphia baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare, which, under his leadership, the Philadelphia Inquirer has hailed “a major addition to the local cultural landscape.” He is also first violin of the Tempesta di Mare Chamber Players, with which he performs and tours regularly. As well, he is Associate Concertmaster for the Carmel Bach Festival Orchestra where he his is also first violin of the Festival Quartet. His historical violin skills have kept him in demand with various notable groups in North America, including, Boston Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, Tafelmusik and the Washington Bach Consort. His involvement with Joshua Rifkin’s Bach Ensemble has taken him to Bermuda, Germany, Spain and the UK.

As first prize winner at the 1995 Locatelli Concours Amsterdam, Mr. Ngai recorded a solo CD of Corelli, Locatelli, and Tartini for Vanguard Classics. Together with harpsichordist Peter Watchorn, Ngai has recorded J.S.Bach’s Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord on Musica Omnia, receiving acclaim in BBC Music Magazine, Gramophone, and The Strad. His trio’s recording of the complete Beethoven string trios on Musica Omnia was warmly reviewed in America Record Guide and Gramophone.

Mr. Ngai has degrees from McGill University, Oberlin College Conservatory, and the Hartt School, University of Hartford, where he pursued advanced chamber music studies with the Emerson String Quartet. His teachers include Sydney Humphreys, Thomas Williams, Marilyn McDonald, Eugene Drucker and Philip Setzer. He has taught at Boston University and McGill University and has given masterclasses in Canada and the United States. Currently he is on faculty at the Hartt School where he teaches violin and co-directs the Hartt School Collegium Musicum.

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.

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.

Lutenist Richard Stone has performed as soloist and accompanist worldwide. The New York Times called his playing as "beautiful" and "lustrously melancholy," while the Washington Post described it as having "the energy of a rock solo and the craft of a classical cadenza." He recently completed a two-season nationwide solo tour of the Bach lute suites. Stone founded and co-directs Philadelphia baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare. He has accompanied many of today's best-known vocal artists and appeared with major ensembles. Stone also conducts, leading from the theorbo in such repertoire as Monteverdi's Poppea, Steffani's Stabat Mater and Handel’s Judas Maccabeus. Solo recordings include the world-premiere with Tempesta di Mare of the lute concerti by Silvius Leopold Weiss on Chandos, and Weiss solo suites on Titanic. Other recording and broadcast credits include Deutsche Grammophon, Lyrichord, PGM, Musical Heritage, Polygram, Vienna Modern Masters, ATMA, Eklecta, Centaur, Bis, Chesky, NPR, Czech Radio 3-Vltava and the BBC. Stone studied lute with Patrick O'Brien at SUNY Purchase, and with Nigel North as a Fulbright Scholar at London's Guildhall School.

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.