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ELIZABETH BLUMENSTOCK (violin) is widely admired as a performer of interpretive eloquence and technical sparkle. A frequent soloist, concertmaster, and leader with American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Santa Fe Pro Musica, and the Italian ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, she is also a member of several of California's finest period instrument ensembles, including Musica Pacifica, Trio Galatea, the Arcadian Academy, Trio Galanterie, and American Baroque, which focuses not just on Baroque performance, but on the growing repertoire of new music written for old instruments. Ms. Blumenstock was recently appointed Resident Artistic Director of Los Angeles-based Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. She has appeared with period orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and abroad, and has performed for the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, Germany's Goettingen Handelfestspiel, Los Angeles Opera, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oulunsalo Soi festival in Finland, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, among many others. She has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics, Dorian, BMG, Reference Recordings, Koch International, and Sono Luminus. She is instructor of baroque violin at the University of Southern California, and has taught at the International Baroque Institute at Longy, Oberlin's Baroque Performance Institute, and the Austrian Baroque Academy, and has coached university Baroque ensembles at USC, Roosevelt University, the University of Virginia, and California Institute of the Arts. |
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MAX (RUDOLF) VAN EGMOND (bass-baritone), studied with Tone van Willingen de Lorme and compled his schooling and musical education in Holland after the war. He became a member of the Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Dutch Bach Society) at the age of eighteen. In 1959 (three years after his friend and compatriot, Elly Ameling) he became one of the prizewinners at the 's‑Hertogenbosch Vocal competition. He took prizes also in Brussels (1959) and Munich (1964) competitions. Those prizes marked the beginning of his full-time distinguished career as a singer of oratorio, lieder and baroque opera. Max van Egmond achieved his greatest fame as an interpreter of J. S. Bach's cantatas, masses and passions and from 1965 participated in complete recordings and performances of these masterpieces with conductors Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Frans Brüggen. One of Holland's most beloved artists, he has received numerous awards and honors including a special decoration from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands for his decades of service to Dutch musical life. His forty-year career has taken him throughout Europe, Canada, the USA, Israel, and Asia. For many years a professor at Amsterdam's Sweelinck Conservatory, Max van Egmond continues to give masterclasses throughout the world and has taught every summer in Mateus, Portugal and at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, Ohio. His recent recordings with the Belgian-based Ricercar Consort have explored the extensive seventeenth-century German cantata repertory in a highly successful ongoing series, "Deutsche Barock Kantaten." In recent years, Max van Egmond has concentrated on performing lieder and French art songs, and has produced highly acclaimed recordings of Schubert's Winterreise and chansons of Gabriel Fauré (Channel Classics). His concerts, recordings and many prominent students all provide eloquent testimony not only to his expertise in all areas of the vocal repertoire, but also to his great kindness and humanity in the service of music. |
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COREY JAMASON (harpsichord & Academy co-director) was named Artistic Director of the San Francisco Bach Choir in the spring of 2007, becoming the choir's third director in its 72 year history. As a harpsichordist and chamber music collaborator Jamason is active throughout the United States and Europe. Jamason has appeared numerous times on NPR's Performance Today and has performed the Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier throughout the United States. Chamber music collaborations have included performances with Jean-Pierre Rampal, Wieland Kuijken, Eva Legêne, Eliot Fisk, and Marion Verbruggen. He has appeared as a concerto soloist with American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Camerata Pacifica, and in collaboration with Joseph Silverstein at the Music in the Vineyards Festival. He has performed with a variety of other ensembles including LA Opera, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, El Mundo, and with members of the Bach Aria Group as well as festival appearances including the Berkeley and Bloomington Early Music Festivals, Bach Aria Festival, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, Whidbey Island Chamber Music Festival, and the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival. Jamason also co-directs the ensemble Theatre Comique, which specializes in recreating late nineteenth and early twentieth century American musical theatre. In May 2007 he conducted performances of Monterverdi's Orfeo at the Bloomington Early Music Festival in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the opera's premiere. He received degrees in music from SUNY College at Purchase, Yale University, where he was a student of Richard Rephann, and from Indiana University's Early Music Institute, where he received a Doctor of Music degree. Recent recordings include performances with the violinist Gilles Apap, El Mundo, and with American Bach Soloists. Since 2001 he has been a member of the faculty of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. |
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STEVEN LEHNING (violone & contrabass) is a remarkable and versatile musician who is equally at home with violas da gamba, violone, violone grosso, and historical keyboards. The founder of Stylvs Phantasticvs, he has worked with many of the luminaries of the early music world including Jeffrey Thomas, John Butt, Andrew Parrott, and Ton Koopman. Mr. Lehning has performed throughout the U.S. and in Europe, appearing with the American Bach Soloists (since their inaugural season), Taverner Consort, Philharmonia Baroque, San Francisco Bach Choir, Santa Fe Pro Musica, Concert Royale, to name a few. He has performed at the acclaimed Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, as well as the Early Music Festivals in Boston and Berkeley. In addition to his performing career, he is sought after for his informative lectures on issues of performance practice, organology, as well as the cultural contexts in which works were conceived and performed. He is currently working toward a Ph.D. in musicology at the University of California (Davis). Mr. Lehning has been recorded on the American Bach Soloists, Delos, EMI, Harmonia Mundi, and Koch labels.
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JUDITH MALAFRONTE (alto) has appeared with numerous orchestras and oratorio societies including the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the Hollywood Bowl, the San Francisco Symphony, the St. Louis and Baltimore Symphonies, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, and the Handel and Haydn Society. She has sung at the Tanglewood Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Utrecht Early Music Festival, and is a frequent guest artist with the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and The Harp Consort. Her operatic performances have included the title role in Handel's Serse at the Göttingen Festival, Scarlatti's L'Aldimiro at the Berkeley Festival, Dido and Aeneas with Mark Morris Dance Group (singing both Dido and the Sorceress), and Nero in Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea for the Aston Magna Festival. She has also sung leading roles at the opera houses of Lyon, Liège, and Montpellier. Ms. Malafronte has won several top awards in Italy, Spain, Belgium, and the U.S., including the Grand Prize at the International Vocal Competition in 's‑Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands. She holds degrees with honors from Vassar College and Stanford University, and pursued post-graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music, with Mlle. Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and with Giulietta Simionato in Milan as a Fulbright scholar. She has recorded a wide range of repertoire, from the twelfth century chant of Hildegard von Bingen to the Deutsche Motette of Richard Strauss, including Handel operas, Bach cantatas and the St. Matthew Passion with American Bach Soloists, medieval music, and Spanish 17th century music. Ms. Malafronte's writings on music have appeared in Opera News, Early Music America, Stagebill, Schwann Inside, and Opus. |
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ROBERT MEALY (violin) has recorded over 50 CDs of early music on most major labels, ranging from Hildegard of Bingen to Renaissance consorts and Rameau operas. At home in New York, he is a frequent leader and soloist with the New York Collegium, Early Music New York, the Clarion Society, and the ARTEK early music ensemble. Mr. Mealy began exploring early music with the collegium of UC Berkeley and then at the Royal College of Music in London. He has recorded and toured with many early music ensembles both here and in Europe, including Sequentia, Ensemble Project Ars Nova, Medieval Strings, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, Tragicomedia, Les Arts Florissants, La Fontegara, the Studio de musique ancienne de Montréal, Seattle Baroque, Boston Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society. He has toured with the Mark Morris Dance Company and accompanied Renée Fleming on the David Letterman Show. Mr. Mealy has been concertmaster of the internationally-acclaimed Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra since 2004, and has led them in performances and Grammy-nominated recordings of Lully’s Thésée and Conradi’s Ariadne, as well as the modern premiere of Mattheson’s Boris Godenouw. He regularly appears at international music festivals from Berkeley to Belgrade, and from Melbourne to Versailles. A devoted chamber musician, he is a member of the celebrated Renaissance violin band The King's Noyse, which records for Harmonia Mundi, and the new 17th-century ensemble Spiritus Collective. He served for over a decade as an instrumental soloist and leader with the Boston Camerata. Through his interest in earlier repertories, he co-founded the medieval ensemble Fortune’s Wheel, which has appeared at early music festivals throughout the Americas, and at the Cloisters and the Frick Museum in New York. Mr. Mealy has lectured and taught historical performance techniques at Columbia, Brown, Rutgers, Oberlin, and UC Berkeley. He was recently appointed Professor (adjunct) at Yale University, where he is director of the Yale Collegium. In 2004 he received Early Music America’s Binkley Award outstanding teaching and scholarship, recognizing his work at Yale and Harvard. Mr. Mealy served for several years as the Hogwood Fellow of the Handel and Haydn Society, advising on scholarship and performance, and he regularly teaches historical improvisation and technique at workshops across North America. |
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SANDRA MILLER (flute) had an early fascination with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach that ultimately led her to the baroque flauto traverso, upon which she is widely regarded to be one of the finest performers of her generation. Trained at the North Carolina School of the Arts and the Curtis Institute of Music in the conservatory curriculum traditional for woodwind players, she chose—instead of the path leading to membership in a symphony orchestra—to settle in New York City, where she leads an active musical life, appearing in a variety of chamber music performances, solo recitals and orchestral concerts. Ms. Miller was winner of the Concert Artists Guild Competition, the Erwin Bodky Competition for Early Music, and of a Solo Recitalist's Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. She is frequently invited to perform and record with many well known period-instrument ensembles, including the American Bach Soloists, American Classical Orchestra, Clarion Society orchestra, Sinfonia New York, New York Collegium, Boston's Handel and Haydn Society, and Tafelmusik. As a founding member and Associate Director of the ensemble Concert Royal, she has toured throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Germany, Brazil and Mexico. For many years Professor (now Emerita) of Music at the Purchase College Conservatory of Music (SUNY), Ms. Miller has also taught at the Mannes College of Music, in CUNY's doctoral program, at the New England Conservatory of Music, and as Kulas Visiting Artist at Case Western Reserve University. She is currently on the faculty of the Historical Performance Program at the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Her solo recordings include the complete Bach flute sonatas and, on six- and eight-keyed classical flutes, the three Mozart concertos. |
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DEBRA NAGY (oboe & recorder), praised for her "dazzling technique and soulful expressiveness," (Rocky Mountain News), is in demand as a soloist and collaborative musician on both coasts, performing with baroque ensembles and orchestras in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and New York. She was the first-prize winner in the 2002 American Bach Soloists Young Artist Competition, is the founder of Les Délices, an ensemble dedicated to chamber music of the French Baroque, and performs fifteenth-century music on shawms and recorders as a member of Ciaramella. Ms. Nagy received her doctorate in Early Music at Case Western Reserve University (where she directs the Collegium Musicum), and completed undergraduate and master's degrees at the Oberlin Conservatory, where she studied with James Caldwell and Gonzalo Ruiz. She has recorded for the Capstone, Bright Angel, Naxos, Hänssler Classics, Chandos, and ATMA labels. |
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ELISABETH REED (viola da gamba & violoncello) was born and raised in Chapel Hill, NC and now lives in Oakland, CA. She teaches viola da gamba, baroque cello, and ensembles at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and at the University of California at Berkeley. She performs with many local and national early music ensembles including the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, the Novello String Quartet, Wildcat Viols, and the improvisational group, MOTOR. Recent highlights include solo and concerto appearances this past summer at the Magnolia Baroque Festival and the Indianapolis Early Music Festival. A graduate of the North Carolina School of the Arts, the Oberlin Conservatory, the Eastman School of Music, and Indiana University's Early Music Institute, she can be heard on the Virgin Classics, Focus, and Magnatune recording labels. She is a Guild certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of Awareness Through Movement and Functional Integration with a particular interest in the issues facing musicians and performers. |
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JOHN THIESSEN (trumpet) has performed with American Bach Soloists for nearly 15 years, and appears as soloist and principal trumpet with early music ensembles in the US and Canada, including Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Early Music Festival, and Boston Baroque. Highlights this season include Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2, Christmas and Ascension Oratorios, and numerous cantatas, Handel's Messiah and Eternal Source of Light Divine, Purcell's King Arthur, recordings of Beethoven symphonies, and recitals throughout the US and Canada. Thiessen is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and King's College, University of London, and is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council and Ontario Arts Council for studies in the UK. He recently presented masterclasses at Juilliard and University of Texas, is an adjunct faculty member for Carnegie Hall's Academy program, and has taught for baroque institutes at Oberlin College and the Longy School. Thiessen has recorded extensively for Sony Classical Vivarte, Telarc, EMI, BMG, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, London Decca, Analekta, CBC, and Denon, and is heard on the recent film Casanova. |
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JEFFREY THOMAS (conductor & Academy co-director) is Artistic and Music Director of the American Bach Soloists, with whom he has directed and conducted recordings of more than 25 cantatas, the Mass in B Minor, Musical Offering, motets, chamber music, and works by Schütz, Pergolesi, Vivaldi, Haydn, and Beethoven. Before devoting all of his time to conducting, he was one of the first recipients of the San Francisco Opera Company's prestigious Adler Fellowships. Cited by the Wall Street Journal as "a superstar among oratorio tenors," Mr. Thomas' extensive discography of vocal music includes dozens of recordings of major works for Decca, EMI, Erato, Koch International Classics, Denon, Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian, Newport Classics, and Arabesque. Educated at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and the Juilliard School of Music, with further studies in English literature at Cambridge University, he has taught at the Amherst Early Music Workshop, Oberlin College Conservatory Baroque Performance Institute, San Francisco Early Music Society, and Southern Utah Early Music Workshops, presented master classes at the New England Conservatory of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, SUNY at Buffalo, Swarthmore College, and Washington University, been on the faculty of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania, and was artist-in-residence at the University of California, where he is now professor of music (Barbara K. Jackson Chair in Choral Conducting). He was a UC Davis Chancellor's Fellow from 2001 to 2006; and the Rockefeller Foundation awarded him a prestigious Residency at the Bellagio Study and Conference Center at Villa Serbelloni for April 2007, to work on his manuscript, "Handel's Messiah: A Life of Its Own." |
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TANYA TOMKINS (violoncello) received her Soloist Diploma from The Hague Conservatory in The Netherlands, where she studied with Anner Bijlsma. While in Holland, she founded the Trio d'Amsterdam, which toured extensively throughout Europe and made their New York debut at the Frick Collection. In 2001 Ms. Tomkins won the Bodky Competition for Early Music Soloists in Boston. She has been featured as a soloist with the American Bach Soloists, the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra, and the Mozart Festival Orchestra in San Luis Obispo. In addition, Ms. Tomkins plays principal 'cello with the Portland Baroque Orchestra and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco. She performs regularly in recitals with pianist and fortepianist Eric Zivian, with whom she has recorded the Beethoven Sonatas for the Centaur label. She has just completed a recording of Kummer Cello Duets with cellist, Phoebe Carrai, for Avie Records. Ms. Tomkins is also active as a chamber musician on the modern cello. She has appeared on the "Great Performers Series" at Lincoln Center, the "Meet the Virtuoso Series" at the 92nd St Y, and San Francisco Performances, to critical acclaim. She has also appeared numerous times in the Concertgebouw Recital Hall in Amsterdam as recitalist and chamber musician, as well as in many other halls throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. Her recordings include the quartets of Debussy and Ravel for Vanguard Classics with the Euridice Quartet (with members of the Concertgebouw Orchestra) and an all Schubert CD with the SoLaRe String Trio on the Ottavo label. Ms. Tomkins appears regularly at the Moab Music Festival and is currently a member of the San Francisco string trio, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, which specializes in contemporary music. |
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