Faculty

John Andrew Bailey is Organist at the Philadelphia Episcopal Cathedral. He performs actively as an accompanist and continuo player in the Philadelphia area, and has also appeared as a concerto soloist with baroque orchestra Tempesta di Mare and on the Philadelphia Bach Festival series. He holds degrees in harpsichord from the Eastman School of Music, where his principal teachers were David Craighead and Arthur Haas. He also trained as a musicologist, and has taught music and humanities courses at Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, Bryn Mawr College, and Montclair State University. He has presented his research on the music of Guillaume de Machaut at international conferences, and his co-authored essay on the performance practice of fifteenth-century chansons appears in Binchois Studies from Oxford University Press. 2011 marks his thirteenth year on the staff of the Amherst Festival.

Julianne Baird, soprano, has been hailed a "national artistic treasure" (New York Times) and as a "well-nigh peerless performer in the repertory of the baroque." It was also stated about her that "she possesses a natural musicianship which engenders singing of supreme expressive beauty."

This estimable artist maintains a busy concert and recording schedule of solo recitals and performances of baroque opera and oratorio. (See, http://juliannebaird.camden.rutgers.edu/performances.htm )

With more than 125 recordings to her credit on Decca, Deutsche Gramophone, Dorian and Newport Classics, Julianne Baird is widely acknowledged as one of leaders in music of the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition to her major roles in a series of acclaimed recordings of Handel and Gluck operatic premieres, recent projects include a Carnegie performance of the lead role in La Giuditta of Alessandro Scarlatti with subsequent recording. Recordings of Handel Arias from Alcina and Rinaldo with the Dryden Ensemble and a newly commissioned opera are planned for 2008-09. She recently recorded the Handel Deutsche Arien with Tempesta di Mare for the British label Chandos. May 2008 will see a recording of L'Amour en Mai with the New York Early Music Ensemble Parthenia.

Julianne Baird is recognized internationally as one whose virtuosic vocal style is firmly rooted in scholarship. Her book, Introduction to the Art of Singing (Cambridge University Press), now in its third printing, is used by singers and professional schools internationally. The Musical World of Benjamin Franklin (CD and Song Book) is published by The Colonial Institute. For publication information go to: http://www.colonialmusic.org/BF.htm
Dr. Baird holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University and is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University.
Julianne Baird's Website

Michael Barrett is active in the Boston area as a professional musician and teacher. As a singer Mr. Barrett has collaborated with the Boston Camerata, Huelgas Ensemble, Blue Heron, Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Netherlands Bach Society), L’Académie, Seven Times Salt, and Exsultemus. He can be heard on harmonia mundi and Blue Heron record labels.

In Boston Mr. Barrett directs Convivium Musicum, a chamber choir for Renaissance music; Sprezzatura, a professional vocal ensemble; and serves on the advisory board of L’Académie, a professional ensemble for Baroque music. Mr. Barrett has performed in several recent opera productions of the Boston Early Music Festival.

Mr. Barrett has worked as a conductor and music theory teacher at Harvard University. He is a faculty member of IMC, a New York-based company for music curriculum and instruction, and has served as a workshop leader for professional development courses. He also maintains a studio for private instruction in voice, piano and music theory.

Mr. Barrett earned an AB in music from Harvard University, an MM in choir conducting from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and First Phase Diploma in Baroque and Classical singing from the Koninklijk Conservatorium (Royal Conservatory) in The Hague, The Netherlands. In the fall of 2010 he began doctoral studies in choral conducting at Boston University.

Michael Barrett's Website

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. Ms. 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.

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.
Louise Carslake has performed throughout her native country of Great Britain, as well as in Holland, Ireland, Poland, New Zealand and the U.S.A. She has recorded for Meridian Records, London, Intrada and Centaur and can be heard on the second DiscContinuo recording. Her festival appearances include the Lufthansa Baroque Festival, York Early Music Festival, Berkeley Festival, Monadnock Festival, Krakow Festival and the Kilkenny Festival. She is a member of Music’s Recreation and also plays with Magnificat. In addition to her performing activities, Louise teaches on the faculty at Mills College, and was the assistant director of the San Francisco Early Music Society Medieval and Renaissance workshop from 2002-2008. A graduate of Trinity College of Music, London, Louise also studied baroque flute with Wilbert Hazelzet in the Netherlands, and performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.

Kathryn Cok pursues a varied career as a harpsichordist, fortepianist and academic on both sides of the Atlantic. She is well sought after both as a soloist as well as a continuo player.

Born in the city of New York, USA, Kathryn now lives in The Hague, Holland where she completed a Masters degree at the Royal Conservatory as a student of Ton Koopman and Tini Mathot on the harpsichord, and Bart van Oort on the fortepiano. Kathryn was recently awarded a PhD from Leiden University on the subject Basso Continuo Sources from the Dutch Republic c.1620-c.1790.

Kathryn recently won first prize in the first solo competition for baroque instruments in Brunnenthal, Austria. She works regularly as a soloist and continuo player with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and other important early music ensembles in Europe and performs regularly as a soloist in many of the world's most renowned Early Music Festivals such as Oude Muziek, Utrecht, Brunnenthaler Concert Zomer, Bodensee Festival, and important keyboard collections in the UK such as the Cobbe Collection, Finchcocks, Fenton House and the Gemeente Museum, Holland.

She is co-founder of the Caecilia-Concert, a dynamic international group of instrumentalists specializing in performance and research of 17th century music for instruments and voices. Kathryn teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Holland, where she is also study leader of the Master research program.

For more information please visit: www.kathryncok.com.

 

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.

Héloïse Degrugillier has worked extensively as both a recorder performer and teacher throughout Europe and the United States. Recent performances included a recital at the National Music Museum in South Dakota, with the Dunya ensemble in Jordan Hall, and with the Boston Early Music Festival Opera. Héloïse enjoys an active teaching career, working with the Boston Recorder Society, Recorder Guild of New York, Pinewoods and others. She has recently completed her studies in the Alexander technique and has a Masters in Music from the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. She has studied with Heiko ter Scheggett, Saskia Coolen, and Pedro Memelsdorff.
Bruce Dickey
Keyboardist Alissa Duryee grew up in New Jersey and began her musical studies at the piano with Donaldo Garcia, at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division. She later attended Vassar College, where she became interested in early keyboard instruments, and upon graduation in 1997, moved to France where she has since studied the piano with Gerard Fremy and Guigla Katsarava, the harpsichord with Olivier Baumont, Noelle Spieth, and Frederic Michel, and the organ with Marie-Louise Langlas.

As a resident artist at the Fondation des Etats-Unis in Paris, she cofounded PONT, an organization devoted to promoting young artists and musicians, and the Orchestre FMR, an orchestra composed of young international musicians supporting student soloists and conductors, and promoting the works of student composers. During this residency, a grant from the Harriet Hale Woolley Foundation allowed her to pursue an interest in instrument building by constructing a fretted clavichord and a French double manual harpsichord.

As a performer, she has appeared throughout Europe and North America and completed a residency at the Banff Centre for the Arts. As a collaborative artist she works with such institutions as the Conservatoire de Chartres, Conservatoire de Region de Paris, and the Amherst Early Music Festival, as well as numerous freelance projects. She maintains a class of keyboard students in Nogent-le-Rotrou, France. Current projects include the study of fortepiano with Patrick Cohen and the writing of a thesis on the topic of the musical traditions of the Couperin, Bach, and Scarlatti families.

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.

http://www.emilyeagen.com

Vittorio Ghielmi is a noted soloist and the director of the ensemble il Suonar Parlante, which is both a viol consort and orchestra. He is also the co-author, with Paolo Biordi, of a viol technique manual, and recently published an edition of the viola da gamba concertos of Johann Gottlieb Graun. For more information about his classes at the 2012 Amherst Early Music fesival, see this page.

 

Justin Godoy has performed with leading period ensembles, including the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Hesperus, Tempesta di Mare, and La Donna Musicale. As a winner of the Frank Huntington Beebe Grant, Justin spent two years performing, teaching, and studying in Holland. In 2006 Justin Godoy and Joseph Gascho founded the early music ensemble Harmonious Blacksmith, which has quickly earned critical acclaim for its "superb improvisations," "dazzling virtuosity," and "almost incredible accord." Harmonious Blacksmith has performed in many festivals and concert series including the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, National Gallery of Art, Magnolia Baroque Festival, The Embassy Series, and the Washington Early Music Festival. Justin studied recorder with Heiko ter Schegget, Saskia Coolen, and Gwyn Roberts, and composition with Nicholas Maw.
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).
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 Yale University and Mannes College of Music / the New School 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.

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.
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.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, Christopher Krueger was a student of James Pappoutsakis. He has performed as principal flutist with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Pops and Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, the Opera Company of Boston, Boston Ballet, Boston Musica Viva, and Cantata Singers, among other organizations, and was a founding member of the Emmanuel Wind Quintet, winners of the 1981 Walter W. Naumburg Award for Chamber Music. Currently he is a member of Collage New Music, Emmanuel Music, and performs frequently as principal flutist with Cantata Singers and other organizations in Boston.

In the mid-1970’s, Mr. Krueger became interested in historical performance. His career as a Baroque flutist has taken him throughout the United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, and Australia. He has been a soloist on the Great Performers Series and Mostly Mozart Festival at Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Bach Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, the Berlin Bach Festival, the City of London Festival, and the Lufthansa Festival of Baroque Music, as well as in France, Belgium, Italy, and Poland. He is a member of the Bach Ensemble and the Aulos Ensemble, and is principal flutist with the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque.

Christopher Krueger has conducted and been a soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music, and his recordings can be heard on Sony, DG, Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Pro Arte, CRI, Telarc, Koch, and Centaur. Mr. Krueger has served on the faculties of the New England Conservatory of Music, Boston University, Wellesley College, the Longy School of Music, Oberlin's Baroque Performance Institute, and the Akademie für Alte Musik in Brixen/ Bressanone, Italy and. He is a Senior Lecturer in Music at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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.
Loren Ludwig performs, teaches, writes about, and composes music. He is currently a Phd. candidate in the University of Virginia's Critical and Comparative Studies in Music program, where he is at work on a dissertation about the social and ritual dimensions of amateur chamber music: '"Equal to All Alike": A Cultural History of the Viol Consort in England, c.1550-1675'. He has presented papers at the AMS, SAM, and IASPM annual conferences and is a recipient of both a Fulbright and a Mellon fellowship. He is a founding member of the new wave viol consort "quaver" and performs music of the last six centuries on acoustic and electric viols. He is on the faculty of the Amherst Early Music Festival and Workshop, the Viola da Gamba Society of America's annual Conclave, and numerous other festivals and workshops. A bit of his music can be heard at myspace.com.
Myron Lutzke is well known to audiences as a ‘cellist on both modern and period instruments. He attended Brandeis University and is a graduate of the Juilliard School where he was a student Leonard Rose and Harvey Shapiro. Chamber music studies include work with Robert Koff, Eugene Lehner and Felix Galimir. He is currently a member of the St. Luke’ s Chamber Ensemble, Aulos Ensemble, Mozartean Players, Bach Ensemble, the Loma Mar Quartet, The Theater of Early Music and the Esterhazy Machine and serves as principal ‘ cellist` for the Orchestra of St. Luke’ s, American Classical Orchestra and, for fourteen years, Handel and Haydn Society with Christopher Hogwood in Boston. He has appeared as soloist at the Caramoor, Ravinia and Mostly Mozart festivals and is a regular participant at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival, Santa Fe Promusica and the Smithsonian Chamber Players.
Mr. Lutzke’ s numerous recordings include the complete Mozart and Schubert piano trios with the Mozartean Players and the album “ Working Classical” with the Loma Mar quartet for Paul McCartney. He has recorded for the Sony, DG, Dorian, Atma, Arabesque, EMI and Oiseau-Lyre labels. He is currently on the faculty of Indiana University Early Music Institute and Mannes College of Music where he teaches period ‘cello and baroque performance practice.
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.
Washington McClain holds degrees in musicology and oboe performance from Northeast Louisiana University and a master in oboe performance from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. A specialist on Baroque and Classical oboes, he has performed with many groups in the United States, including The City Musik (Chicago), Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), Opera Lafayette (Washington, D.C.), and Washington Bach Consort.

In Canada and Europe, Washington has performed with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, serving as core oboist for seven years, Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver), The Netherlands Bach Society, and is currently principal oboist of l’Ensemble Arion in Montréal, Québec.

Washington’s extensive teaching and performing experience in workshops and festivals in North America include The Amherst Early Music Festival, Albuquerque Baroque Double Reeds, the Madison Early Music Festival, The International Baroque Institute at Longy (Boston), Festival International de Musique Baroque de Lamèque (New Brunswick, Canada), The Staunton Music Festival (Virginia), and the Boston Early Music Festival. He is also the first period instrument performer to be featured in an article of Windplayer Magazine.

Washington has recorded for the Sony Classical, ATMA, Analekta, Naxos, Centaur, and CBC Records labels, and currently teaches at The Early Music Institute at Indiana University in Bloomington. He makes his home in Windsor, Ontario (Canada).

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. Since assuming artistic directorship of Boston Midsummer Opera in 2006, he has directed his own pastiches of scenes, The Marriages of Mozart and Tales of Offenbach as well as Peter Brook’s Tragedy of Carmen and Mozart’s Così fan tutte.

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.

Patricia Ann Neely (viola da gamba) has appeared with many early music ensembles including, the Folger Consort, Smithsonian Chamber Players, the New York Collegium, the Washington Bach Consort, Amor Artis, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, the Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, The Newberry Consort, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, The New York Consort of Viols, and Early Music New York, among others, and was a founding member of the viol consort Parthenia. She spent three years performing with the acclaimed European-based medieval ensemble, Sequentia on the medieval fiddle performing throughout Europe and North America, at festivals including, Oude Muziek - Utrecht, Bach Tage – Berlin, Alte Musik – Herne, Wratislavia Cantans - Poland, Music Before 1800, and The Vancouver Early Music Festival.  Ms. Neely began playing the viol at Vassar College and continued her studies, earning an MFA in Historical Performance at Sarah Lawrence College, with additional studies in Belgium with Wieland Kuijken.  She has recorded for Arabesque, Allegro, Musical Heritage, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Ex Cathedra, Classic Masters, Erato, Lyrichord, and Music Masters labels. Ms. Neely has been a member of the faculty at the Amherst Early Music Summer Festival, the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclaves, and is currently on the faculty of The Brearley School in New York City where she teaches recorder and double bass. 

 

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.
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. 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.
Stanley Ritchie has directed and appeared as soloist with many period instrument ensembles, including the Academy of Ancient Music, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, and the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra. He is in demand for master classes and workshops throughout the world. Professor Ritchie is a member of Duo Geminiani with harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright, and was a member of Three Parts Upon a Ground, specializing in 17th-century music for three violins. For 20 years, he was a member of The Mozartean Players, with whom he recorded the complete Mozart and Schubert Piano Trios. He has held various positions as a modern violinist, including concertmaster of the New York City Opera Orchestra, associate concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, and first violinist of the Philadelphia String Quartet.
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.
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.
John Mark Rozendaal specializes in teaching and performing stringed instrument music from the Baroque and Renaissance eras. As founding Artistic Director of Chicago Baroque Ensemble, JMR performed and led seven seasons of subscription concerts, educational programs, radio broadcasts, and recordings for the Cedille and Centaur labels. Rozendaal served as principal 'cellist of The City Musick, and Basically Bach, and has performed both solo and continuo roles with many period instrument ensembles, including the Newberry Consort, Orpheus Band, and the King's Noyse. Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Catacoustic Consort, Philomel, Parthenia, The New York Consort of Viols, Empire Viols, and the Kansas City Chorale under maestro Charles Bruffy.  JMR performs as a member of Trio Settecento with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and harpsichordist David Schrader. Rozendaal's viola da gamba playing has been praised as "splendid" (Chicago Tribune), and "breathtaking" (Sun-Times).  Recordings are available on the Cedille and Centaur labels.

A dedicated teacher, Rozendaal is in demand as a workshop teacher and often joins the faculties of the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, Viols West’s annual workshop, Amherst Early Music, Madison Early Music Festival, and the Music Institute of Chicago’s annual Baroque Festival. As Artist -in-Residence at The Harvey School, a coeducational college preparatory school locatied in Katonah, New York, Rozendaal led the Harvey Early Music Ensemble's tours to England in 2006 and to Italy in 2007. JMR teaches private lessons and viola da gamba Dojo classes at his studio in Manhattan.

 

Avi Stein teaches harpsichord, vocal repertoire and chamber music at Yale University, continuo accompaniment at the Juilliard School and is the music director at St. Matthew & St. Timothy Episcopal Church in Manhattan. The New York Times described him as "a brilliant organ soloist" in his Carnegie Hall debut and he was recently featured in Early Music America magazine in an article on the new generation of leaders in the field.  Avi has performed throughout the United States, in Europe, Canada, and Central America. He is an active continuo accompanist who plays regularly with the Boston Early Music Festival, the Trinity Church Wall Street Choir and Baroque Orchestra, the Clarion Music Society and Bach Vespers NYC.  Avi directed the young artists’ program at the Carmel Bach Festival.  Avi has also conducted a variety of ensembles including the Opera Français de New York, the OperaOmnia and a critically acclaimed annual series called the 4x4 Festival.  Avi studied at Indiana University, the Eastman School of Music, the University of Southern California and was a Fulbright scholar in Toulouse. 

 

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

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.
Jennifer Streeter has performed throughout the United States and Europe with ensembles such as the Indianapolis and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, Baroque Northwest, Music of the Baroque, the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, and was featured at the 2006, 2007 and 2008 Bloomington Early Music Festivals.  She completed masters' degrees in recorder and harpsichord from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, studying with Eva Legêne and Elisabeth Wright.  She has been featured on Indiana University's WFIU and the nationally syndicated program Harmonia. She currently resides in Cary, NC where she contributes to her community as a freelance musician and as a massage therapist.

 

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 Cambridge Society for Early Music and at Music Sources in Berkeley, CA, Manuel de Falla's Harpsichord Concerto with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble, the Schumann Piano Quintet on original instruments with the Van Swieten Quartet, and Samuel Barber’s organ concerto “Toccata Festiva” in at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. 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, an event 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 Psyché and Conradi’s Ariadne, and now directs its featured “Keyboard Day” mini-festival. He also 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. He also performs frequently on the clavichord and was one of two featured players on this instrument at the 2009 Boston Early Music Festival.

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 recordings include the dedication recital on the Tannenberg organ in Old Salem, available on the Raven label, and the complete Bach harpsichord partitas, soon available on the Centaur label.

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 faculty of the Longy School of Music.  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.

Peter Sykes's Website
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.

Four time Grammy Award winner, Glen Velez is the founding Father of the modern Frame Drum movement and is regarded as a legendary figure among musicians and audiences world-wide. Velez brought a new genre of drumming to the contemporary music scene by creating his own performance style inspired by years of percussion and frame drumming studies from various cultures. Velez's virtuosic combinations of hand movements, finger techniques, along with his original compositional style, which incorporates stepping, drum language and Central Asian Overtone singing (split-tone singing), has undoubtedly opened new possibilities for musicians around the globe, resulting in a shift in modern percussion.

Velez has several instructional videos and has published numerous instructional books and articles on the subject. He is a master teacher who conducts workshops worldwide. Velez developed his own teaching approach called The Handance Method. It incorporates voice and body movement into the process of learning to play the frame drum and has been presented in hundreds of universities and conservatories. Velez is an adjunct professor at Mannes School of Music in New York City and conducts regular master classes at The Juilliard School and Tanglewood Summer Music Program. Glen's groundbreaking research efforts into the history of the Frame Drum has inspired a host of his protéŽgésŽ to continue the quest into the mystery of the frame drum's origins.

The Dutch recorder player Reine-Marie Verhagen studied the recorder with Walter van Hauwe at the then "Amsterdamsch Conservatorium". She also studied with Walter van Hauwe. 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.

Since 1983, Reine-Marie Verhagen has been a a regular member of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Ton Koopman. She has taken part in many recordings and concerts with this ensemble (J.S. Bach’s cantatas, Brandenburg Concertos, as well as works by George Frideric Handel, Purcell and Charpentier). With the ensemble La Sfera Armoniosa conducted by Mike Fentross she performed several 17th century operas. 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). For the past 10 years she has also regularly performed 17th-18th and 20th-century music in San Francisco, Amherst, Boston, and New York.

Reine-Marie Verhagen takes keen interest in the contemporary repertoire, from Japanese composers to Steve Reich. For the Steve Reich festival at the Royal Conservatory at The Hague in December 2003, she made a very successful transcription of his Vermont Counterpoint for solo recorder and an 11-member recorder ensemble. This composition was also performed in October 2007 at the International Minimal Music Festival in Kassel, Germany, in combination with the Premiere of a new minimal composition, written for Reine-Marie Verhagen, by Ulli Goette: Mural.

Not confining herself exclusively to musical performance, Reine-Marie Verhagen was a co-founder and former member of the board of the Dutch branch of the ERTA.

 

Wouter Verschuren was born in Amersfoort, Holland. He studied recorder with Michael Barker and Jeanette van Wingenden at the Koninkijk Conservatorium in Den Haag concurrently studying the baroque bassoon with Donna Agrell. He received his solo diploma in 1999. He is principal bassoon of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra conducted by Ton Koopman, which in addition to having a busy international concert schedule is currently involved in recording all the cantatas of J.S.Bach. He also plays with such orchestras as The Academy of Ancient Music, La Petite Band and Concerto Copenhagen. Wouter is a keen soloist and active chamber musician. He gives solo recitals with keyboard player Kathryn Cok with whom recent performances have included international festivals such as the 2002 Brunnenthaler Konzertsommer in Austria. As well as this he is a founder member of the Caecilia-Concert, and a founder member of the Etesian Ensemble who perform music of the classical period for fortepiano and winds.

Wouter is currently teacher of dulcian at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. See his website at http://www.wouterverschuren.com/

Webb Wiggins, recognized and lauded internationally for his innovative and musical continuo realizations, has performed and recorded with many US ensembles.  They include the Folger Consort, the Dryden Ensemble, Kings Noyse, Chatham Baroque, Hesperus, the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, the Catacoustic Consort, the Baltimore Consort, the Violins of Lafayette, Apollo’s Fire, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony, and the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra.  His collaborations with soloists, both vocal and instrumental, have earned him high respect among his colleagues in the world of baroque music.

Wiggins is also one of the foremost teachers of harpsichord as well as a coach for chamber music and director of baroque opera.  He is associate professor of harpsichord at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music and serves on the faculty of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the Amherst Early Music Festival.  For over fifteen years, Wiggins was coordinator of the early music program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music.  His recordings can be heard on the Dorian, EMI, Bard, Smithsonian, and PGM labels.

Webb holds degrees in organ performance from Stetson University and the Eastman School of Music and has done additional harpsichord study at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.  He is perhaps the only harpsichordist in modern times to have given multiple performances on trans-Atlantic voyages.  

 

Brent Wissick is the Zachary Taylor Smith Distinguished Term Professor in the Department of Music at UNC-CH, where he has taught cello, viola da gamba and chamber music since 1982. A member of Ensemble Chanterelle and principal cellist of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, he is also a frequent guest with American Bach Soloists, Folger Consort, Boston Early Music Festival, Concert Royal, Dallas Bach Society, Vancouver Early Music Festival and Collegio di Musica Sacra in Poland. With these ensembles has recorded for the Centaur, Albany, Koch, Radio Bremen, Bard and Dux labels as well as in the soundtrack for the Touchstone film "Casanova". His online video article titled "The Cello Music of Bononcini" can be viewed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music" and several of his teaching videos are posted on the website of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. He served as president of that society from 2000 through 2004 and chaired its international Pan-Pacific Gamba Gathering in Hawaii during the summer of 2007.

In addition to teaching cello at UNC, he directs its Cello Choir, Viol Consortand Baroque Ensemble, also teaching classes in Historical Performance Practices and String Methods for Music Education Students; as well as team-teaching a First-Year Seminar in the Physics of Music with Laurie McNeil, chair of the Physics Department. He also serves as mentor of the Kenan Music Scholars and is chair of the String Area.

His current research and performance interests include the cello music of Benjamin Britten, Chopin’s Cello Music on period instruments and French Gamba Music. A graduate of the Crane School of Music at Potsdam College in NY and of Penn State (MM cello, 1978), he also studied with John Hsu at Cornell University and was an NEH Fellow at Harvard in the 1993 Beethoven Quartet Seminar. He has taught at the College of St Scholastica in Minnesota (1978-82), Chautauqua Institution and the 1997 Aston Magna Academy at Yale; and has presented lectures, master classes and recitals at schools, colleges and workshops throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

Adam Woolf graduated in 1997 from the Royal Academy of Music where he has since returned as a visiting professor of baroque trombone.

He is a keen exponent of the many guises of historical trombone playing.  His enthusiasm has led him to partake in recordings and concerts all over the world with some of today's finest exponents of early music including specialist ensembles such as Concerto Palatino and La Fenice.  His work can be heard on dozens of recordings covering a repertoire spanning over 600 years!  Recent projects have included recording the sonatas of Dario Castello, virtuosic chamber music by Matthias Weckmann, Schmelzer, Biber and Buxtehude and early 15th century playing techniques.  Adam is a full time member of several world-leading ensembles including His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts, Caecilia-Concert and Oltremontano.

As well as his work at the Royal Academy or Music in London, Adam teaches regularly on international early music courses including Wim Becu's Academia Giovanni Gabrieli in Belgium and the Newark Early Music Course with Jamie Savan in the UK.  He has also taught as a visiting professor at the Royal College of Music in London and given masterclasses in America, Sweden, Israel, and a course for renaissance brass playing on an organic cattle farm in Southern Germany!   Adam is not only active as a teacher of the sackbut but also teaches brass at the British School in Antwerp.

Since 2000, Adam has been the principal trombone with Sir John Eliot Gardiner's English Baroque Soloists and Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique. Activities with these groups have included recording all the Cantatas of JS Bach, orchestral works by Brahms, and the groundbreaking live DVD recording of Berlioz "Les Troyens".  He is also principal trombone of The Kings Consort with whom he recently performed the Leopold Mozart concerto.  

From 2005 to 2007 Adam was part of the production “VSPRS”, a ballet based upon Monteverdi's Vespers of 1610 which toured world-wide with Alain Platel's Ballet C de la B, Oltremontano and Aka Moon in which he exploited among other things the possibilities of contemporary jazz improvisation on the sackbut!  He continues to work in this genre with the sackbut as part of the VSPRS concert orchestra and in projects mixing world music, contemporary jazz and baroque styles with Aka Moon.

In 2007 Adam was elected an honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music when he was awarded the ARAM for distinguished significant work in the music profession.

 

In 2009, Adam recorded his first solo CD, entitled Songs Without Words, which is the first recording to feature a sackbut player as a soloist while focussing solely on music and playing styles from 16th- and 17th-century music.

In 2010, Adam published his tutor-book for sackbut. Entitled Sackbut Solutions, this is the first book of its kind to be made commercially available.

 

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.
Lawrence Zukof, MM, Performance of Early Music, New England Conservatory. Former Executive Director of Brookline Music School (MA). Performed and recorded with the Boston Camerata and Pro Arte Chamber Singers (CT). Recorder and Vocal Soloist (Countertenor) with Boston Classical Orchestra, Capella Cantorum and others. Faculty: Pinewoods Early Music Week, American Recorder Society Workshops (MA, CT, NY). Arts Management consultant for National Guild of Community Schools of the Arts.