Summer 2022 Artists

In Summer 2022, we are thrilled to be joined by so many of your favorite familiar artists, along with celebrated artists performing with us for the first time. We welcome them all* and we welcome you as you join us. Meanwhile, we will maintain our robust library of Aston Magna musicians, to remind you of the depth and breadth of Aston Magna’s extensive talent over the decades and in coming seasons! *denotes Summer 2022 participation

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Daniel Stepner, baroque violin

During nearly three decades as Aston Magna’s artistic director, Daniel Stepner has programmed and led vocal and instrumental music dating from 1589 through the 1850s – with occasional forays both earlier and later — always featuring period instruments and vocal styles. The Festival’s repertoire has ranged from music for solo violin to baroque and early opera, such as Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas and Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne.

Mr. Stepner was a founding member of the Boston Museum Trio at the Museum of Fine Arts and first violinist of the Lydian String Quartet at Brandeis University. He has held concert masterships with the Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and Boston Baroque. For six years he was assistant concertmaster and frequent soloist 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.

He is Professor Emeritus at Brandeis University, was a Preceptor in Music at Harvard University for 20 years, and enjoyed guest teaching stints at The Eastman School, The Longy School of Music, New England Conservatory, Boston University and Smith College. In solo recital, chamber, theatrical and orchestral settings, he has performed music from the Renaissance through 2018.

Mr. Stepner is featured on over 60 commercial recordings, including the Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach, the Late Quartets of Beethoven, the five Violin Sonatas of Charles Ives, (with pianist John Kirkpatrick), and major chamber works of Schubert, Brahms, John Harbison, Peter Child and Yehudi Wyner. For Aston Magna, he has led recordings of cantatas of J. S. Bach, chamber works of Mozart and Schubert, an acclaimed recording of Handel’s oratorio, The Triumph of Time and Truth, and Monteverdi’s pioneering opera L’Orfeo. Stepner is a native of Wisconsin. 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.

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Douglas Balliett, violone/double bass

New York City-based Doug Balliett is a composer, instrumentalist, and poet with a constant stream of commissions, and a weekly show on New York Public Radio. Raised in central Massachusetts, he graduated from Harvard with honors in 2007 and from Juilliard in 2012, with a master’s in Historical Performance. He studied composition with John Harbison, Elliot Gyger, and Philip Lasser. Primarily a composer of vocal music, Balliett has written for Grammy winners Estelí Gomez and Dashon Burton, members of the Trinity Wall Street Choir, Charlotte Mundy, Davone Tines, and Ariadne Greif.

Recent projects include the evening-length A Gnostic Passion, written with his twin brother, Brad, and commissioned by Cantori New York. He has held composer in residence positions with the Lucerne Festival Academy, the Chelsea Music Festival, New Vintage Baroque, the Millennials, and the Colonials. His work has been performed at Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, the Stone, SubCulture, Le Poisson Rouge, Galapagos, ShapeshifterLab, and Spectrum. He and his brother co-host The Brothers Balliett on WQXR’s Q2, a weekly show exploring new music. The brothers also curate a monthly series at Spectrum on the Lower East Side, featuring many major NYC new-music luminaries. Balliett has given talks at the International Society of Double Bassists on historical performance, conducted many performances of his own works, and composes poetry.

Alongside his brother and composer Elliot Cole, Balliett is a member of The Oracle Hysterical, a half-band-half-book-club that has presented hip-hoperas, art-rock song cycles, rap cantatas, and other genre-bending works all over America and Europe. Trained as a classical double bass player by Todd Seeber during his time at Harvard, Balliett maintains an active career as a performer. He has performed as principal or solo double bassist with Ensemble Modern, the San Antonio Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, and many other ensembles. He has collaborated with musicians from all walks, ranging from Baroque opera at William Christie’s French estate to tours with the pop band Pink Martini, to appearances with MacArthur fellow Steve Coleman at the Newport Jazz Festival. Deeply committed to period instrument performance, Balliett is also principal bassist with the Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra, the Holy Trinity Lutheran Bach Orchestra, 17th-century string band Acronym, and has appeared as principal bass of Les Arts Florissants, Boston Baroque, the Handel and Haydn Society, and the Washington Cathedral. He performs regularly on the viola da gamba and violone.

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Jason Fisher, viola

Jason Fisher is a founding member of Boston’s Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra, A Far Cry (afarcry.org). A Carnegie Hall Fellow and a Peabody Singapore Fellow, Jason has toured Europe, Asia, Kazakhstan, and the Kyrgyz Republic. Concerts include Vienna Musikverein, Singapore Esplanade, and Carnegie Hall and he has performed with Pink Martini, Jake Shimabukuro, Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Renée Fleming, Kiri Te Kanawa, and members of the Florestan Trio, and the Aeolus, Brentano, Cleveland, Emerson, Mendelssohn, and St. Lawrence String Quartets. As a passionate explorer of early music, he plays period viola with a bicoastal variety of ensembles including Gut Reaction, Antico/Moderno, Sarasa, the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, and the Seattle and Portland Baroque Orchestras. During the summer, Jason performs on both modern and period instruments at the Staunton Music Festival in Virginia.

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Jack Greenberg, actor and ‘Soldier’

Jack Greenberg currently studies acting in the School of Theater at Boston University, and is a graduate of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts high school senior drama program. He was a winner of musical theater performance in the National YoungArts Foundation competition, and a recipient of the “Best Leading Actor” scholarship award for his performance as “Christopher” in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. He has trained with the ‘Midsummer in Oxford’ program at the British American Drama Academy (BADA), and was an apprentice at Commonwealth Shakespeare Company. He is a trained singer, pianist, and songwriter. Jack’s current artistic goals center around expanding his position as a storyteller beyond entertainment, and into utilizing the connective medium of theater to spark curiosity, change, and joy where it is most needed. Jack also loves brownies and tye-dying his socks!

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William R. Hudgins, clarinet

William R. Hudgins was appointed by Seiji Ozawa as Principal Clarinetist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Symphony Chamber Players in 1994. He has been heard as a soloist with the Boston Symphony Orchestra on numerous occasions, including performances of both Mozart and Copland’s Clarinet Concertos and works by Bruch, Krommer, Martin and Weber. Past chamber music performances include collaborations with Emanuel Ax, Yo-Yo Ma, Paula Robison, Barbara Bonney and the Lydian String Quartet. Mr. Hudgins spent eight seasons with the Saito Kinen Summer Festival Orchestra in Japan and six seasons as a member of both the Spoleto Festival Orchestra in Charleston, South Carolina, and Il Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, Italia. He formerly served as Principal Clarinet with Charleston (SC) Symphony Orchestra and the Orquesta Sinfonica Municipal in Caracas, Venezuela.

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Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba

Laura Jeppesen, player of historical stringed instruments, earned a master’s degree from Yale University and studied at the Hamburg Hochschule and the Brussels Conservatory. She has been a Woodrow Wilson Designate, a Fulbright Scholar, and a fellow of the Bunting Institute at
Harvard.

A prominent member of Boston’s early music community, she has long associations
with The Boston Museum Trio, Boston Baroque, The Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival and Aston Magna. She has been music director at the American Repertory Theater, creating music for Christopher Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage, for which she earned an IRNE nomination for best musical score. In 2015, she was part of the BEMF team that won a Grammy for best opera recording. She has performed as soloist with conductors Christopher Hogwood, Edo deWaart, Seiji Ozawa, Craig Smith, Martin Pearlman, Harry Christophers, Grant Llewellyn, and Bernard Haitink.

She has an extensive discography of solo and chamber works, including the gamba sonatas of J.S.Bach, music of Marin Marais, Buxtehude, Rameau, Telemann and Clerambault. She teaches at Boston University, Wellesley College and Harvard University, where in 2015 and 2019 she won awards of special distinction in teaching from the Derek Bok Center. She is a 2017 recipient of an Andrew W. MellonBlended Learning Initiative Grant for innovative teaching at Wellesley College. Her essay, “Aesthetics of Performance in the Renaissance: Lessons from Noblewomen,” appears in Uncovering Music of Early European Women 1250-1750, published by Routledge Studies in Musical Genres, 2019. Her most recent CD, “Marais at Midnight,” was released by Centaur in 2021. Photo: Small Circle Studios

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David Hyun-su Kim, fortepiano

Regarded “as among the finest pianists of his generation” (WholeNote), David Hyun-su Kim has been acclaimed as a musician who “rivals Golden Age pianists. [His playing is] brilliant artistry indeed, … nuanced and naturally phrased, clear and poetic… [A] performer of artistry, integrity, and interest” (Early Music America).

Born in upstate New York to Korean immigrants, David’s early interests were in math, philosophy, and chemistry, and he matriculated at Cornell University as a Presidential Research and National Merit Scholar in chemistry. He never seriously considered music until a life-changing encounter with the Beethoven piano sonatas convinced him to trade the lab stool for the piano bench. He launched himself into music, working at Cornell with Malcolm Bilson and James Webster, before heading to Europe where he made his orchestral debut in Vienna and continued his musical studies in Germany as a Fulbright scholar. He returned to the United States to complete his training and earned degrees in music from Yale, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory. These studies overlapped with an increase in performance work, and he is now primarily a concert artist. He has performed as a concerto soloist, recitalist, and chamber musician in Australia, South Korea, Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Italy, Germany, and the United Kingdom, and regularly tours North America.

David is also active as a recording artist. His debut solo CD of Mozart and Beethoven sonatas was recorded on a historically-appropriate Viennese 5-octave piano and was acclaimed for its “great sensitivity to the music’s rhetoric, [yielding] movements that come across as journeys of discovery” (Fanfare). His follow-up project, a much-anticipated all-Schumann album on a Viennese 6 1/2-octave piano closely modeled on Schumann’s personal instrument, was praised as “endlessly fascinating… thanks to Kim’s thoughtful phrasing and 19th -century disregard for strict observance of time… [T]his familiar music yields unexpected depth and a sheer beauty that is unrivaled by performances on modern instruments. Kim’s interpretation is an essential part of our understanding of this composer, the musical world in which he lived, and the joy of experiencing compositions and playing of the highest order”.

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Frank Kelley, tenor

The talented and versatile American tenor, Frank Kelley, has performed in concert and on opera stages throughout North America and Europe, garnering plaudits and a loyal following. The Boston Musical Intelligencer has observed, “Kelley’s burnished tone was just right…. His sensitivity to the texts and the shifts of mood were superlative.”

In the 2017-18 season, he was a soloist in Britten’s War Requiem with Music Worcester, Inc. and in Carlisle Floyd’s Prince of Players in a return to Florentine Opera. Recent season highlights included a return to Florentine Opera as Joseph in Carlisle Floyd’s Wuthering Heights and in his stage directing debut for Elmer Gantry. He also returned to Odyssey Opera in Boston as Victorin in Die Tote Stadt. Mr. Kelley has enjoyed an ongoing relationship with Boston Lyric Opera, where he has performed many roles, including Triquet in Eugene Onegin, Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro, Normanno in Lucia di Lammermoor, Dr. Blind in Die Fledermaus, Goro in Madama Butterfly, Spoletta in Tosca, and Monostatos in Die Zauberflöte. With Opera Boston, he appeared as Raoul in Offenbach’s La vie parisienne, as the Kavalier in Hindemith’sCardillac, the Magician in The Consul, and Fatty in The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. Other notable opera appearances include Grandpa Joe in the world premiere of Peter Ash’s The Golden Ticket with Opera Theatre of St. Louis, also in the European premiere with Wexford Festival Opera; Spoletta in Tosca, Pang in Turandot, Basilio in Le nozze di Figaro and Eddie Fislinger in Elmer Gantry with Florentine Opera; and the United Way in Tod Machover’s Death and the Powers with Dallas Opera and Opéra de Monte Carlo.

He also has long associations with Boston’s premier concert organizations, including multiple performances of Bach’s cantatas with Emmanuel Music under the direction of Craig Smith, Christopher Hogwood, and Seiji Ozawa; St. John Passion with the Handel and Haydn Society and the Orquesta Sinfónica Naciónal de México; St. Matthew Passion with Boston Baroque and Emmanuel Music; Handel’s Messiah with the Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque; recitals of Schubert lieder for Emmanuel Music’s Schubert Series; and Weill’s Seven Deadly Sins with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. His other concert appearances include Stravinsky’s Pulcinella Suite with the St. Louis Symphony; Master of Ceremonies in Queen of Spades with the National Symphony Orchestra; and Mendelssohn’s The First Walpurgis Night with Roger Norrington and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s.

On television, Frank Kelley appears on the PBS broadcasts of Peter Sellars’ productions of Le nozze di Figaro and Così fan tutte. Mr. Kelley’s recordings feature him in repertoire spanning ten centuries. His discography includes three Deutsche Harmonia Mundi albums with the ensemble Sequentia: Aquitania, Shining Light, and Saints; a Teldec release of Stravinsky’s Renard with Hugh Wolff and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra; and Kurt Weill’s Das Kleine Mahagonny with Kent Nagano. He is also featured on the recording of Robert Aldridge’s Elmer Gantry which received a 2012 Grammy for Best Contemporary Composition as well as Best Engineered Album.

 

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Andrea LeBlanc, flute

Flutist Andrea LeBlanc is devoted to furthering the artistry and expression of the flute by performing on instruments from the baroque, classical, and romantic eras. She has been praised by Early Music America for her “sensitive and beautiful playing, with crystalline tone and execution [that] made you wonder why it was necessary to invent the Boehm system for flute” (Fall 2015).

Andrea has performed and recorded with numerous ensembles in the Northeast, frequently serving as principal flute. She appears with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival, Arcadia Players, Aston Magna, The Sebastians, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Blue Hill Bach Festival, and the Big Moose Bach Festival, as well as Mercury Houston; performing under such directors as Marin Alsop, Masaaki Suzuki, Richard Egarr, Nicholas McGegan, Harry Christophers, and Joshua Rifkin. She performs chamber music of the late-classical and early-romantic periods in recital with pianist David Hyun-Su Kim. In 2021 Andrea co-founded the ensemble Arpeggione with clarinetist Thomas Carroll, to explore the ways in which Classical and Romantic music was historically experienced outside of the concert hall and bring innovative performances to venues around her home on Boston’s North Shore.

Ms. LeBlanc holds a B.Mus. with honors and distinction in performance from New England Conservatory and a M.Mus. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was a teaching assistant in flute and early music. She spent a year furthering her study of the traverso at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. 

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Julie Leven, violin

Julie Leven is the Founder and Artistic Director of Shelter Music Boston and is the first-ever classical musician to be named a Boston Neighborhood Fellow. Julie was awarded this unique prize for her dual commitment to producing monthly classical music concerts of the highest artistic standards in homeless shelters throughout Greater Boston, and for employing classical musicians to create social change in environments of need. In addition to the more than seventy annual concerts she produces in shelters, Julie is concertmaster of the Bach and Beyond Festival and has performed as soloist, concertmaster, and principal second violin with Boston Baroque, and the Handel + Haydn Society. A recent performance of the Vivaldi Four Seasons with the West Virginia Symphony Orchestra was deemed “sweet and full of fire.” As a member of the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra, she has performed across the U.S., in Japan and Korea. Julie performs annually at the Aston Magna Festival and has appeared at: the BBC Proms, Cactus Pear Music Festival, Casals Festival, Edinburgh Festival, Esterhazy Haydn Festival, Krakow Festival and with Scrag Mountain Music. Julie has been a member of the Jerusalem Symphony, and Århus (Denmark) Symfonieorkester. She is a soloist on the Boston Baroque recordings of Handel Opus 6 Concerti Grossi and the Grammy-nominated Monteverdi Vespers.

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Catherine Liddell, theorbo and lute

Catherine Liddell is in high demand for her skill, sensitivity and experience as a continuo player on theorbo and lute. In her more than 35 years as a professional 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, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, St. Luke’s Chamber Orchestra, A Far Cry, Emmanuel Music and in the Aston Magna and the Boston Early Music Festivals. With the London Sinfonietta and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment she performed in the US premier of Heiner Goebbel’s Songs of War I Have Seen 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 recent recording on the Centaur label, Marais at Midnight, with Laura Jeppesen, viola da gamba, has received enthusiastic acclaim. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Ms. Liddell earned the Soloist Diploma from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. She is Lecturer in Lute in the Historical Performance Program at Boston University, teaches lute at Wellesley College, and serves as President of the Lute Society of America.

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David McFerrin, baritone and ‘Devil’

David McFerrin, Hailed for his “voice of seductive beauty” (Miami Herald), baritone David McFerrin has won critical acclaim in a variety of repertoire. His opera credits include Santa Fe Opera, Seattle Opera, Florida Grand Opera, the Rossini Festival in Germany, and numerous roles with Boston Lyric Opera. As concert soloist he has sung with the Cleveland Orchestra, Israel Philharmonic, Handel and Haydn Society, and in recital at the Caramoor, Ravinia, and Marlboro Festivals.

He is also a member of the renaissance vocal ensemble Blue Heron, winners of the 2018 Gramophone award for Best Early Music
Album. Recent highlights have included the role of Lucifer in a filmed production of Handel’s La Resurrezione with Emmanuel Music, performances of the Cimarosa monodrama Il Maestro di Capella with Boston Baroque, and Monteverdi’s dramatic scena Il Combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda with American Bach Soloists in the Bay Area.

This summer he appears at the Aston Magna Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, and in Handel’s Judas Maccabeus with Berkshire Choral International. David recently moved from Boston to Natick, Massachusetts with his wife Erin, an architectural historian and preservation planner; their three-year-old daughter Fiona; and black lab Holly.

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Loretta O’Sullivan, cello

Loretta O’Sullivan, described as “an agile, eloquent player” by the New York Times, performs on Baroque, classical and modern cello. As cellist with the Four Nations ensemble, she performs obbligato arias, sonatas and concertos, and has recorded the complete Geminiani Sonatas for cello and continuo, cello sonatas by Vivaldi and Boismortier, and chamber works for flute, violin and voice. She can be heard most recently in the group’s “Concise Dictionary of Music.” Her continuo playing can be heard in performances and recordings with Opera Lafayette, the Bach Choir of Bethlehem and Aston Magna Music Festival. As a member of these ensembles as well as the Haydn Baritone Trio and the Classical Quartet, Loretta has played in beautiful venues around the world, including Pamphilli Palace, Esterhazy Palace, Versailles and Wigmore Hall. Recently she has played solo cello recitals in homes, churches and at Pacem in Terris. Her repertoire includes the Bach Suites, Dall’Abaco Caprices, and her transcription of the Biber Passacaglia. On modern cello, Loretta frequently plays with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s in New York City. She enjoys teaching and has given masterclasses in performance practice at many of this country’s conservatories and colleges.

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DeAnna Pellechia, dancer,  ‘Governor’s Daughter’

DeAnna Pellechia is an artist, activist, feminist, dancer, choreographer, aerialist, equestrian, designer, producer, director, mentor and educator. Boston-born and bred, DeAnna has been deeply rooted in the city’s arts community since 1999. Over the past 20 years she has taught and toured throughout India, Russia, France, and the U.S.; danced with horses, in trees, on stilts, underwater and through air; and been featured in operas, plays, fashion shows, dance films, rodeos, books, movies, magazines, and music videos.

As Artistic Director/Choreographer of KAIROS Dance Theater, DeAnna has collaborated with Grammy-nominated musicians Kenny Werner, Dave Eggar, Chuck Palmer and Joshua Pierce; NYC music-icon, composer Johnny Reinhard; MIT’s acclaimed composer Elena Ruehr; award-winning choreographer Ann Carlson; legendary choreographer Elaine Summers of the Judson Dance Theater; NYC fashion designer Carla Fernandez; and internationally acclaimed visual artist Shinique Smith. DeAnna’s work has been presented by the American Festival of Microtonal Music, Charles Playhouse / Broadway Across America, Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, The Gardner Museum, and The Huntington Theatre, among others. She has been a principal dancer with Paula Josa-Jones / Performance Works, Kinodance Company, Bennett Dance Company, and Anikaya Dance Theater, among others Ms. Pellecchia received a B.A. in Dance / Performance from Roger Williams University.

She has taught at Boston Conservatory, Massachusetts College of Art, Dean College, Salem State University, Mount Holyoke College, and Simmons College, among others; currently, she resides on dance faculty at Boston University and Boston Ballet and is an MFA Mentor at Wilson College. deannapellecchia.com/kairosdancetheater.org

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Edson Scheid, baroque violin

Edson Scheid has been praised for his “polished playing” (The Strad), for being “more than equipped to deal with the virtuosic challenges” (Seen and Heard International), and for being “both musically and technically one of the most assured and accomplished of today’s younger period violinists” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer). His performance of Strauss’s song Morgen at Carnegie Hall was described as follows: “The concertmaster, Edson Scheid, proved a worthy foil as violin soloist” (The New York Times). A native of Brazil, Scheid has performed with such ensembles as Les Arts Florissants, Il Pomo d’Oro, the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Juilliard415, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Sejong Soloists, NOVUS NY, the Aston Magna Music Festival, Orchester Wiener Akademie, and the Aspen Festival Orchestra. He is the two-time winner of the Historical Performance Concerto Competition at The Juilliard School, and recipient of the Broadus Erle Prize at the Yale School of Music. Edson Scheid’s many performances of Paganini’s 24 Caprices, on both period and modern violins, have been received with enthusiasm around the world. He has performed the Caprices in cities in Europe, North and South America, and Asia, and has been featured live in-studio on In Tune from BBC Radio 3. His recording of the Caprices on the baroque violin for the Naxos label has been critically acclaimed: “Far from being mere virtuoso stunts, Scheid’s Caprices abound in the beauty and revolutionary spirit of these works…” (Fanfare Magazine). As a chamber musician, he has performed as a violinist and a violist in festivals including the Juilliard Chamberfest, Utrecht Early Music Festival, Dans les Jardins de William Christie, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. He holds degrees from the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, the Yale School of Music and The Juilliard School, where he was a recipient of a Kovner Fellowship.

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Robert Schulz, percussion

Robert Schulz is widely considered one of Boston’s most versatile percussionists. He is the principal percussionist for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Boston Musica Viva and Dinosaur Annex New Music Ensemble. With BMOP, he has overseen innumerable percussive details on over 80 commercial recordings.

As a timpanist, Robert performs with the Boston Baroque Orchestra, Back Bay Chorale, Cantata Singers, Emmanuel Music and Odyssey Opera. He has performed with the Boston Symphony, Pops and Ballet Orchestras, the Handel & Haydn Society, A Far Cry and IRIS, and has been a frequent soloist with the Boston Chamber Music Society, First Monday Series at NEC, and the Boston Celebrity Series.

Concerto performances include the Tan Dun Water Concerto, Lukas Foss Percussion Concerto, Eric Moe Drumset Concerto and Philip Glass Timpani Fantasy, with international appearances in Athens, Paris, London, Shanghai and Beijing adding to a multi-faceted career. Schulz is a graduate of New England Conservatory, where his principal teachers were Fred Buda (Jazz Studies, 1992) and Frank Epstein (Graduate Diploma in Solo Percussion, 1994).

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Michael Sponseller

Mr. Sponseller appears regularly as harpsichordist and continuo organist with several of American’s finest baroque orchestras and ensembles, such as Bach Collegium San Diego, Les Délices, Aston Magna,Tragicomedia, and the Boston Early Music Festival orchestra and can be heard on many recordings from Delos, Centaur, Eclectra, and Naxos et al. At home, Michael is a regular presence at Boston’s Emmanuel Music, having performed over 100 sacred cantatas. His various recordings include a diverse list of composers, including Bach, Handel, Rameau, Praetorius and Laurenti received excellent reviews throughout the world. Early Musica America Magazine has said of his performance of the Bach Concertos, “His well-proportioned elegance carries the day quite stylishly.” He currently is Artistic Director for Ensemble Florilege. He has been on faculty at the Longy School of Music at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute.

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Peter Sykes, harpsichord

Peter Sykes will join the organ department faculty at the University of Michigan in September 2022. Since 2014 he has been a core faculty member and principal instructor of harpsichord at the Historical Performance Department of the Juilliard School in New York City, and since 2002 working at Boston University, where he teaches both organ and harpsichord.

He performs extensively in recital, and has made ten solo recordings of organ and harpsichord repertoire ranging from Buxtehude, Couperin and Bach to Reger and Hindemith and his acclaimed organ transcription of Holst’s “The Planets.” Newly released is a recording of the complete Bach harpsichord partitas on the Centaur label, and an all-Bach clavichord recording on the Raven label; soon to be released will be the complete Bach works for violin and harpsichord with Danie Stepner. He performs and records with Boston Baroque and Aston Magna.

A founding board member and president of the Boston Clavichord Society as well as past president of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, he is the recipient of the Chadwick Medal and Outstanding Alumni Award from the New England Conservatory, the Erwin Bodky Prize from the Cambridge Society for Early Music, and the Distinguished Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation.

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Marcus Thompson, viola and viola d’amore

Marcus Thompson has appeared as soloist with many of this country’s leading symphony orchestras, recital series and chamber festivals. This season he completed his 12th season as artistic director of the Boston Chamber Music Society, where he has been violist since 1984.

Performance highlights of Mr. Thompson’s career include Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante with Yehudi Menuhin and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the premiere of Olly Wilson’s Viola Concerto with the Rochester Philharmonic, and the west coast premiere of John Harbison’s Viola Concerto with the LA Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer. He has appeared as a guest in a Live from Lincoln Center broadcast of Tchaikovsky’s Souvenir de Florence with its Chamber Music Society led by Itzhak Perlman. His most recent recordings include Elena Ruehr’s Shadow Light with the New Orchestra of Washington and John Harbison’s Viola Concerto with BMOP. He gave the Boston premiere of John Harbison’s Sonata for Viola and Piano with pianist Judith Gordon, in the Boston Chamber Music Society series, and performed solo recitals on the String Masters Series at Boston Conservatory of Music and at the University of Maryland at College Park. In the current season, he has appeared in the BCMS Series online concerts and in a Gala concert to mark the 60th Anniversary of Young Concert Artists, Inc. in New York City. Thompson holds the first doctorate in viola performance from The Juilliard School. He has been a member of the viola faculty at New England Conservatory of Music for more than three decades, and professor of music at MIT for more than four. In June 2015 he was appointed to MIT’s highest faculty honor, becoming one of thirteen Institute Professors.

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Kristen Watson

 

 

Kristen Watson, hailed by critics for her “blithe and silvery” tone (Boston Globe) and “striking poise” (Opera News) has made solo appearances with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, American Classical Orchestra, Boston Baroque, Handel & Haydn Society and Emmanuel Music, at such venues as Walt Disney Concert Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Carnegie Hall and Boston’s Symphony Hall.

Ms. Watson has received particular acclaim for her interpretations of Baroque repertoire, performing as a soloist for the San Francisco Early Music Society, Trinity Wall Street, Aston Magna Music Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, North Carolina Symphony, Carmel Bach Festival, Masterwork Chorus of New Jersey, Duke Chapel Choir, Handel Society of Dartmouth, Arcadia Players and Sarasa.

Opera audiences have heard her with Boston Lyric Opera, Odyssey Opera, Opera Boston, Boston University Opera Institute, Opera Providence, and the Opera Theater of Pittsburgh in such roles as Anne Trulove in The Rake’s Progress, Tytania in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and Adele in “Die Fledermaus.” 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, and as a versatile crossover artist has performed with the Boston Pops in programs ranging from Mozart to Richard Rodgers.

Additional solo performances include the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, Gulf Coast Symphony, Albany Pro Musica, Pittsburgh Camerata and A Far Cry; solo recordings include Barber’s Knoxville with BMOP and baroque cantatas with Musicians of the Old Post Road. Originally from Kansas, Ms. Watson holds degrees from Carnegie Mellon University and Boston University.

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David A. Wells

Bassoonist David A. Wells has extremely wide-ranging musical tastes, abilities, and experiences.He is mostly engaged in historically-informed performances on period bassoons ranging from the 17th to the early 20th centuries, with groups including the Carmel Bach Festival, American Bach Soloists, Sinfonia Spirituosa, Sacramento Baroque Soloists, Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

He is also an adept performer on the modern bassoon and contrabassoon, equally at home with standard orchestral/chamber/solo repertoire and demanding modern works involving extended techniques and/or electronics. Furthermore, Wells has a predilection for taking the bassoon to unexpected places, most notably having played for nine years with the Django Reinhardt-inspired swing sextet Hot Club Faux Gitane.

Wells serves as Co-Executive Director of Meg Quigley, an organization focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion within the bassoon world. He is also active as a music scholar, having presented papers at the conferences of the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the International Double Reed Society Wells is on faculty at California State University, Sacramento, where he teaches bassoon and music history.

He holds a D.M.A. in Bassoon Performance and an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and also studied at Florida State University and Arizona State University. When not playing or teaching, he can be found swimming in cold water, taking photographs, collecting records, and trying to keep up with his super-librarian/yogi wife, Veronica.

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Jacques Lee Wood, cello

Cellist, Jacques Lee Wood has performed around the world as a solo artist, chamber, and orchestral musician. His activities as a performer reflect a varied and broad range of interests. Historical performance on period instruments, commissioning new works for both modern and baroque cello, improvisation that incorporates live electronics, and composing his own material are just a few of the areas he explores in his creative scope.

Dr. Wood is Principal Cello of the Cape Symphony and is a member of several musical groups including Aston Magna, StringLab, Pedroia Quartet, Triop Klaritas, Antico Moderno, and the NYC-based bluegrass band Cathedral Parkway. He is a frequent guest artist with A Far Cry, House of Time, Yale Schola Cantorum, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Bachsolisten Seoul, Bach Collegium Japan, Juilliard 415, Firebird Ensemble, and the Handel and Haydn Society. A recognized pedagogue, Wood holds faculty positions at the University of New Hampshire, Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, Milton Academy, and Concord Academy.

Because of his diverse musical interests, Dr. Wood is an active guest lecturer and clinician and has presented on a wide range of topics: from Historical Performance Practice to Music Technology in the Pedagogical Process. He is currently on the faculty of the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival (Yale Summer School), Summer Youth Music School (University of New Hampshire), and is a frequent guest artist at the Great Mountains Festival (South Korea), Korea Strings Research Institute, Bari International Music Festival, Banff Centre, Avaloch Farm, Aston Magna, and the Manchester Summer Chamber Music Festival.

As a recording artist, Wood has released recordings on the Hyperion and Navona labels. Dr. Wood completed his BM at the New England Conservatory of Music under Laurence Lesser, and holds a MM and DMA from Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot.

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Administrative Staff

Susan B. Obel, Executive Director

A life-long music lover, and presently a singer with MasterVoices (formerly Collegiate Chorale) in New York City, Susan Obel, had her first job in Arts Management with St. Luke’s Chamber Ensemble/Orchestra of St. Luke’s. “I got my feet wet as a part-time office manager, but as a member of a small staff I soon became involved in writing, fundraising and special events.” She next joined the staff of the Harlem School of the Arts, working closely with then-Executive Director Betty Allen. There she launched and co-produced an annual Radiothon with radio legend Robert Sherman and WQXR, a fundraising event that continued for many years. Following that was a 15-year stint in public relations and fundraising with Theatreworks/USA, the nation’s preeminent professional theater for young and family audiences. One of her great joys is bringing her three granddaughters to Aston Magna concerts.