Artists
A-Z
Jedediah Allen
American bass-baritone and cornettist Jedediah Allen studied vocals at the Central Washington University. He pursued a master's degree at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University where he studied baroque voice under Paul Elliott and Nigel North. There he also began studies in cornett (zink) performance under Kiri Tollaksen. As a singer and cornettist he has worked with such ensembles as Voices of Music and Magnificat. At the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Basel, Switzerland) he has completed two master's degrees — the first in Cornett Performance under Bruce Dickey and the second in the Advanced Vocal Ensemble Studies programme directed by Anthony Rooley and Evelyn Tubb. In Europe, he has performed and recorded with many renowned ensembles, most notably including projects with Bruce Dickey, Charles Töet, Anthony Rooley, Evelyn Tubb and Hervé Niquet. He is currently a member of the ensembles Chant 1450 and Ensemble La Sestina.
Pilar Almalé
Pilar Almalé is a multifaceted artist dedicated to music and painting who strives to combine her two passions. She graduated in Fine Arts at the University of Seville (2015), while training in viola da gamba in several conservatories throughout Spain, graduating in 2019 from the Superior Conservatory of Music in Vigo where she studied with Sara Ruíz. As a performer, Pilar has collaborated with many musicians, including with piper Carlos Núñez (2018), Viajeros Medievales conducted by Aziz Samsaoui (2017) and the Orquesta del Pórtico de la Gloria (2017), under the direction of Jordi Savall and Carlos Núñez, among others. Pilar continues to develop as a concert performer with her trio of violas da gamba Ceci n’est pas Baroque as well as her personal project Almalé, led by guitarist Ernesto Cossío. In 2020 Pilar gave her first solo exhibition of Melifluo, a series of 46 paintings in oil and collage, linking her expressions in visual art and sound together with an opening solo concert on viola da gamba. www.pilaralmale.com
Benjamin Bagby
Vocalist, harper and teacher Benjamin Bagby directs the Sequentia ensemble, which he co-founded in 1977. Apart from the research and ensemble work of Sequentia, Mr. Bagby devotes his time to the solo performance of Anglo-Saxon and Germanic oral poetry; an acclaimed performance of the Beowulf epic is an ongoing project (www.BagbyBeowulf.com <http://www.bagbybeowulf.com/>). In a career spanning more than four decades, he has performed all over the world, published and lectured widely, and is committed to teaching the next generation. Between 2005-2018 Bagby was on the faculty of the Université Paris - Sorbonne, teaching in the master’s program for medieval music performance. He currently teaches medieval performance practice at the Folkwang University of the Arts, in Essen (Germany). www.sequentia.org
Jacopo Bisagni
Jacopo Bisagni is a lecturer in the Classics at NUI Galway. He studied Classics, Celtic linguistics and Indo-European linguistics at the University of Pisa, Italy, and was awarded a PhD in NUI, Galway in 2008 for a thesis entitled Amrae Coluimb Chille: a Critical Edition, a revised and expanded version of which was published in 2019 by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He has taught widely in early Irish, Latin language, and historical linguistics, and his research area ranges from Celtic philology to the study of Early Medieval Irish literature (both Latin and vernacular). He has published on the terminology of music and musical instruments in Old and Middle Irish sources. His interest in medieval music and instruments includes not only research, but performance. He plays bagpipes and various whistles and fipple flutes.
Colin Booth
Colin Booth has combined the careers of harpsichordist and instrument-maker for most of his working life. As player, he has performed as soloist and continuo harpsichordist in a number of countries, from Denmark to South Africa and from Ireland to the USA. He taught and played annually for 25 years at the Dartington International Summer School, and has recorded 14 CDs of solo harpsichord music. Following a widely praised CD of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, his most recent release was a 4-CD recording of the Well-tempered Clavier. Andrew McGregor, on BBC Radio 3 Record Review, commented: “I would urge anyone to buy this...there is so much to be learned here, from the playing, as well as from the superb booklet.” www.colinbooth.co.uk
Theresa Burton
Theresa Burton studied recorder with Leo Meilink, Baldrick Deerenburg, and Heiko ter Schegget at the Utrecht Conservatorium in the Netherlands. She has participated in masterclasses and further lessons with Wilbert Hazelzet, Sebastian Marq, Peter van Heijghen, Renemarie Verhagen, Marion Verbruggen and Peter Holtslag. Theresa has played in numerous early music ensembles, and in concert series and festivals, including throughout Ireland at the Hugh Lane Gallery Sundays at Noon, Drawing Room concert series, Kaleidoscopenight, Clifden Arts Festival, Shorelines Festival Portumna, Castletown House, and abroad at the Utrecht Early Music Festival Fringe, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Vredenburg Lunchconcert Series, Concert Series at St Michael the Northgate, Oxford, Engelsekerk Amsterdam, and the Dartington Music Festival. Theresa particularly enjoys playing with singers and is a founding member of Ensemble Revelare.
Julie Comparini
Julie Comparini made their singing debut at the age of 17 in a production of Judas Maccabaeus conducted by Nicholas McGegan. They went on to complete degrees in cognitive science/linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley and early music singing at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen. Specialising in early music, new music, multimedia theater, and in rare or newly re-discovered early operas, their repertoire also includes contemporary Art Song, including performances with pianist Yonit Kosovske, with whom in 2021 they will premiere a newly commissioned song cycle “Watershed” by Ailís Ní Ríain. As a concert and ensemble singer, Julie sang the title role in the modern premiere of Simon Mayrs Jacob a Labano fugiens and has performed under the direction of Olof Boman, Michi Gaigg, and Thomas Hengelbrock. They appear regularly with the Balthasar-Neumann-Chor and the Brechtlieder- and “Heimatabend” performances at the Bremer Arbeitnehmerkammer and have sung more than 100 Bach cantatas as part of the project “Laudate-Cantate” at the Kirche Unser Lieben Frauen in Bremen. Julie’s academic work includes lectures on musicological and linguistic subjects and translations of Baroque song texts for Edition Raumklang and the ortus Musikverlag, as well as teaching early music singing at the Hochschule für Künste Bremen, and seminars in Renaissance notation in Germany and abroad. www.juliecomparini.com
Debbie Diamond
Debbie Diamond has been a member of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment since 1999, working for such eminent conductors as Sir Simon Rattle, Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Mark Elder, Ivan Fischer, Vladimir Jurowski, Sir Roger Norrington and Masaako Suzuki. She has performed frequently with the English Baroque Soloists, L’Orchestre Romantique et Revolutionnaire (conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardiner), Gabrieli Consort, Florilegium, and The Sixteen. Debbie has appeared as soloist with Fiori Musicali, Ensemble Sonnerie, and the Sweelinck Ensemble. She has performed as guest violinist with the chamber group Red Priest. As a soloist, she has given recitals in Canada, the United States, Israel, Germany, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Debbie teaches extensively, ranging from baroque and modern violin to chamber music and orchestral coaching. She has given classes in Latvia, America, Ireland, Princeton University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and the Royal Academy, London, where she teaches regularly at the Junior Academy. She has delivered lectures on baroque performance practice at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (University of Limerick, Ireland), Princeton University and City Lit, London. Debbie holds a Master’s degree in Historical Performance from the University of Toronto. www.debbiediamond.co.uk
Rosemary Heredos
A native of Parkman, Ohio, Rosemary Heredos is a singer specialising in Gregorian chant and medieval song. She is also an avid knitter and spinner with a passion for rustic, local wool in Ohio and Ireland. Rosemary holds degrees in Vocal Performance and English Literature from Kent State University. Her love of traditional music and Gregorian chant brought her to the University of Limerick in 2016, where she completed the MA in Ritual Chant & Song. A devoted ensemble singer, she has performed with various choirs in America and Ireland, including ANÚNA, as well as Cantoral, an all-female group based at UL that specializes in medieval chant and early polyphony. As a soloist, she performs primarily medieval through early Baroque repertoire, with a particular interest in Marian imagery in music across the centuries. Rosemary currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where she is pursuing a DMA in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University. When she is not singing or writing, she can most often be found spinning yarn and knitting wool socks for family and friends.
Jacob Heringman
American-born lutenist Jacob Heringman studied with Jakob Lindberg at the Royal College of Music, and later with Patrick O'Brien in New York. In England since 1987, he is in demand internationally as a soloist and ensemble player, playing and recording with many leading ensembles and singers. In 2011, Jacob gave up air travel, curtailing all intercontinental touring (though he spends many hours on trains around Europe). Recent projects include performing and recording for ECM and Arcana with the group Alternative History (John Potter, Ariel Abramovich, Anna Maria Friman, and JH). Jacob performs regularly with singer Clare Wilkinson’s ensemble Courtiers of Grace, and in a duo (Pellingmans’ Saraband) with his wife, the viol player Susanna Pell. Jacob's solo recordings of Holborne, Bakfark, Josquin, Jane Pickeringe’s Lute Book, and The Siena Lute Book, have all been widely praised by critics, as has his compilation, The Art of the Lute Player. A second volume of Josquin intabulations was released this year. His lute playing can be heard on the soundtracks of many films, including Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Kingdom of Heaven, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, and The Hobbit: an unexpected journey. www.heringman.com
Teddie Hwang
Flautist Teddie Hwang is fascinated by the timbre and vocal qualities of the baroque traverso. Based in Germany, she collaborates with a variety of ensembles, playing repertoire ranging from 17th century airs de cour to 19th century symphonies. She has given workshops on historical performance at institutions such as the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the School of Music at the University of Victoria BC, and the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick. In addition to the flute, Teddie is also an avid photographer. Specializing in portraiture for musicians, she creates each image like a musical composition with a specific structure, emotion, and style. She enjoys the challenge of expressing the essence of music and of musicians through a visual medium. Teddie studied traverso with Wilbert Hazelzet and received her Master's degree in Historical Flute Performance from the Koninklijk Conservatorium Netherlands. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Music and Germanic Studies from Indiana University USA, where she studied modern flute with Kathryn Lukas and graduated with high distinction. She is a winner of the Baroque Flute Artist Competition held by the National Flute Association of America, and has also adjudicated for its masterclass competitions. www.teddiehwangphotography.com
Miriam Kaczor
Miriam Kaczor is a Polish-born, Dublin-raised flautist and freelance photographer. Receiving awards through the Irish Freemason's Young Musician of the Year, RDS, Flax Trust, Feis Ceoil and the RIAM led to her solo appearances with the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, RTÉ NSO, Ulster Orchestra, Dublin Orchestral Players and multiple broadcasts on RTÉ lyric fm. She plays principal flute with the Irish Baroque Orchestra and has guested as principal with the Irish Chamber Orchestra and RTÉ Concert Orchestra. As a chamber musician, she has played at various festivals and recital venues around Ireland and internationally. Miriam is a member of the experimental new music group, Kirkos Ensemble, and has collaborated with the Contemporary Music Centre. Miriam graduated from the RIAM as a pupil of William Dowdall and has had masterclasses with Sir James Galway, William Bennett, Peter-Lukas Graf, Lorna McGhee and Felix Renggli. She continued studies with Michael Cox, Lisa Beznosiuk and Rachel Brown, was a Britten-Pears Young Artist for several years and was a scholarship participant of the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra Institute in Toronto. She currently lives in Vienna and is mentored by Erwin Klambauer. Miriam is grateful for the generous support of the Music Network and the Arts Council funded by the Department Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht and South Dublin County Council. www.miriamkaczor.com
Shira Kammen
Multi-instrumentalist Shira Kammen has spent much of her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music of all kinds. A member for many years of the early music Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, storyteller/harpist Patrick Ball, singers Azam Ali and Joanna Newsom, the Balkan group Kitka, Anonymous IV, the King's Noyse, the Newberry and Folger Consorts, The Compass of the Rose, Vajra Voices, Calextone, the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to providing music on river rafting trips. She has worked with students in many different settings, among them teaching summer music workshops in the woods, coaching students of early music in such schools as Yale University, Case Western, the University of Oregon at Eugene, and working at specialized seminars at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy and the Scuola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland. Shira directs a chamber chorus called Gallimaufry, and co-directs a women's vocal ensemble, WAVE, and currently directs the music for the California Revels. She has played on a number of movie and television soundtracks, when weird medieval instruments are needed. www.shirakammen.com
Johannes Keller
Johannes Keller graduated at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in the classes of Jörg-Andreas Bötticher (harpsichord), Jesper Christensen (basso continuo) and Andrea Marcon (maestro al cimbalo) in 2010. His main focus is music theater, in the context of historical and contemporary performance practice. He collaborates with various artists, groups and orchestras, as a player, ensemble leader and curator. He teaches the subject "Intonation and Tuning" at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and is currently working on his PhD about microtonal instruments and their music from the 16th and 17th centuries. Johannes is a founding member of Studio31+, a collective of musicians, researchers, composers and instrument builders with a common interest in instruments and music with more than 12 pitches per octave. www.johanneskeller.ch |www.projektstudio31.com
Andrew Lawrence-King
Born in Guernsey, now based in Tallinn, Estonia – award-winning Baroque opera, orchestral & ensemble director; imaginative continuo-player; Early Harp virtuoso; specialist in baroque gesture & Historical Action; investigator of Flow; opera composer; Andrew Lawrence-King is the doyen of historical harping, one of the world’s leading performers of Early Music, and an internationally renowned scholar. His pioneering recordings of Trabaci, Ribayaz, Handel & Carolan re-established the lost worlds of Italian, Spanish, Anglo-Welsh & Irish baroque harps; as co-director of Tragicomedia & director of The Harp Consort, he led a revolution in improvisation & continuo-playing; his research into Tactus redefines our understanding of baroque rhythm; as guest director & teacher, he inspires musicians around the world to reach new levels of technical precision & stylish historicity with fun, energy & passion. Andrew Lawrence-King directs The Harp Consort, combining state-of-the art early music performance with stylish improvisation & entertaining stage presentation; Il Corago, the production team for historical stagings of early opera; the International Baroque Opera Studio & OPERA OMNIA Moscow. The online Academy of Basso Continuo opens soon. Andrew's hobbies include marathon running, sailing, kayaking, fencing (modern epée & historical rapier) & Tai Chi Chuan. He is an Ocean Yachtmaster & a qualified hypnotist. www.andrewlawrenceking.com
Yonit Kosovske
Yonit Kosovske performs as a soloist and collaborative artist on harpsichord, modern piano, fortepiano and chamber organ. At home with repertoire from the Renaissance through New Music, Yonit curates, directs and co-produces projects and festivals that integrate music, text, movement, and painting, as well as her original photography and short film. Chrome Attic, Yonit’s ongoing research-recording-performance project, explores connections between musical chromaticism and chiaroscuro in Baroque painting and contemporary photography. She recently received a 2020 Arts Council Music Commissions Award for Watershed—a song-cycle for voice and piano to be composed by Ailís Ní Ríain on poetry by Jessica Brown, to be premiered in 2021 in collaboration with contralto Julie Comparini. Together with Vlad Smishkewych, Yonit co-founded H.I.P.S.T.E.R., an acronym for Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education and Research, as well as WAVE~LINKS, a new series of explorations in music and artisanry. Yonit is a Lecturer in Music at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. She has given masterclasses throughout Ireland, the United States, Israel, China, and Colombia. She is the author of “Historical Harpsichord Technique: Developing La douceur du toucher,” (Indiana University Press, 2011), and she holds a Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she studied with harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright.
Pauline Mac Sweeney
Pauline Mac Sweeney studied harpsichord and organ with Christopher Stembridge at University College Cork from where she graduated with an honours BMus and a first class honours MA for her research into organ and harpsichord building in 18th-century Ireland. She continued her harpsichord studies in England and France with Michael Thomas, Maggie Cole and Kenneth Gilbert. With her partner, Michael Thomas, she gave many performances, workshops and exhibitions on his collection of historical instruments throughout England and France. From 1990 to 1998 she was the harpsichordist with the Lir Ensemble which performed in France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland. On her return to Ireland she joined the staff of the CIT Cork School of Music in 2000 as Lecturer in Piano, Harpsichord and Organ. She has helped to develop Early Music in the school through her work with student Baroque Ensembles. A founding Director of East Cork Early Music, she was chairperson of the festival from 2007 to 2013 and continues to be an active board and committee member. She has organised masterclasses for her harpsichord students and chamber groups with Early Music experts such as Bob Van Aspern, Malcolm Proud, Pamela Thorby, Rachel Brown and many others. She continues to work with both 2nd and 3rd level students, hoping to inspire in them a life-long love of Early Music.
Amanda Markwick
Amanda Markwick received a double Bachelor’s degree (Modern Flute/French Language and Literature) and a Master’s degree (Early Music) from Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, U.S.A. She completed her second Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in historical flutes with Kate Clark, Wilbert Hazelzet, and Barthold Kuijken at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in The Hague, The Netherlands. Amanda has performed and recorded with many ensembles worldwide, including the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Hong Kong Early Music Society, Barcelona Barroc, the Attaignant Consort, the Rheinische Kantorei und Das Kleine Konzert, die Hannoversche Hofkapelle, die Lautten Compagney, Cantus Thuringia & Capella, Elbipolis, and Cantus Cölln. She has participated in leading early music festivals, and was invited to perform in the prestigious “Solissimo” series at the Magdeburger Telemann Festtage in 2020 (postponed until 2022). Past engagements as a guest lecturer have been at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance at the University of Limerick; the Bauhinia Musik Haus in Hong Kong; and the Kuopio Conservatory in Kuopio, Finland. Her article “Advice for Traverso Beginners” was published by “Fluit” magazine in the Netherlands. With co-author Kate Clark, Amanda has written The Renaissance Flute: A Contemporary Guide, the first modern handbook for the Renaissance flute, published by Oxford University Press in 2020. Amanda lives and teaches in Berlin, Germany. www.amandamarkwick.com
Óscar Mascareñas
Óscar Mascareñas is a poet of sounds, movement and letters. He holds a PhD in Music, an MA in Chant and Ritual Song (both from the University of Limerick in Ireland), and a BSc in Industrial Physics and Engineering (from the ITESM, Mexico). He has published work and given concerts, conferences and master classes extensively in Europe, the Americas and Africa. He was the founding course director of the BA in Voice and Dance, and was acting and assistant director of the MA Ritual Chant and Song at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. He holds the Founding Cage-Cunningham Chair in Contemporary Performance at the Escuela Superior de Música y Danza de Monterrey in Mexico. Óscar’s inter-/trans-disciplinary research covers a wide range of subjects and disciplines including poetry, performance, improvisation, radical pedagogy, Zen, Gregorian chant and the philosophy of music. Also a medieval vielle player, he currently lectures and researches in chant and contemporary music at the Academy, and works independently as a writer, composer and performer internationally. His most recent book, Meditations on the Poetics of Experience – a series of reflexive essays on experience as expressed through the fundamental concepts of listening, silence, sound, time, movement, memory, light and space – will be released in the winter of 2020 by EROS Books. www.silencebound.org
Ingrid Matthews
Ingrid Matthews is Co-founder and Music Director Emeritus of Seattle Baroque Orchestra (1994–2013). Since winning first prize in the Bodky International Competition for Early Music in 1989, she has performed around the world as a soloist, chamber musician and guest director with many groups, including the New York Collegium, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Bach Sinfonia (Washington DC), Musica Pacifica (San Francisco), and many others, and she has recorded extensively; her recording of the Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach is the top recommendation for this music by both American Record Guide and Third Ear's Classical Music Listening Companion. Matthews has taught at Indiana University, the University of Toronto, Oberlin College, USC/Los Angeles, and the Cornish College of the Arts. She also plays jazz and swing styles and is a member of Seattle-based Lulu Swing. Ingrid is also active as a visual artist; her works have been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Seattle, Portland, Berkeley, Los Angeles, North Carolina, Hawai’i, Wyoming and elsewhere. She is the featured artist for one of six episodes of “Commissioned,” The Design Network’s show about art and artists. www.ingridmatthews.com
Felicity Maxwell
Felicity Maxwell has been dancing since early childhood, exploring a range of styles including ballet, contemporary, English and Scottish country and ceilidh, Irish, and Renaissance dance. She has participated in Regency balls and a Stuart masque and called dance instructions at balls on the Scottish university circuit. Most recently, she organised and taught English country dance workshops at the Galway Early Music Festival in 2019. As a percussionist, Felicity has performed with the Galway Early Music adult consort and accompanied Cois Cladaigh Chamber Choir in the Galway International Arts Festival. Felicity’s poems have been published in Goblin Fruit and The Emma Press Anthology of Dance, and she has written and performed monologues for the Múscailt Festival and Flirt FM. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, Felicity obtained her PhD in English from the University of Glasgow in 2014 then joined NUI Galway as a researcher on the project “RECIRC: The Reception and Circulation of Early Modern Women’s Writing, 1550–1700.” Now an Irish Research Council Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow, she is researching the letters of 17th-century Anglo-Irish Puritan feminist Dorothy Moore. (Moore did not approve of dancing.)
Stephanie Muncey-Dyer
Stephanie Muncey-Dyer is primarily a historical trombone specialist and a member of world-renowned historic brass ensemble His Majestys Sagbutts & Cornetts since 2016. Born and raised in South Wales, Stephanie studied at King’s College, Cambridge, Royal Academy of Music, London – where she was also Regent Fellow for 2015/16 – and at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, Switzerland. A highly versatile musician, she is ordinarily in demand internationally and across the UK as a historical specialist, trombonist and educator. Alongside her work with HMSC, as a period instrumentalist Stephanie performs with the likes of the Academy of Ancient Music (UK), Il Giardino Armonico (Italy) and Orkest van de Achttiende Eeuw (Holland). Equally at home in the recording studio and theatre as on the concert platform, in 2018 Stephanie played on the film soundtrack for Fanny Lye Deliver’d and was trombonist for the Hamlet production at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. Passionate about education, Stephanie is the sackbut tutor for the annual International Early Music Summer School in Poland (Ścinawka Górna, 2017–) and has coached at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama (2018; 2020). She has been Lower Brass Tutor for the National Schools Symphony Orchestra since 2017. Last year Stephanie was delighted to be elected a Member of The Royal Society of Musicians. www.stephaniedyer.me
Eibhlís Ní Ríordáin
Eibhlís Ní Ríordáin researches and sings the songs of 17c and 18c Irish harpers while accompanying herself on a copy of an 18c Irish wire-strung harp within the framework of Historically Informed Performance. A native of County Cork, she is a Sean-nós singer, harpist, musicologist, and piano instructor, as well as a composer and arranger of music for diverse media. With the commencement of lessons in 2017 with historical harp specialist Siobhan Armstrong, there has been a fortuitous amalgamation of Eibhlis’s deep interests in Irish music and song, in Early Music, research and performance. She has also been exploring the interconnections between sean-nós song (a living tradition) and early Irish harp music (an 800 year long tradition, but which died out around 1800). Recognising Eibhlís’s singular expertise, the Historical Harp Society of Ireland has invited her for the past number of years to teach Harp Song classes at Scoil na gCláirseach, Kilkenny. She is the only singing-harpist in Ireland offering such coaching. Eibhlís’s first sean-nós song and harp-song album An Buachaillín Bán is forthcoming in 2020. She was recently awarded an Irish Arts Council Traditional Arts Bursary to research the music of 18th-century female Irish harpers represented in the Bunting manuscript. www.eibhlis.ie
Carlos Núñez
Carlos Núñez is one of the world's top bagpipers and an internationally acclaimed headliner on the Celtic/World Music scene. As a teenager he was discovered by Irish legends The Chieftains in his native Galicia, the Celtic region in North West Spain. He became a honorary member of the band, and they recorded a Grammy Award winning CD together, "Santiago". SONY MUSIC (formerly BMG Classics/RCA Victor) has released 10 of his albums, which have sold 1 million copies since his debut in 1996, accumulating several Platinum and Gold CDs and DVDs, as well as 2 Latin Grammy nominations. They feature a wide variety of artists such as The Chieftains, Ry Cooder, Jackson Browne, and many more. Carlos Núñez’s open view of Celtic Music includes a historical perspective, which aligns with Early Music. On his 3rd album he invited his long-time friend Jordi Savall to duet with him in a Breton Baroque piece. Although this was the first Savall tour with Núñez, both have performed together in Europe on special occasions, including most recently in Galicia's Santiago de Compostela Cathedral, leading a 24 piece Medieval orchestra and playing repertoire from the Camino de Santiago. They were joined by Hesperion XXI, as well as folk musicians and a Fado singer, heirs of a Galician-Portuguese Medieval Cantigas tradition. They used reproductions of the instruments sculpted so perfectly in the Cathedral's Pórtico de la Gloria that they were recently compared by a US luthier to "12th century 3D prints". Carlos Núñez is also classically trained on the recorder and often plays with orchestras around the world, having performed at Carnegie Hall, Boston Symphony Hall, Musikverein in Vienna and the Royal Albert Hall in London. According to the BBC, “Carlos Núñez is one of the world’s most exciting, and most serious, musicians.”
Anthony (“Anto”) O’Brien
Anthony (“Anto”) O’Brien is a potter, painter, poet, meditator, musician, and instrument builder. He lives and works in Louisburgh, County Mayo, on the Atlantic Coast of Ireland. As a ceramic artist he works mainly in clay, drawing inspiration, and some of his materials, from Mayo’s wild and rugged landscape. The human figure, animals, plants and the countryside are recurrent themes both as the subjects of pictures and as decorative motifs on his ceramics. His media include high temperature ash-glazed stoneware, blue-and-white earthenware, charcoal, pastel drawing and acrylics. Clay is closest to his heart for its immediacy of expression, alchemic transformation and unequalled durability of colour. His ceramics range from the abstract beauty of a simple bowl, to the rich palette of a Mayo landscape. In addition to a prolific and prize-winning career as a ceramicist, he plays viola da gamba as a consort musician and has worked as a professional instrument builder of violins and viols. In 2011 he made the documentary film Tatiko, the Journey of an African Pot with Michael OBrien in Nigeria. In 2014 Anto’s book 36 Views of Croagh Patrick, Pictures and Poems was published by CPR Publications, showcasing paintings based on his original ceramic work and haikus exploring his personal connections with the sacred mountain. www.anthonyobrienart.com
Michelle L. O’Connor
Michelle L. O’Connor has been performing for over 30 years. She studied medieval vielle with Shira Kammen, earned a Masters in Ritual Chant & Song from the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance (University of Limerick), and studied music at Brown University. She has performed internationally with an eclectic variety of ensembles, including Jordi Savall & Hespèrion XXI, Keltia Productions, The Boston Camerata, and Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to creating music on whitewater rafting trips. Recently she performed the show ‘Stars & Stones’ for Cístermusica Festival (2019) in Portugal with tenor Wolodymyr Smishkewych: a program of Irish, British, French, German, and Iberian Troubadour repertoire. During her time living in Limerick, she was privileged to perform with the Limerick Philharmonic Orchestra, the University of Limerick Orchestra, and to teach violin/fiddle/viola & voice at Redemptorist Centre of Music and Mid-West Vocal Academy & Music School. Michelle has recently returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where she lives with her husband and five birds. www.michelleoconnor.eu
Maura O’Cróinín
Maura Ó Cróinín is a founder member of Galway Early Music and current chair and programme director. Born and raised in the U.S.A. (on both coasts), she has been living in Ireland since 1975 and in Galway since 1980. She has an MPhil in Medieval Studies from University College Dublin. She plays recorder and historical harps (bray and early Irish harp), works on the Galway Early Music Festival and does graphic design. galwayearlymusic.com
Caitríona O’Mahony
Caitríona O’Mahony is a violinist, violist, educator, and artistic director from Cork. She has been known to try her hand at any variety of bowed strings, including viola d’amore and viola da gamba. She studied modern violin and viola with Ruxandra Petcu-Colan and Simon Aspell at the Cork School of Music, and later specialised in historical performance with Walter Reiter and Kati Debretzeni at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag. She was awarded a Masters in Early Music Performance from the Royal Irish Academy of Music studying under Claire Duff. She has performed with the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Camerata Kilkenny, Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Ensemble Marsyas, and with the rising Irish early music group Ensemble Dagda. Caitríona’s research focuses on 18th century performance practice in Ireland, patronage of music amongst the Anglo-Irish landowners of Munster, and 17th–18th century music by female composers. As Artistic Director of East Cork Early Music Festival, she enjoys creating multi-genre programmes containing strong narratives that feature specific references to historic spaces or art. She has also engaged in creating family-friendly interactive concerts, introducing young audiences to early music. www.caitrionaomahony.com
Mícheál 'Moley' Ó Súilleabháin
Mícheál 'Moley' Ó Súilleabháin has apprenticed himself to the repertoire of his mother, renowned Irish sacred singer Rev. Nóirín Ní Riain, as well as the artform of poetic recitation. He has recorded and travelled widely performing several genres of music with his brother, Owen. Mícheál, with his brother and mother, run tours to Ireland and present online courses on a range of Celtic, artistic and spiritual themes under the banner of Edge School and David Whyte’s Many Rivers Press has just published his poetry book Early Music. www.owenandmoley.com
Mario Papini
Mario Papini is a lutenist, multi-instrumentalist, and researcher. He is active as a soloist and collaborative artist in the field of Early Music and various traditional repertoires. He has performed with various ensembles, including Laus Veris, Immota Manet, I Cimbali, Lutark, and his personal project Uramèl. From Brescia, Italy, in 2019–2020 he gave several concerts throughout Ireland, and pursued research at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, University of Limerick. In 2019 he graduated cum laude with a Master of Arts in Lute and Early Plucked Instruments from the Conservatory Alfredo Casella of L’Aquila under the guidance of Marco Pesci. Mario also holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Conservatory Benedetto Marcello of Venice, where he studied with Tiziano Bagnati. He has explored medieval lute and modal music with Peppe Frana, as well as later repertoires of Early Music under the tutelage of Claudia Caffagni, Guillermo Perez, Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Joachim Held, Rob Mackillop, and Crawford Young. In 2016, through the Foundation Ugo e Olga Levi, he recorded a Concerto by Giovanni Rovetta with the Conservatory of Music Benedetto Marcello in Venice.
Susanna Pell
In previous years Susanna Pell toured internationally with the viol consort Fretwork and medieval music specialists The Dufay Collective, enjoying an active freelance career which flitted from country to country; concert hall to recording studio. Then in 2011, after a move north from London to Yorkshire, she rubber stamped her concern for the welfare of the planet by quitting work-related air travel. She now teaches and performs much closer to home and spends the rest of her time foraging, gardening and wielding a crochet hook. She teaches viol at the University of York and has an Alexander Technique teaching practice in Richmond. She is focusing her performing on her duo with Jacob Heringman, Pellingmans' Saraband; The Herschel Trio, with flautist Graham O'Sullivan and harpsichordist, Mie Hayashi O'Sullivan; and The Northern Early Music Collective with Jamie Savan, Faye Newton and Pamela Thorby. Last year she was invited to join Nicolette Moonen, baroque violin and Medea Bindewald, harpsichord in a new trio, Vermilion and is very happy to have successfully relocated her performance base from London to the North East. www.susannapell.co.uk
Theodore "Ted" Robertson
Theodore “Ted” Robertson: harpsichord builder, lid painter, soundboard painter, craftsman, artist, and historical keyboardist. Ted has created over 60 unique instruments that are now owned by musicians, collectors, churches and universities around the world. When he was just 14 years old, he made his first clavichord and a copy of the 1640 Andreas Ruckers Flemish harpsichord by using plan drawings from museums. As an undergraduate he studied both Biology and Harpsichord at Indiana University with Professor Elisabeth Wright. At 19 years old he made a copy of 1745 Dulcken harpsichord for Indiana University’s Early Music Institute (now called the Historical Performance Institute). Years later, after a brief step into the study of medicine, Ted enrolled again at Indiana University to pursue a Masters degree in harpsichord performance. Today he lives in Ellettsive, Indiana with Seana, his wife of 23 years and his business partner, along with their two children, one of whom is learning harpsichord maintenance and tuning. www.robertsonharpsichords.com
Malachy Robinson
Malachy Robinson is a dedicated chamber musician, as passionate about Early Music as he is about New Music. He is a founder of the Gregory Walkers, a group performing Early Music from Ireland and beyond (in which he plays the viola da gamba) and is director of the Robinson Panoramic Quartet, a revelatory alternative to the standard string quartet. With the Far Flung Trio he explores extended roles for the double-bass in multiple genres, and they have recently released an eclectic, vivid album, Live at the Large Room. Principal double-bass with the Irish Chamber Orchestra since 1995, he is also a founder member of the cutting-edge Crash Ensemble as well as appearing with period-instrument orchestras such as The Sixteen, the English Concert, the OAE and the Academy of Ancient Music. He is involved in music education, coaching string players for the Dublin Youth Orchestras, the National Youth Orchestra, the IAYO orchestra, ICO’s sing out programme, ConCorda chamber music school, Ceol na Mara summer school and others. He has also been involved in many workshops for schools with numerous organisations, including the National Concert Hall, Music Network and Music Generation. www.malachyrobinson.com
Norbert Rodenkirchen
For over 30 years Norbert Rodenkirchen has dedicated himself to the artistic dialogue between old and new sounds, between the middle ages and today. He is in high demand as a soloist on historic transverse flute as well as a chamber musician in the scene of historically informed performance practice. He is also active as a composer and improviser of experimental music in the New Music scene of Cologne, in addition to composing music for TV documentaries and for theatre. Norbert teaches medieval improvisation in workshops and coaches musicians at numerous music schools throughout Europe and across the globe. He is a long-time core member of internationally acclaimed ensembles such as Sequentia and Dialogos, as well as with his own medieval ensemble project Candens Lilium. Norbert Rodenkirchen has created various medieval solo programs, most of which are also available on CD. www.norbertrodenkirchen.org
Antonio Santos García
Spanish baritone Antonio Santos García has performed in Europe and the Americas with numerous ensembles and orchestras, such as the Chamber Choir of the Early Music Academy of Salamanca University (USAL, Spain), Lipzodes (USA), Concentus (USA), Musica Poetica (Holland), IU Baroque Orchestra (USA), Symphonic Orchestra of Burgos (Spain), ¡Sacabuche!, El Fénix de los Ingenios (USA) and Musica Ficta (Colombia). He is a founding member of ensembles Vox Reflexa and Canto Romántico. He has sung various operatic roles and has taken part in important festivals such as Aix-en-Provence Lyric Festival (France), Boston Early Music Festival or Festival Internacional de Santander (Spain). Mr. Santos received degrees in History and Musicology from the University of Salamanca (Spain) and in Voice from the Professional Conservatory of Music of Salamanca. In 2008, Mr. Santos received the Performer Diploma in Voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music in the Early Music Institute, where he also graduated as Master of Music in Voice. Among his instructors were Richard Levitt, David Mason, Dr. Robert Harrison and Paul Elliott. Mr. Santos has taught Voice at Universidad del Norte in Barranquilla, Colombia, South America. He currently teaches voice and choral singing in Salamanca, Spain. www.antoniosantosgarcia.com
Aiden Scanlon
Organist Aiden Scanlon is well known throughout Ireland for his work involving the tuning and maintenance of harpsichords, chamber organs, and church organs. His instrument services are in high demand by universities nationwide, as well as by major concert halls, festivals, concert series, individual musicians, and leading ensembles, such as the Irish Baroque Orchestra, Irish Chamber Orchestra, Irish National Opera, Chamber Choir Ireland, Resurgam, among many others. For several years he was employed as an organ builder, working for Kenneth Jones, and on various projects voicing organs in major churches throughout Ireland, the United States, Australia, and throughout Europe. Included amongst his personal instrument collection are several harpsichords, a clavichord, regal organ, continuo organ, and a square piano.
Wolodymyr “Vlad” Smishkewych
Wolodymyr “Vlad” Smishkewych (tenor) has performed with artists as diverse as Sequentia, Theatre of Voices, Carlos Nuñez, Jordi Savall and Hesperion XXI, The Harp Consort, Ars Nova Copenhagen, and Ensemble Dialogos. On the opera and concert stage he has performed as soloist under directors such as Christophe Rousset, Peter Sellars, Albert Takazauckas, Gary Thor Wedow and Andrew Lawrence-King. Vlad has recorded for Sony/BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Naxos, Norton, and Focus Records. He holds the Doctor of Music in Voice Performance from Indiana University, and has lectured and taught masterclasses and performance programmes at universities in the USA, South America, Canada, and Europe. His passion for writing and creating audio and video about music, culture, and nature, brought him to Spain as a Fulbright Fellow in 2005. In 2011 he moved to Ireland to become director of the MA in Ritual Song and Chant at the University of Limerick, Ireland, where he taught until 2014. He then returned to performing and to the world of audio broadcasting and film, in 2015 joining Ireland’s RTÉ lyric fm as an announcer and programme writer, and as the host of Ireland’s weekly early music programme, Vox Nostra. He is a co-founder of H.I.P.S.T.E.R., an acronym for Historically Informed Performance Series, Teaching, Education and Research.
Eamon Sweeney
Eamon Sweeney began his musical studies on the violin, picked up a guitar while in his teens and subsequently studied Classical guitar at the Dublin Institute of Technology Conservatory of Music and Drama. While there he was exposed to the Baroque guitar, inspiring his doctoral research into the 17th-century instrument and its variants. He continued his further study of early plucked-instrument performance at Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, Barcelona. Eamon teaches and performs extensively in a variety of genres and styles giving broadcasts, lectures and seminars in his native Ireland and internationally. He is a member of a number of music ensembles that focus on the performance and recording of early and Irish music, namely Tonos, The Gregory Walkers and Sonamus. He is also committed to the provision of Community Music, Music in Healthcare Settings and Early Years Music and is co-director of the Alchemy Music – an organisation that supports multi-disciplinary arts events, school projects, music and health projects, and recitals in County Wicklow. Eamon counts himself most fortunate to have collaborated with some of Ireland’s leading artists over the years including the late Seamus Heaney, Elaine Agnew, Brian Irvine, Mary Coughlan and Theo Dorgan. Eamon is the 2018/19 Music Network Artist-in-Residence at Mermaid Arts Centre. His work regularly receives support from the Arts Council of Ireland, Local Authority Arts Offices and Music Generation – Ireland’s National Music Education Programme.
Caspar Johannes Walter
Caspar Johannes Walter studied composition with V. D. Kirchner, J. Fritsch and C. Barlow. He is a cofounder of the Cologne-based Thürmchen Verlag (Publishing House) and has received several composition awards in the Stuttgart Composition Competition, Irino Prize for Orchestra (Japan), “Vienna modern” competition, the Hindemith Award of the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and many others. He has represented the young generation of Cologne musicians in exchange projects sponsored by the Goethe Institute in New York and Atlanta. His pieces were selected for the World Music Days in Stockholm in 1994 and in Copenhagen in 1996. A CD with Caspar’s chamber music works was released by the German Council of Music on the Label Wergo and has was awarded the “Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik” in 1998. Caspar’s works are performed regularly in Europe, the USA and Japan. In 2002¬–2003 Caspar was Composer in Residence at the University of Birmingham/UK. He has taught composition in Stuttgart/Germany and at the Musikakademie Basel/Switzerland. In 2014 he was elected into the “Akademie der Künste, Berlin.“ He is a founding member of Studio31+. www.casparjohanneswalter.de