Daniel Stepner
Daniel Stepner, as Aston Magna’s Artistic Director, has programmed and led vocal and instrumental music dating from 1589 through the 1850s, featuring period instruments and vocal styles. Aston Magna repertoire has included everything from music for solo violin to early baroque opera, such as Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo and L’incoronazione di Poppea, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne. Mr. Stepner is also first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet (Artists in Residence at Brandeis University) and a founding member of the Boston Museum Trio (resident at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts for 27 years). For the last 21 years, under Thomas Dunn, Christopher Hogwood and Grant Llewellyn, he has been the concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society, America’s oldest continuing musical organization. He is also a Preceptor in Music at Harvard University, where he team-teaches a course in the performance and analysis of chamber music with Robert Levin. In solo recital, chamber and orchestral settings, and in the theater, he has performed music from 1589 through 2008. Mr. Stepner has recorded baroque sonatas by Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Marais; major chamber works of Schubert, Brahms, John Harbison, Peter Child and Yehudi Wyner and violin and piano sonatas of Charles Ives with pianist John Kirkpatrick. For Aston Magna, he has led recordings of cantatas of J. S. Bach, chamber works of Mozart and Schubert, and an acclaimed recording of Handel’s oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, and Monteverdi’s pioneering opera L’Orfeo. He has held concertmasterships for Boston Baroque, The Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and New Haven Symphony, and for six years was assistant concertmaster of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century, based in Holland. As a touring musician, he has played in 11 countries in Western Europe and the former Soviet Union, and throughout Australia and the United States. Mr. Stepner is a native of Wisconsin, and his major teachers were Steven Staryk in Chicago, Nadia Boulanger in France and Broadus Erle at Yale, where he earned a Doctor of Musical Arts degree. Presently on the faculties of Brandeis and Harvard Universities, he has taught violin, chamber music and performance practice at the New England Conservatory, Eastman School, Boston University and the Longy School.
Frederick Aldrich
Hornist, Frederick Aldrich, is a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Richard Mackey. He has also studied with Julie Landsman, James Chambers, Mason Jones and Robert Pierce. Mr. Aldrich is a member of the Boston Classical Orchestra and is principal hornist of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra. He has performed with the Boston Symphony, Boston Pops, the Philharmonia Hungarica, Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Ballet, and the Boston Lyric Opera. Conductors that he has worked under include Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, and Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos. Mr.Aldrich also serves on the music faculties of Wellesley College, Smith College and Brandeis University.
Roberta Anderson
The American soprano, Roberta Anderson, has performed extensively throughout the USA, Europe and Canada, winning praise for her “sweet tone” and “exquisitely refined musicianship”. She has been a soloist with the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Early Music Festival, Emmanuel Music, Concerto Köln, Boston Baroque, the Aston Magna Festival, The Spectrum Singers, Cantata Singers, the Boston Camerata, and Coro Allegro. Roberta Anderson may also be heard on numerous recordings, most recently on Emmanuel Music’s newly released Bach Cantatas for the 1st and 2nd Sundays after Trinity.
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Nancy Armstrong
Nancy Armstrong’s luminous performances extend across the musical spectrum from early Renaissance to American musical theatre. The Boston Globe described her voice as “a plaintive, humane instrument … she is an intelligent artist who cherishes words”, and The New Yorker honored her with the title “the Purcell Prima Donna of our day”. Highlighting her career are her portrayals of seventeen Handelian opera and oratorio heroines to date. Her critically acclaimed Messiah performances span the United States and include several at Carnegie Hall. She appears annually to sold-out audiences in her treasured Valentine’s Day concerts of American Broadway composers. Miss Armstrong has just released her first solo CD, ‘What Magic Has Victorious Love’, on VAI, featuring her interpretations of Handel’s powerful cantata Lucrezia and selected favorite songs of Purcell. Another new CD, ‘Starlight and Sweet Dreams’, with songs of Gershwin and Porter, is a joint project with baritone Robert Honeysucker, violinist Daniel Stepner and viola da gambist Laura Jeppesen, and has appeared on Centaur. She is showcased on CDs of Handel’s L’Allegro ed il Penseroso ed il (Arabesque), Mozart’s Mass in C Minor (Denon), Virgil Thomson’s songs (Northeastern), Perera’s The Outermost House (Albany) and Trimble’s Four Fragments from the Canterbury Tales (Albany). Miss Armstrong is also Adjunct Associate Professor of the Practice for the Brandeis University Theatre Arts Graduate Program.
Malcolm Bilson
Malcolm Bilson has been in the forefront of the period-instrument movement for over thirty years. A member of the Cornell Music Department since 1968, he began his pioneering activity in the early 1970s as a performer of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert on late 18th- and early 19th-century pianos. Since then he has proven to be a key contributor to the restoration of the fortepiano to the concert stage and to fresh recordings of the “mainstream” repertory. In addition to an extensive career as a soloist and chamber player, Bilson has toured with the English Baroque Soloists with John Eliot Gardiner, the Academy of Ancient Music with Christopher Hogwood, the Philharmonia Baroque under Nicholas McGegan, Tafelmusik of Toronto, Concerto Köln and other early and modern instrument orchestras around the world. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Bard College and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Mr. Bilson has recorded the three most important complete cycles of works for piano by Mozart: the piano concertos with John Eliot Gardiner and the English Baroque Soloists, the piano-violin Sonatas with Sergiu Luca, and the solo piano sonatas. His traversal on period pianos of the Schubert piano sonatas (including the so-called incomplete sonatas) was completed in 2003, and in 2005 a single CD of Haydn sonatas will appear on the Claves label. In the fall of 1994 Bilson and six of his former artist-pupils from Cornell’s D.M.A. program in historical performance practice presented the 32 piano sonatas of Beethoven in New York City, the first time ever that these works had been given as a cycle on period instruments. The New York Times said that “what emerged in these performances was an unusually clear sense of how revolutionary these works must have sounded in their time.” The recording of this series garnered over fifty very positive reviews and has recently been reissued.
In addition to his activities in Cornell’s performance-practice program, Professor Bilson teaches piano to both graduate and undergraduate students. He is also adjunct professor at the Eastman School of Music. He gives annual summer fortepiano workshops at various locations in the United States and Europe, as well as master classes and lectures (generally in conjunction with solo performances) around the world. In his educational video entitled “Knowing the Score,” released in 2005, Bilson discusses the question: Do we really know how to read the notation of the so-called ‘classical’ masters?
Anne Black
Anne Black enjoys an active career in the Boston area as both a classical musician and visual artist. She performs with the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, as well as with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops as an extra violist. She is principal violist of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston, and the orchestras of the Cantata Singers, Concord Chorus, and Metropolitan Chorale. Appearing frequently as a performer of contemporary music, Black is violist of the Dinosaur Annex Music Ensemble. She performs with Collage New Music and can be heard on Collage’s Grammy-nominated recording of John Harbison’s Mottetti di Montale. She has presented solo and chamber works for Notariotous, Auros New Music Ensemble, Extension Works, Alea III, Phantom Arts Ensemble, Composers in Red Sneakers, the Boston Microtonal Society, and the Harvard University Fromm Foundation Concerts. She has been a guest artist with the Lydian Quartet, in residence at Brandeis University. She appeared as viola d’amore soloist in Meyerbeer’s opera “Les Huguenots” with the American Symphony in 2009.
As a performer on period instruments, she is a violinist and violist in the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra and performs with Boston Baroque and the Aston Magna Festival. She has been featured as viola d’amore soloist with Handel & Haydn Society, Chorus Pro Musica, Concord Chorus, and Cecilia Society. She was a founding member of the Mannheim Quartet, which can be heard on Titanic Records.
She received a B.A. at University of California, Los Angeles, M.M. at Yale University School of Music, and pursued further post-graduate work at Boston University. She also spent three summers at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara, CA. Her teachers included Broadus Erle and Syoko Aki, violin, and Walter Trampler, viola. She has taught at Phillips Exeter Academy, University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and Merrywood Music School in Lenox, MA, and will be on the faculty of Point Counterpoint, VT, in August 2012.
A prize-winning photographer and artist in multiple media, she has been a resident artist at the Arlington Center for the Arts since 2004. Her work can be seen at www.CapriccioArts.com.
Guy Fishman
Guy Fishman made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005 with the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra, which he joined in 2002 as their youngest principal player. That same year he joined Boston Baroque, and since that time he has been in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, performing in recital and with Apollo’s Fire, Emmanuel Music, and the Boston Museum Trio, as well as with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s and The Mark Morris Group, among others. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by The New York Times, and “beautiful….noble” by the Boston Herald. Mr. Fishman started playing the cello at age 12, and at 16 began his Baccalaureate studies with David Soyer at the Manhattan School of Music. He subsequently worked with Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten and Laurence Lesser, with whom he completed Doctoral studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. In addition, he is a Fulbright Fellow, having worked with famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam. He has recorded for the Centaur, Telarc, Titanic, and Newport Classics labels. He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler.
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Sarah Freiberg Ellison
Sarah Freiberg is principal cellist of Boston Baroque and a tenured member of the Handel and Haydn Society. She hasperformed with the New York Collegium, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Portland Baroque Oregon), Seattle Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival and Arion (Montreal). As a corresponding editor for STRINGS magazine, she has contributed dozens of articles and reviews. Ms. Freiberg edited the long forgotten Guerini cello sonatas for both PRB Productions and Broude Brothers, and recorded both Guerini and Laurenti cello sonatas for Centaur. She teaches in the Historical Performance department at Boston University as well as at the Powers Music School in Belmont. Sarah received her D.M.A. and M.M. degrees from S.U.N.Y. at Stony Brook, and holds degrees from the San Francisco Conservatory, Brown University and the Mozarteum in Salzburg , Austria. Ms. Freiberg can be heard on numerous recordings, including as soloist on the Boston Baroque CD of works by Vivaldi and Geminiani.
John Gibbons
John Gibbons, the American harpsichordist, received the Erwin Bodky Prize (1969), the NEC Chadwick Medal (1967) and a Fulbright Scholarship for study with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam. He is a distinguished keyboard artist and member of the Boston Museum Trio. He has performed as harpsichord and fortepiano soloist with major ensembles in the USA and Europe, among them the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, New York Chamber Symphony, Orchestra of the 18th Century, Philharmonia Baroque and the Da Camera Society of Houston. He performs regularly at such festivals as those in Torino and Spoleto, Italy; Chamber Music Northwest; the Aston Magna Festival in the Berkshires. John Gibbons teaches historical performance and chamber music at New England Conservatory, where he also directs the Bach Ensemble.
Valerie Gordon
Valerie Gordon is originally from Denver, Colorado and is currently pursuing her Master’s Degree in Early Music at Indiana University, where she is the recipient of an Associate Instructorship, studying baroque violin with professor Stanley Ritchie.
Previous to moving to Bloomington, Valerie received a Bachelor’s Degree from McGill University, and an Artist’s Diploma from The Glenn Gould School. Valerie was under the tutelage of Erika Raum and Jeanne Lamon at the Glenn Gould School, and Tom Williams and Mark Fewer at McGill University.
Valerie is also involved in teaching young students and adults how to play the violin, and is currently working in the Fairview Elementary violin program in Bloomington IN., lead by Dr. Brenda Brenner.
Recent activities include; performances with the Aradia Ensemble in Toronto as well as Sulmona Italy, and a performance and masterclass with the Elixir Ensemble at SUNY Fredonia, in NY. This year Valerie will be performing as part of the Bloomington Early Music Festival in their Bach Cantata projects throughout the year, as well as playing with Bourbon Baroque in Louisville, KT.
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Stephen Hammer
Stephen Hammer enjoys a varied musical life playing and teaching oboes of all periods. He is principal oboist of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society, Concert Royal, the Bach Ensemble, the Arcadia Players, the Clarion Music Society, and the Columbia Festival Orchestra, and was also a co-founder of the New York Collegium and served as its first Artistic Director. He also plays recorder regularly with the Metropolitan Opera orchestra and Yamaha wind synthesizer with the Neptune Philharmonic jazz trio. His solo, chamber and orchestral recordings appear on Decca L’Oiseau-lyre and many other labels. He teaches oboe and performance practice at the Bard College Conservatory, the Longy School of Music, and the Aston Magna Early Woodwinds workshops and collaborates with instrument-maker Joel Robinson in building replicas of historical oboes. Stephen Hammer has participated in Aston Magna festivals and academies since 1977, and lives in the town of Clermont, NY in the beautiful Hudson River Valley.
William Hite
William Hite’s reputation as a engaging and expressive artist has led to engagements with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Dresdner Philharmonie, American Symphony Orchestra, San Diego Symphony, Washington Bach Consort, New York City Ballet, Mark Morris Dance Group, New York Collegium, National Arts Center Orchestra (Ottawa), Charlotte Symphony, Boston Baroque, Toronto Consort. Emmanuel Music, Tafelmusik and Philharmonia Baroque under the direction of Bernard Haitink, Seiji Ozawa, James Levine, Rafael Frübeck de Burgos, Nicholas McGegan, Christopher Hogwood, Jane Glover, Robert Spano, Grant Llewellyn, Leon Botstein, John Harbison, Craig Smith and Peter Schreier.
Mr. Hite’s recent and upcoming engagements include the title role in La clemenza di Tito with Emmanuel Music, Boston, Evangelist in the St. Matthew Passion at Trinity Church, Wall Street and the Boston Cecilia, Messiah with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Handel’s Acis and Galatea at the Theater an der Wien and Britten’s War Requiem with the Harrt School of Music. He is a senior lecturer and coordinator of the voice faculty at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.
Clayton Hoener
Clayton Hoener is a dynamic and versatile violinist who has performed extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. He is principal second violin of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, and also regularly performs with the Handel & Haydn Society and numerous other musical organizations. With eight musicians of the Handel and Haydn Society and the vocal group Chanticleer, Mr. Hoener participated in the 2002 Grammy Award winning recording of John Tavener’s compelling composition Lamentations and Praises.
Clayton Hoener was a founding member and first violinist of the Boston Composers String Quartet, winning a silver medal in the 1993 Osaka Chamber Music Competition, a Chamber Music America Three-Year Residency Grant, and the 1995 CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. As solo violinist and chamber musician, he has also participated in the Cleveland, Taos, and Kneisel Hall Chamber Music Festivals, and the prestigious Internationale Sommerakademie-Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.
For over a quarter century, violin and pedagogical instruction has held a special place in his career. Mr. Hoener is a faculty member of Longy School of Music, where he held the posts of Associate Chair of Strings and Community Programs Chair of Strings from 1998 – 2010. He is also a faculty member of Cape Cod Conservatory.
He holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from Boston University, as a student of Roman Totenberg. Mr. Hoener has recorded for Albany, Koch International Classics, Master Musicians Collective, Music and Arts, and Northeastern Records. He performs on both period and modern instruments. Carl Becker and Son of Chicago made his modern violin in 1925.
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Eric Hoeprich
For the past twenty-five years Eric Hoeprich has specialized in performing on historical clarinets, in music from the Baroque to the late Romantic. Educated at Harvard University and the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, he is currently on the faculties of the Paris Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague and at Indiana University, Bloomington. A founding member of Frans Brüggen’s Orchestra of the 18th Century (1982), Hoeprich has performed frequently as a soloist with this orchestra, as well as many of the major early music ensembles, under conductors such as Nicholas McGegan, Roger Norrington, Christopher Hogwood, Philippe Herreweghe, Michael Willens and Jos van Immerseel. Also a variety of other orchestras such as Akamus (Akademie für Alte Musik) the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Stavanger Symphony Orchestra and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra have invited him as a soloist. In the 1980′s, he founded two wind ensembles, NACHTMUSIQUE and the Stadler Trio (three basset horns), which have toured around the world. His dozens of recordings are available on labels such as Deutsche Gramophone, Philips, EMI, SONY, Harmonia Mundi, Glossa and Decca. The recent release of clarinet quintets (Mozart and Brahms ) with the London Haydn Quartet (Glossa), and the three clarinet concertos by Bernhard Crusell with Kölner Akademie (ARS Production) and has received wide critical acclaim. An interest in historical clarinets has led to the publication of numerous articles, and a general text on the clarinet published by Yale University Press (The Clarinet, 2008).
Kelsey Hudson
Kelsey Hudson is originally from Blue Hill, Maine. She recently graduated from Vanderbilt University with degrees in both Psychology and Violin Performance. While at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music, she studied with Cornelia Heard and concentrated in baroque violin with Karen Clarke. With Professor Clarke, she played and studied with Nashville’s Music City Baroque. She has performed for Monica Huggett and Aaron Brown of Guido’s Ear. Kelsey currently lives in Boston, where she is continuing her baroque studies with Dan Stepner.
Laura Jeppesen
Laura Jeppesen is a graduate of the Yale School of Music. She is the principal violist of Boston Baroque, gambist of the Boston Museum Trio, and plays in many early music groups, including the Handel and Haydn Society, The Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Aston Magna and the Carthage Consort. She has been a Woodrow Wilson Designate, a Fellow of Harvard’s Institute for Advanced Studies, and a Fulbright Scholar. In 2006, the Independent Critics of New England nominated her for an IRNE award for the score she produced as music director of the American Repertory Theater’s staging of Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage. She has performed as soloist under conductors Christopher Hogwood, Edo de Waart, Seiji Ozawa, Martin Pearlman, Grant Llewellyn and Bernard Haitink. Her extensive discography includes music for solo viola da gamba, the gamba sonatas of J. S. Bach, Buxtehude’s Trio Sonatas opus 1 and 2, Telemann’s Paris Quartets, and music of Marin Marais. She teaches at Boston University and Wellesley College.
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Frank Kelley
Frank Kelley sings a wide variety of music throughout North America and Europe. He has performed many roles with the Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, Florentine Opera, Opera Theater of St. Louis, and the San Francisco Opera Company, has appeared at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, the Theatre de la Monnaie in Brussels, The Franfurt Opera Opera de Monte Carlo, and in the Peter Sellars productions of Die Sieben Todsünden, Das Kleine Mahagonny, Cosi fan tutte, and Le nozze di Figaro. The Mozart operas were recorded by Decca and Austrian Public Television, and were broadcast on PBS’s “Great Performances”. They are available on London DVD as is Weill’s Die Sieben Todsünden. In concert performances Mr. Kelley has sung with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony, the Dallas Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. He has performed medieval and renaissance music with Sequentia, the Boston Camerata , and the Waverly Consort, and he performs baroque music with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque , Emmanuel Music, Music of the Baroque, and Aston Magna. Mr. Kelley has participated in the Blossom Festival, the Tanglewood Festival, Ravinia Festival, Marlboro Music Festival, Pepsico Summerfare, the Nakamichi Festival, the New England Bach Festival, Next Wave Festival, Wexford Festival Opera, and the Boston Early Music Festival. He has recorded for London, Decca, Erato, Harmonia Mundi France, Teldec, Telarc, Koch International, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Arabesque, and Northeastern. A resident of Boston, Mr. Kelley sings there regularly with Emmanuel Music, both in the ongoing series which presents the complete Bach cantatas and in special projects, including the complete piano/vocal works of Schumann and Brahms, Schubert lieder, Don Giovanni, The St. Matthew Passion, Alcina, The Magic Flute, The St. John Passion, and most recently The Rake’s Progress.
Dominique Labelle
Born in Montreal, Dominique Labelle first came to international prominence as Donna Anna in Peter Sellar’s stunning PepsiCo Summerfare Festival production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, set in Spanish Harlem, which she performed in New York, Paris and Vienna. Since then she has been acclaimed in a repertoire that ranges from Bach to 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner Yehudi Wyner. She has worked with conductors from Boulez to Zinman, and orchestras from Atlanta to San Francisco. She is a regular guest soloist in Europe. Her many recordings, with repertoire from the 17th to the 21st centuries, appear on Virgin Veritas, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, RCA Victor Red Seal, Koss, Denon, New World, and Musica Omnia labels. Her recording of Handel’s Arminio won the 2002 Handel Prize. Increasingly many of these may be found on iTunes and other download services. Ms. Labelle lives in central Massachusetts with her husband and two children, loves her garden with its fish pond, is an avid knitter who spins her own wool, and enjoys baking, with a special interest in lemon pie. Dominique is related to Dame Emma Albani DBE, a leading soprano of the 19th and early 20th century who was the first Canadian singer to become an international star. Labelle is a National Winner of the Metropolitan Opera competition, and the recipient of a George London Foundation Award and Boston University’s Distinguished Alumni Award.
Julie Leven
Julie Leven is a principal player in the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. In June 2004, she made her Los Angeles solo debut in Disney Hall. She has many times been a featured soloist, with Daniel Stepner and Boston Baroque, in concertos of Bach, Vivaldi and Telemann. As a guest soloist with the Boston Museum Trio it has been her particular pleasure to play the chamber music of Bach, Telemann, Buxtehude and Purcell. Ms. Leven is concertmaster of the Bach and Beyond Festival, and has participated in the Krakow/Warsaw Easter Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, Spoleto Festival, Colorado Music Festival, and Tanglewood Music Center. As a member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Ms. Leven has performed throughout the US, Japan and Korea. She has been a member of the Jerusalem Symphony and the Aarhus Symfonieorkester in Denmark. With these orchestras she has toured throughout Germany, France, Great Britain, Denmark, Sweden and Finland. She has recorded with Telarc, Decca, Harmonia Mundi and Titanic. Ms. Leven can be heard as a soloist on two Telarc recordings of Boston Baroque: Handel Opus 6 Concerti Grossi, and the 1999 Grammy nominated performance of the Monteverdi Vespers.
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© Jessamyn Mayher
Catherine Liddell
Catherine Liddell, theorbo, is in high demand for her skill, sensitivity and experience as a continuo player. She has performed with many of America’s leading period instrument ensembles, including Boston Baroque, the Handel & Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), the New York Collegium, and in the Aston Magna and the Boston Early Music Festivals. She recently performed in the US Premier of Heiner Goebbel’s Songs of War I Have Seen with the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment as part of the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra’s 50th Anniversary Celebration. She has recorded for Musical Heritage Society, Titanic, Dorian, Wildboar and Centaur Records. Her solo recording, La belle voilée, 17th Century French Lute Music by Jacques Gallot and others is available on the Centaur label. Her edition, Sacred Music for Lute, Vol. I is available through Lyre Editions, Fort Worth, Texas. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Ms. Liddell earned the Soloist Diploma from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. She is Past-President of the Lute Society of America and Lecturer in Lute in the Historical Performance Program at Boston University.
Richard Menaul
Richard Menaul enjoys a wide-ranging career as a free lance horn player and teacher in the Boston area. He is a member of the Boston Ballet Orchestra, the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, Boston Baroque, the Handel & Haydn Society, and has served as Principal Horn of the Opera Company of Boston and the Albany Symphony Orchestra. He appears regularly with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and has also performed with the Syracuse and Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestras. Concert tours have taken him world wide to more than fifteen countries on four continents, and to thirty-eight of the U.S. states. Conductors he has played for include Seiji Ozawa, Bernard Haitink, Andre Previn, Michael Tilson Thomas, Colin Davis, and James Levine. He was born in Chicago and grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. Mr. Menaul holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Ithaca College and a Masters of Music degree from Northwestern University. His teachers include Dale Clevenger, John Covert, and Joseph Singer. He teaches at Boston University.
David Miller
David Miller holds an undergraduate liberal arts degree from Oberlin College and a graduate music degree in viola from The Juilliard School. A devoted performer of chamber music on period instruments and a pioneer of early music performance in this country, he is a founding member of the Classical Quartet, Haydn Baryton Trio, Bach Ensemble and Concert Royal. He has performed with Aston Magna every season since 1974 and has appeared frequently as a guest artist with the Mozartean Players and Helicon. Mr. Miller plays principal viola for numerous Baroque and Classical orchestras including the Handel and Haydn Society, New York Collegium, Boston Early Music Festival and American Classical Orchestra. Notable chamber music appearances at summer festivals include Mostly Mozart at Lincoln Center, Tanglewood Festival, Festival of Perth (Australia), Lufthansa Festival (London) and the Esterhazy Palace (Eisenstadt, Austria). His many recordings of solo and chamber works can be heard on Decca, Dorian, Harmonia Mundi, EMI, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Collection of Recordings, among others. Mr. Miller has taught viola at Princeton University and at the Akademie für Alte Musik in Brixen, Italy.
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Loretta O’Sullivan
Loretta O’Sullivan has appeared on the Great Performers series at Lincoln Center, at the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Merkin Concert Hall with the Four Nations Ensemble. The group has several recordings with Gaudeamus.
As a member of the Haydn Baryton Trio and The Classical Quartet, she toured throughout the US and England, and recorded for Dorian, Titanic, and Harmonia Mundi.
Ms. O’Sullivan has played continuo cello for many ensembles including Opera Lafayette, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Aston Magna, Florida Grand Opera and The American Bach Soloists, and has played many years with The Orchestra of St. Luke’s.
She has played cello recitals around the country. In collaboration with musicologist Larry Lipkis, Loretta gave a pre-concert lecture for Yo Yo Ma’s performance of the Bach Suites in Bethlehem, Pa. and has given Performance Practice classes in major conservatories.
Stephanie Raby
Stephanie Raby started violin at the age of 4½ and has enjoyed many years of study both in the US and in England. Her serious study began with Deirdre Ward (faculty at Chetams School of Music in Manchester, UK and both a modern and baroque violinist) under whom she achieved the ABRSM (Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music) grade 8 and was part of the Fylde Symphonia.
In 2006, Stephanie moved back to the U.S. in order to pursue a BM in music performance at University of North Texas with Dr. Igor Borodin. In 2007 she was one of the winners of the UNT Concerto Competition under the supervision of Maestro Anshel Brusilow. In 2009 she moved on to study with Julia Bushkova and in 2010 she performed with Grammy winning country artist Lynn Anderson.
Whilst at UNT, Stephanie also actively participated in the baroque program, initially starting baroque violin lessons with Cynthia Roberts in 2008 and then viola da gamba with Pat Nordstrom (2009) and Allen Whear (2010). In 2009 and 2011 she had the opportunity to perform with the UNT Collegium at BEFM (Boston Early Music Festival). Additionally, she has played with ensembles such as the Orchestra of New Spain and the San Francisco Bach Choir.
Stephanie is now a graduate of UNT and is pursuing a masters in Early Music Performance at Indiana University under the guidance of Stanley Ritchie.
Photo by Julian Bullitt
Deborah Rentz-Moore
Hailed for her ”deep, honeyed voice” (Graham Watts, Ballet.com Magazine), mezzo-soprano Deborah Rentz-Moore performs with some of the most celebrated ensembles in North America, including the Handel & Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, The Boston Camerata, Ensemble Très., The Boston Early Music Festival , Aston Magna, New York Collegium and the Mark Morris Dance Group. A specialist in early music, she also performs opera, oratorio, chamber and contemporary music. This season includes separate appearances as both Dido and the Sorceress in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Messiah with Worcester Chorus, a Spanish baroque program with Musicians of the Old Post Road, “Borrowed Light” with The Boston Camerata and Tero Saarinen Dance Company, Israel in Egypt with The Newton Choral Society, St. John Passion with Masterworks Chorale and Mass in Time of War with Berkshire Concert Choir. Aston Magna also featured Ms. Rentz-Moore in a program of Purcell and Handel this past May.
Her recordings include music of J. S. Bach and Cozzolani on the Musica Omnia label, Shaker songs on Glissando, baroque holiday selections with Très., and Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Aston Magna.
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David Ripley
Recent performance highlights include performances at the Metropolitan Museum Cloisters Musical Theater, the premier of Kaddish, by New Hampshire composer Larry Siegel an oratorio work based on testimony from Holocaust survivors, the premier of Lori Dobbins’ The Rage of Achilles in Jordan Hall, Ernst Bloch’s Sacred Service with the Brattleboro Music Center, Bach’s St. John Passion at the University of New Hampshire, a performance of his own work, Wounded Dove, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. at the New Hampshire State House and with the UNH Dance Company. Recent recordings include The Songs of Johnny Mercer with Boston Musical Theater, and Enoch Arden with pianist Chad Bowles, a melodrama by Richard Strauss.
Mr. Ripley is professor of music at the University of New Hampshire where he teaches voice and directs the Opera workshop, which recently presented Victor Ullman’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis, as part of a Department series entitled “Echoes of the Holocaust.” He has been a regular presence at the Aston Magna Festival for many years, appearing on two recordings, Solo Cantatas of J.S. Bach, and Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo. He is a graduate of Harvard and the New England Conservatorywith the Waverly Consort, works from the American Songbook with Boston.
Stanley Ritchie
Stanley Ritchie was born and educated in Australia. In 1962 he settled in New York, where he played as concertmaster of the New York City Opera, associate concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera, and with the New York Chamber Soloists. From 1975 to 1981 he was first violinist of the Philadelphia String Quartet at the University of Washington in Seattle., and has been a professor of violin at Indiana University since 1982. His interest in early music dates from 1970 when he joined harpsichordist Albert Fuller in a collaboration that led to the founding in 1973 of the Aston Magna Festival. His association with Aston Magna continued for over two decades. He and harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright formed Duo Geminiani in 1974, and for 20 years he was also a member of The Mozartean Players. Other prominent early musicians with whom he has performed include Hogwood, Gardiner, Brüggen, Norrington, Bilson and Bylsma. Ritchie performs and teaches worldwide and has conducted and soloed with the Academy of Ancient Music, Tafelmuslk, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the Handel & Haydn Society, among others. He is a jury member for the Leipzig International Bach Competition. In 2009 he received Early Music America’s highest honor, the Howard Mayer Brown Award for Lifetime Achievement in Early Music. His book, entitled Before the Chinrest – a Violinist’s Guide to the Mysteries of Pre-Chinrest Technique and Style, published by Indiana University Press, was released in January 2012. He has recorded for L’Oiseau Lyre, Harmonia
Marc Schachman
Marc Schachman was born in Berkeley, California, and attended Stanford University and the Juilliard School, where he was awarded the B.S, M.S., and the D.M.A. degrees. One of the world’s leading performers on early oboes, Mr. Schachman is a founding member of some of America’s foremost period instrument chamber groups–The Aulos Ensemble (1973), The Amadeus Winds (1983), and The Helicon Winds (1994). He has performed as principal oboist and soloist with virtually all of this country’s “original instrument” orchestras, including Philharmonia Baroque (San Francisco), Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque (Boston), The American Classical Orchestra (New York), and the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra (Washington, D.C.). His numerous recordings on historical oboes cover a wide variety of styles and genres, and include the Mozart Oboe Quartet and Bach Cantatas (Harmonia Mundi), the Mozart Oboe Concerto (Musicmasters), Concerti and Chamber Music of Bach, Handel, Telemann, and Vivaldi with the Aulos Ensemble (MHS/Musicmasters) , Bach’s Brandenburg Concerti, Orchestral Suites, Magnificat and B Minor Mass (Telarc), Wind music of Mozart and Beethoven (L’Oiseau Lyre, Sony) , and most recently, the Schumann Romances for oboe and piano (Helicon), which the New York Times described as “pure magic”. In the fall of 2010, Centaur Records will release a CD of 5 baroque concerti with the ACO. Mr. Schachman taught for many years at Vassar College and at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College, and is currently on the faculty of the School of Music at Boston University. He has given workshops and master classes at the Juilliard School and the Curtis Institute of Music and at colleges and universities throughout the U.S. He has performed at festivals worldwide, including Spoleto, Edinburgh, Goettingen, Perth, Tanglewood, Ravinia, Caramoor, and Mostly Mozart. On the modern oboe, Mr. Schachman performs with the New York Chamber Soloists and the Orchestra of St. Lukes.
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Priscilla Smith
Priscilla Smith has been heard throughout the United States, Europe, and in South America performing music from the 11th century to today. As an early oboist and recorder player, she has appeared with Portland Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, Trinity (Wall St.) Baroque Orchestra, The Handel & Haydn Society, Concert Royal, Baroque Band, the Clarion Society, Juilliard Baroque, the Sebastian Chamber Players, and Orchester Wiener Akademie. As a renaissance wind specialist, she is a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, and has also appeared with The Waverly Consort, Early Music New York, Ex Umbris and Istanpitta. As a member of Piffaro, she has collaborated with Capilla Flamenca, Psallentes, The Crossing, The Newberry Consort, The Concord Ensemble, Parthenia, The Folger Consort, and ARTEK. As soprano and multi-instrumentalist, Smith has premiered works of Mario Davidovsky, Kile Smith, Matthew Greenbaum, Mena Hanna, and Frank Brickle. Her performances have been called ”spirited” by
the New York Times and “particularly fine” by the Washington Post. Smith is a graduate of Temple University, where she was a modern oboe student of Louis Rosenblatt, and The Juilliard School, where she was a baroque oboe student of Gonzalo Ruiz. She is on the faculty of Temple University, where she directs the Early Music Ensemble.
Jane Starkman
Jane Starkman received B.M. and M.M. degrees from the New England Conservatory of music. She continued her studies in Basel, Switzerland at the Schola Cantorum with Jaap Schroeder and in New York with William Lincer. While living in Basel she performed with the Radio Orchestra Basel. Ms. Starkman has performed as both a violinist and violist with many groups in the US and abroad. In Europe she has performed with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra, Capella Clementina as well as ensembles in the Netherlands and Italy. Some of the ensembles Ms. Starkman performs with include the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Ensemble Florilege, and the Aston Magna Festival as well as being a founding member of The King’s Noyse. Ms. Starkman teaches at Oberlin College’s Baroque Performance Institute, Boston University, Wellesley College and has been a guest clinician at the Massachusetts Suzuki Festival and the New England Conservatory of Music.
Peter Sykes
Peter Sykes performs widely in the US and in Europe on the harpsichord, organ, clavichord, and fortepiano. He has recorded ten solo CD recordings of organ and harpsichord music, including his best-selling organ transcription of “The Planets” of Gustav Holst, and appears as a soloist and continuo player on recordings with Boston Baroque, Music from Aston Magna, and the Cambridge Bach Ensemble. He has recently completed a two-year benefit recital series (“Tuesdays with Sebastian”) in which he and Christa Rakich performed the complete works of Bach for organ and harpsichord in thirty-four concerts at five locations in the greater Boston area. In May 2005 he was honored by the New England Conservatory with its Outstanding Alumni Award. 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 instructor of organ, harpsichord and chamber music at the Longy School of Music.
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Lynn Torgove
Lynn Torgove is well known to Boston audiences as a singer and director. She has been a featured soloist with the Cantata Singers, most recently as the alto soloist in Bach’s Lutheran Mass in F, and last season, in the role of Maurya in Ralph Vaughn Williams Riders to the Sea and the second soprano soloist in Bach’s Mass in b minor. She has also been a soloist with Emmanuel Music, Opera Boston, Boston Camerata, Aston Magna, St. Louis Symphony, Portland Symphony, the Tallahassee Symphony and the American Repertory Theater. In 2008 she appeared in and helped to create Through the Shining Glass: a Commemoration of the 70th Anniversary of Kristallnacht in Providence, RI.
As a stage director, Ms. Torgove has directed Menotti’s ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’ for MIT, Stravinsky’s ’The Rake’s Progress’, Britten’s ‘The Little Sweep’, Hans Krása’s opera ‘Brundibár’, A Kurt Weill Cabaret, and Britten’s ‘Noye’s Fludde’ for the Cantata Singers, John Harbison’s Full Moon in March and Lucas Foss’ Griffelkin with Boston Modern Orchestra Project. As a recipient of the Gideon Klein Fellowship from Northeastern University, she created, produced, directed and performed in the cabaret Frauenstimmen: Women’s Voices from the Ravensbrück Concentrataion Camp at the Fenway Center in Boston. She has been on the faculties of the Opera Institute at Boston University, New England Conservatory, Boston Conservatory, and the Walnut Hill School. She currently teaches at the Longy School of Music and Hebrew College. Ms. Torgove recently received her Masters in Jewish Studies and will be ordained as a Cantor in June 2012 from Hebrew College in Newton, Massachusetts.
Anne Trout
Bassist Anne Trout is active as a chamber and orchestral musician throughout North America. She has performed with many prominent ensembles sized five to 50 and recorded for Telarc, Sony Classical, Chandos, London, Musica Omnia, Centaur and others. In Boston she has served has been a principal player for the Handel and Haydn Society, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Bach Ensemble and Boston Baroque. She has appeared on NPR’s Performance Today and can be heard often on WQXR live broadcasts. She frequently performs with REBEL, the New York-based chamber ensemble, in its national tours and its residency at Trinity/Wall St. Church in lower Manhattan. Recent engagements have included the PROMS in London with Sir Roger Norrington, New York Collegium, Clarion Society (NY) and Mark Morris “Dido and Aeneas” conducted by Mark Morris, Haydn Masses with Jane Glover (NY), Saint Matthew Passion with the Grand Tour Orchestra (NY), Arcadia Players with Ian Watson, the Providence-based women’s ensemble Foundling, a Music for Shakespeare program with actors’ readings led by Philip Pickett. Recently released recordings include the Aston Magna Monteverdi L’Orfeo and a premier disk of works by Fasch with the Philadelphia-based Tempesta di Mare. Ms. Trout serves on the faculties of the Groton School, Boston College and Longy School in Cambridge.
Kristen Watson
Soprano Kristen Watson, hailed by critics for her “blithe and silvery” tone and “winning stage presence,” has made solo appearances with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music, at such venues as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and Boston’s Symphony Hall. Praised for her “keen musicianship, agility and seamless control,” Ms. Watson has been recognized by the Concert Artists Guild, Oratorio Society of New York, Joy in Singing, American Bach Society, and Louisville Bach Society competitions. Opera audiences have heard her with Boston Lyric Opera, Opera Boston, Boston University Opera Institute, Opera Providence, and the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh in such roles as Tytania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Adele in “Die Fledermaus,” and Anne Trulove in “The Rake’s Progress”. As a versatile crossover artist she has performed with the Boston Pops in programs ranging from Mozart to Richard Rodgers. Additional solo performances include the Boston Early Music Festival, Carmel Bach Festival, Cactus Pear Music Festival, Topeka Symphony, Gulf Coast Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Evansville Philharmonic, Pittsburgh Camerata, Arizona Early Music Society, Musicians of the Old Post Road and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project. Ms. Watson is originally from Topeka, Kansas.
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Nancy Wilson
With a repertoire ranging from early 17th-century violin solos to the string quartets of Beethoven and Schubert, Nancy Wilson is known as one of the leading early music violinists in the United States. A founding member of many of American’s pioneering period instrument ensembles, including Concert Royal, the Bach Ensemble and the Classical Quartet, she performs regularly with Aston Magna and has worked extensively with the Smithsonian Chamber Players. She has worked as concertmaster and soloist with leading conductors in early music, Jaap Schroeder, Christopher Hogwood and Nicholas McGegan among them, regularly leads period orchestra performances in New York City and the metropolitan area, and has a considerable discography to her credit. Her solo playing has been called “clear and sweet in tone, refined in articulation” by Gramophone, and “exceptionally stylish” by The Edinburgh Scotsman. A native of Detroit, Ms. Wilson holds degrees from Oberlin College and The Juilliard School. She has been invited as guest lecturer and clinician at workshops and music schools throughout the United States and Europe, currently teaches at The Mannes College of Music in Manhattan and Princeton University and has served on the faculty at the Academies of Aston Magna. Ms. Wilson can be heard in Philadelphia with Philomel, as director of Princeton University’s Richardson Baroque Players and in collaboration with Westminster Choir College and Fuma Sacra in Princeton.
Ronnie Boriskin
Ronnie Boriskin, Aston Magna’s Executive Director, has more than three decades’ experience working with some of this country’s most important cultural institutions, including The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City (where she led the creation and subsequent expansion of both its fund‑raising and public relations programs), Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts (where she secured the first corporate underwriting grants for concerts and lectures, balancing the budget for the first time in their history), and Columbia Artists Management (where she was responsible for the business management of over 700 Community Concerts series). She has been invited to serve as grants panelist for the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and Connecticut Commission on Culture and Tourism, is a former member of the Board of Directors and past Treasurer of Early Music America, and has served as consultant for numerous arts and educational institutions nationwide. A former cellist, she holds a Master of Arts degree in Musicology from Queens College of the City University of New York and a Bachelor’s Degree in Music from Hunter College.
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