Faculty

2012 Ensembles

• Anonymous 4
• Chatham Baroque with Chris Norman
• Newberry Consort
• The Rose Ensemble

2012 Workshop Faculty

Listed alphabetically by category.

Jump to individual faculty bios. (More bios coming soon.)

Voice:

• Cheryl Bensman-Rowe, soprano
  
• Kristina Boerger, soprano
  
• Marsha Genensky, soprano
  
• Susan Hellauer, soprano
• Chelsie Propst, beginning voice
  
• Paul Rowe, baritone
• Jordan Sramek, tenor

Strings:

• Julia Chybowski, beginning harp
• David Douglass, violin/viola
• Andrew Fouts, violin
• Patricia Halverson, viol
• Eric Miller, beginning viol
• Christa Patton, harp
• Scott Pauley, theorbo, guitar
• Anton TenWolde, beginning baroque cello

Historical Winds & Brass

• Greg Ingles, sackbut
• Joan Kimball, recorder, historical winds
• Theresa Koenig, beginning recorder
• Chris Norman, Baroque and wooden flute
• Christa Patton, historical winds
  
• Bob Wiemken, historical winds
  
• Tom Zajac, recorder, historical winds

Keyboard:

• John Chappell Stowe, organ, harpsichord

Musicology, History and Culture:

• J. Michael Allsen, musicology
• John W. Barker, history
• Lawrence Bennett, musicology
• Jim Carrier, filmmaker
• Jim Page, musicology
• William Keyse Rudolph, art history
• Michelle Bray Wilson, history
• Tom Zajac

Historical Dance:

• Jane Peck

Conducting:

• Kristina Boerger
• Jerry Hui, assistant conductor

Ensembles:

Anonymous 4

Renowned for their unearthly vocal blend and virtuosic ensemble singing, the four women of Anonymous 4 combine historical scholarship with contemporary performance intuition to create their magical sound. The ensemble has performed on major concert series and at festivals throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, including appearances at Tanglewood, Wolftrap, BBC Proms, Edinburgh Festival and the Brisbane Biennial. Enchanted both by their live performances and by their eighteen recordings of medieval, contemporary, and American music, Anonymous 4's listeners have bought nearly two million copies of the group's albums on the harmonia mundi label.

 

Chatham Baroque with Chris Norman

“One of Pittsburgh’s greatest treasures” says the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Baroque continues to excite local, national, and international audiences with dazzling technique and lively interpretations of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music, that is accessible and thrillingly vivid, with a freshness akin to improvisational jazz. Founded in 1990, Chatham Baroque celebrates its twentieth season this year with a full calendar of concerts, tours, musical collaborations, and the CD release in December of vocal and instrumental works by the Italian composer Giovanni Girolamo Kapsperger. The trio of baroque violin, viola da gamba, theorbo and baroque guitar tours nationally and internationally, has recorded seven CDs on the Dorian label and hosts a successful concert series in Pittsburgh.

Chatham Baroque has toured across the United States as well as in South America and Mexico, the Virgin Islands, and Canada. Highlights of this season’s tours include concerts in Oregon, Delaware, New York, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC.  On the road, the ensemble consistently receives high praise. The Washington Post calls them “musically impeccable”; the Chicago Tribune, “a splendid period-instruments ensemble”; and the New York Times praises their “colorful virtuosity.”

Chatham Baroque is repeatedly listed among the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s “Top 50 Cultural Forces in Pittsburgh” and “Ten Best Classical Concerts.” The ensemble prides itself on its commitment to the Pittsburgh region and its ability to serve nationally and abroad as ambassadors for the city. In addition to local and touring concerts and recording, Chatham Baroque presents Peanut Butter & Jam Sessions for pre-schoolers and Music All Over the Place performances in various community venues. Chatham Baroque is Ensemble-in-Residence at WQED-FM and Calvary Episcopal Church.

 

Newberry Consort

Beguiling and intelligent, provocative and classic, ravishingly beautiful and deliciously edgy-The Newberry Consort has been delighting audiences for nearly three decades. Directed by David Douglass, Newberry Musician-in-Residence, and early music diva Ellen Hargis, the ensemble plumbs the Newberry Library's vast music collection and assembles a star-studded roster of local and international artists to bring you world-class performances of music from the 13th to the 18th centuries…and occasionally beyond!

Affiliated with the Newberry Library Center for Renaissance Studies, the Consort also serves as an ensemble-in-residence at both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. In addition to an annual concert series in Chicago, the Consort has an active touring schedule. This season, traveling to several cities across the US, the Consort will offer two popular programs: Beautiful Dreamer: Music of Lincoln's America and Fair Oriana: an Early Film with Early Music, featuring an Elizabethan score to accompany Sarah Bernhardt's 1912 silent film Elizabeth I.

 

The Rose Ensemble

Founded in 1996 by Artistic Director Jordan Sramek, The Rose Ensemble is celebrating 15 years of reawakening the ancient with vocal music that stirs the emotions, challenges the mind and lifts the spirit. The Saint Paul, Minnesota group tours internationally with repertoire spanning 1,000 years and 25 languages, including new research in Middle Eastern, European and American vocal traditions. The Rose Ensemble was a recipient of the Chorus America Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence in 2005 and first-prize winner at the 2007 Tolosa International Choral Competition in Spain (part of the European Choral Grand Prix). In June, founder Jordan Sramek received the 2010 Louis Botto Award from Chorus America “for entrepreneurial zeal.” Having toured Europe by invitation numerous times in the past two years, The Rose Ensemble will represent the U.S. at the 2011 World Symposium on Choral Music in Argentina this August. The Ensemble has released 9 recordings.

Watch a 5-minute video about The Rose Ensemble; listen to excerpts from their program Celebremos el Niño.

Learn more about The Rose Ensemble at www.roseensemble.org.

 

Workshop Faculty

Musicologist J. Michael Allsen has been associated with MEMF since 2001.  He is currently Professor of Music at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he teaches Music History, World Music, and Humanities courses.  Allsen holds a Ph.D. in Musicology from UW-Madison, and has worked principally on the music of the 15th century.  He has contributed articles and reviews to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and several other reference works and journals. Allsen has written program notes for the Madison Symphony Orchestra since 1984, and also writes for several orchestras and festivals around the country.  As a performer, he has played primarily with the Madison Symphony Orchestra (bass trombone).  Allsen was cofounder of Madison’s Glenwood Moravian Trombone Choir and directed the group for nearly 25 years.  In 2006, he was awarded the Moravian Music Foundation’s Moramus Award.

John W. Barker (lecturer – historian) is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Wisconsin–Madison where, for almost forty years, he taught areas of Mediterranean Medieval history (Byzantium, Crusades, Venice), plus a multimedia course in relations between music and history.  He has published widely on both history and music. A passionate record-collector, he has been a staff reviewer with The American Record Guide for over fifty years, he has been an active radio broadcaster in Madison (for WHA/WERN; now for WORT), and he is classical-music critic for Madison’s Isthmus.

Lawrence Bennett came to Wabash College in July, 1995, as Chair of the Music Department. A music historian and tenor, Bennett co-founded The Western Wind, an a cappella vocal sextet that has made numerous recordings and sung many concerts in North America, Europe and Asia. Bennett has edited several collections of music and written often about the music of early America and the Baroque Era. In 2001-02 he lived in Vienna, Austria, where he researched several articles, laid the groundwork for a book on the Italian cantata, and sang in the choir of the Anglican Church. During the sabbatical year 2008-09 Bennett prepared an edition of the opera Hypermnestra by Ignaz Holzbauer; the edition will be published in the historical series Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (Monuments of Austrian Music). With Indiana University’s Early Music Institute he co-produced performances of this opera in 2009. Bennett has completed a book entitled The Italian Cantata in Vienna, 1658-1712: Entertainment in the Age of Absolutism.

 

Grammy award winner Cheryl Bensman-Rowe, (soprano; MEMF Artistic Director) is known to both early and new music audiences in this country and abroad. A former member of the Waverly Consort and Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, she has also performed with King’s Noyse, the Folger Consort, The Smithsonian Chamber Ensemble and Pomerium Musices.  Orchestral engagements include the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Israel Phiharmonic, and the St. Louis Symphony. She has toured extensively in North and South America, Europe and Japan. Appearances include concerts at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Aspen Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Ravinia, Casals, Mostly Mozart, Wiener Festwochen,  and Holland Festival. She has recorded for Nonesuch, ECM, and CBS Masterworks.

 

Kristina Boerger (conductor) received her formative musical training from pianist Annie Sherter and holds the doctorate in Choral Conducting and Literature from the University of Illinois.  She is currently in her third year as Carroll University's Director of Choral Activities. 

A New Yorker during most of the last decade, Dr. Boerger served nine seasons as Artistic Director of the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, three seasons as Music Director of AMUSE, and two seasons as Associate Conductor of the Collegiate Chorale. 

As a singer in a variety of styles, Boerger spent several years with the Western Wind sextet and the Vox Vocal Ensemble; she continues with the NYC-based Renaissance choir Pomerium and has recenlty enjoyed touring a Slavic Renaissance program as a guest of The Rose Ensemble. Other credits include projects with Early Music New York, the choir at Trinity Church Wall Street, and Bobby McFerrin. 

For more complete information, please visit www.kristinaboerger.com.

 

Chelcy Bowles (Program Director) is Professor of Music and Director of Continuing Education in Music at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she directs professional development programs for music teachers and performers, the community adult music education program, and the Madison Early Music Festival. She holds a Ph.D. in Music Education, has taught music and music education at the elementary, secondary, college and continuing adult levels, and has presented and published research in major forums and journals. She has taught and performed as a professional harpist, including historical harp and traditional Irish music.  

 

Jim Carrier is an award-winning writer, filmmaker and civil rights activist. Author of ten books, he has appeared on the PBS Newshour, and been published in the National Geographic and New York Times.

Carrier worked for the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, AL from 1999 to 2001, where he developed the Webby-winning site tolerance.org and directed the film Faces in the Water, shown at the Civil Rights Memorial Center.

His interest in banjo history stems from his discovery a decade ago, while researching A Travelers Guide to the Civil Rights Movement (Harcourt 2004), that the banjo was first a slave instrument. This led to an Appalachian Music Fellowship at Berea College, and to Dena Epstein, a pioneering music librarian who documented the banjo’s trail from Africa to America. Carrier began playing the banjo in 1972 when Duelin’ Banjos was a hit song.

 

Julia Chybowski (beginning harp) teaches pedal, folk, and historical harp and has served on the board of the Historical Harp Society. She is a former administrator for MEMF and served on the board in the Festival’s early years. Having earned a Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she now teaches music history at UW-Oshkosh and has been awarded a Mellon Foundation fellowship for her current research. The Grove Dictionary of American Music and American Music Research Journal have published her work, and she presents regularly at the national meetings of the Society for American Music and the American Musicological Society.

 

First trained as a modern violinist, David Douglass has earned a reputation for his performances on medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque bowedstring instruments. His playing has been praised by The New York Times for its "eloquence" and "expressive virtuosity". Through his groundbreaking work in the field of early violin performance, he was the first to develop a historical technique producing "a distinctively 'Renaissance' sound and style for the violin" (Fanfare). The King's Noyse, a Renaissance violin band, was the culmination of this work.

A founding member of The Newberry Consort in 1988, Mr. Douglass was appointed the ensemble's Director and Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library in 2007. In great demand as a guest artist and director, Mr. Douglass has traveled extensively, performing with the world's foremost early music ensembles.

Mr. Douglass is also a writer and lecturer on early violin history, technique and repertoire. He teaches at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University.

 

Andrew Fouts (violin; Chatham Baroque) joined Chatham Baroque in 2008. In performance he has been noted for his “mellifluous sound and sensitive style” (Washington Post) and as “an extraordinary violinist” who exhibits “phenomenal control” (Bloomington Herald-Times), while the Lincoln Journal-Star wrote that his “talent challenges the top soloist of today’s classical stage.” In 2008 Andrew won first prize at the American Bach Soloists’ International Baroque Violin Competition. During the 2010-11 season he served as concertmaster for the Washington Bach Consort and played on tour in Europe with Apollo’s Fire. He has also performed with Philharmonia Baroque, the National Cathedral Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Quince, and The Four Nations Ensemble and has served as concertmaster for the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra.

 

Marsha Genensky (soprano; Anonymous 4) is a founding member of the vocal quartet, Anonymous 4. Also a longtime singer and student of Anglo-American song, with an advanced degree in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, she handles Anonymous 4's research in American music and in historical pronunciation. She acted as music director for the groups recordings American Angels and Gloryland, and contributed the American tunes for their most recent holiday release, The Cherry Tree. A regular at Bay Area shape note sings, Marsha teaches performance classes on medieval music and on Anglo-American sacred and secular song for Stanford Continuing Studies. She and Bay Area friends Shira Kammen, Peter Maund, and Allison Zelles Lloyd occasionally perform together under the alias, S.P.A.M.

 

Patricia Halverson (viola da gamba; Chatham Baroque) holds a doctoral degree in Early Music Performance Practice from Stanford University. After completing her graduate work she studied in Holland with Anneke Pols at the Royal Conservatory in the Hague. A native of Duluth, Minnesota, Patricia is a founding member of Chatham Baroque and has been instrumental in raising the level of Baroque chamber music performance in the Pittsburgh area. Her playing has been praised by the Cleveland Plain Dealer as “invested with feistiness and solidity.” Patricia teaches viola da gamba in the Pittsburgh region and in recent years has made guest appearances with the New York City-based ensemble Empire Viols.

 

Susan Hellauer (soprano; Anonymous 4) is a native of the beautiful Bronx, New York, where she grew up rooting for the Yankees. While earning a B.A. in music as a trumpet player from Queens College (City University of New York), an increasing fascination with medieval and Renaissance vocal music led her to convert to singing, and to pursue advanced degrees in musicology from Queens College and Columbia University. Susan handles Anonymous 4's medieval music research, and is an adjunct Assistant Professor of Music at Queens College, CUNY, where she directs the Collegium Musicum. She has appeared as a vocal soloist with the Harp Consort, Parthenia, and the 2006 U.S. Fes Festival of World Sacred Music. Susan leads Chant Camp workshops throughout the U.S., plays Baroque guitar and clawhammer banjo, and is proud to be a volunteer EMT with the Nyack Community Ambulance Corps.

 

Jerry (Chiwei) Hui (assistant conductor) is the founder and director of many music ensembles throughout the years; recent affiliations in Madison include early music ensemble Eliza's Toyes, and New Music Everywhere (New MUSE) which designs and performs site-specific multidisciplinary programs of contemporary chamber music. As a singer, Jerry has recently been performing with the Madison Bach Musicians, Isthmus Vocal Ensemble, and the New Brunswick Early Music Festival. Jerry received his doctoral degree in music composition from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Besides being an active vocalist and conductor, he is an award-winning composer, and a conductor of both instrumental and choral music. www.jerryhui.com

 

In sixth grade Greg Ingles (sackbut; Piffaro) decided he wanted to play a brass instrument in band, but since his older sister already played the French horn, he chose to take up the trombone, going on to graduate from the Interlochen Arts Academy and then the Oberlin Conservatory. After holding the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker (Hof, Germany) Greg returned to the United States and completed Master’s and Doctoral degrees in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook. During his graduate work Greg became acquainted with the sackbut and historical performance, and he soon became a member of Piffaro. He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Chiaroscuro, Concerto Palatino, Quicksilver and Tafelmusik. Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and is Music Director of Spiritus Collective. Greg was the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University for over a decade. He teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer and taught at the SFEMS Recorder Workshop in 2010.

 

Joan Kimball (historical winds; Piffaro), artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, gave full time to early music performance in 1980 after a number of years as an educator. She teaches recorder and early winds to children and adults and is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private recorder students and recorder ensembles. Joan also organizes Piffaro’s educational programs, including the biennial recorder competition for high school students, and encourages ensembles of young recorder players wherever she can. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes and is a maker of double reeds for Renaissance shawms, dulcians and capped winds. Joan teaches bagpipe, recorder and double reed classes at summer music workshops and festivals. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical, Eudora and Vox Amadeus.

 

Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia into a music loving family, Chris Norman's (Baroque and wooden flute) influential work for the past 30 years as performer, composer, recording artist and teacher has won him worldwide recognition. He performs frequently as a soloist or in a duo with violinist David Greenberg. Previously, Chris was a member of the international folk trio Helicon, the all-star Celtic fusion group Skyedance, and the acclaimed early music group The Baltimore Consort and has performed across Europe with Concerto Caledonia. His flute playing has appeared on more than 40 recordings and can be heard featured on the Oscar winning soundtrack of Titanic and other Hollywood films including, Soldier, and the Stone of Destiny. Chris is founder and artistic director of the Boxwood Festivals and Workshops taking place in Canada, New Zealand, Europe, and Asia, which have inspired thousands of musicians of all ages.

James P. Page (musicology) first sang shape-note tunes in a chorus in the fall of 1977 while a student at Goddard College.  He has been singing with the Madison Sacred Harp Singers since 1983.  While he is a regular at Midwestern shape-note singings, Jim has traveled to traditional Sacred Harp singings in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Mississippi, and to Old Harp singings in Tennessee.  Jim has read much of the scholarly literature on four-shape music and early American psalmody.  Jim is a shape-note composer who uses texts that are religious or spiritual, but not sectarian.  His music has appeared in The New Millennium Harp, An Eclectic Harmony II, and his own compilation, The Wisconsin Harmony.  Jim has taught shape-note workshops at Madison's Folk Ball, the Gays Mills Folk Festival, the Monroe Arts Center, and the Driftless Folk School.

 

Christa Patton (harp; Piffaro) specializes in early wind instruments as well as historical harps and has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with Early Music New York, Ex Umbris and Piffaro. As a Baroque harpist Christa has appeared with many of North America’s premier early music groups, including Apollo’s Fire, The King’s Noyse, The Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, Parthenia and ARTEK, as well as in productions of Monteverdi operas with New York City Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, Tafelmusik, and Opera Atelier. She is co-director of the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College and has participated in the Yale Baroque Opera Project as coach and performer. In addition, she has led workshops at the Madison Early Music Festival, Pinewoods Early Music Camp, and the Medieval Summer Institute at the Longy School of Music. A former Fulbright scholar, Christa studied the Italian Baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy, with historical harp specialist Mara Galassi. She is currently pursuing a doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook with early keyboard specialist Arthur Haas.

 

Scott Pauley (theorbo, guitar; Chatham Baroque) holds a doctoral degree in Early Music Performance Practice from Stanford University. Before settling in Pittsburgh in 1996 to join Chatham Baroque, he lived in London for five years, where he studied with Nigel North at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. There he performed with various early music ensembles, including the Brandenburg Consort, The Sixteen, and Florilegium. He won prizes at the 1996 Early Music Festival Van Vlaanderen in Brugge and at the 1994 Van Wassenaer Competition in Amsterdam. In North America Scott has performed with Hesperus, Musica Angelica, Apollo’s Fire, The Folger Consort, Tempesta di Mare, The Four Nations Ensemble, and The Toronto Consort and has soloed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. He has performed in numerous Baroque opera productions as a continuo player, both in the USA and abroad. In 2010 he performed in Carnegie Hall and at the Library of Congress with the acclaimed British ensemble, the English Concert.

Teacher, performer, and dance historian Jane Peck (historical dance) has researched and performed historical dance across the U.S., Canada, and France. Jane was named Artist of the Year 2008  by Young Audiences of Minnesota for her performances and teaching . She performed with the renowned St. Paul Chamber Orchestra in selections from Handel’s Water Music Suites. Former professor at the Graduate School of Music of St. Thomas University, St. Paul, Jane has taught  popular classes at the national Suzuki Society conferences,  Bloomington  Early Music Institute, and  the Madison Early Music Festival (UW)  as well as public school residencies since 1988 through COMPAS/Young Audiences and the Mn. State Arts Board. She has a Masters in Education and  is currently  on the dance faculty at UMN  Winona. Jane has been choreographing dance history performances since 1987, for theaters, museums, colleges,  as well as her own ensemble, Dance Revels Moving History. Jane has done landmark research on early North American regional dance, in particular that of the French-Indian (Metis) communities. www.janepeck.com

Paul Rowe (baritone; MEMF Artistic Director) is Professor of Voice at the University of Wisconsin Madison.  He has performed with many of the leading American musical organizations including the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji Ozawa at Symphony Hall in Boston and Carnegie Hall in New York, American Ballet Theater at the Metropolitan Opera and Kennedy Center, and Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. He has appeared as well with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society, Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Alabama and Arkansas symphony orchestras, the Folger Consort, and the Ensemble for Early Music, among many other groups. As a member of the Waverly Consort, Mr. Rowe toured the United States, the Far East and South America and participated in the Consort's regular series at Alice Tully Hall and the Cloisters in New York. In addition, he performed for two years as a member of the New York Vocal Arts Ensemble, touring the U. S. and Yugoslavia and recording two discs: the Quartets of Haydn and Trios of Mozart, and a disc entitled Listen to the Mockingbird, featuring songs of Stephen Foster and other American music.

 

William Keyse Rudolph (lecturer—art history) is Curator of American Art at the Milwaukee Art Museum.  He has a distinguished career, coming to Milwaukee from the Worcester Art Museum where he was Curator of American Art since 2009. Prior to that, he was the Associate Curator of American Art at the Dallas Museum of Art, and Associate/Research Coordinator in European Decorative Arts after 1700 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Rudolph received his M.A. in Art History from the University of Virginia with an emphasis in 18th-Century Art, and Modern Art and received his Ph.D. in Art History from Bryn Mawr College in the fields of Colonial and Federal American Art and Victorian Painting.

 

Jordan Sramek (tenor; The Rose Ensemble) is Founder/Artistic Director of The Rose Ensemble (Saint Paul, Minnesota) and enjoys an active career as a performing musician, scholar, teacher and arts entrepreneur. Jordan studied early vocal performance and harpsichord at the College of St. Scholastica and has spent time learning from such early-music experts as Benjamin Bagby, Eric Mentzel, Dom. Daniel Saulnier, Margriet Tindemans and Crawford Young. He is highly respected for his meticulous research of music rarely heard in the concert hall and has championed vocal repertoire from Renaissance Poland, Bohemia and Sweden, as well as Baroque Mexico and 19th-century Hawaii. Now in frequent demand as performer and clinician, Jordan has led musical workshops and master-classes at universities and festivals across the U.S., and with The Rose Ensemble he has developed several award-winning educational programs for young people. Jordan’s honors include a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Performing Musicians; a Jerome Foundation Travel/Study Grant; and the 2010 Chorus America Louis Botto Award for Innovative Action and Entrepreneurial Zeal.

 

John Chappell Stowe (organ, harpsichord) is Professor of Organ and Harpsichord at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music.  Before moving to Wisconsin, he was Professor of Organ and Church Music at Houghton College, Houghton, NY and also served as Visiting Associate Professor of Organ at the University of Iowa for the 1993-94 academic year. He graduated from Southern Methodist University and Eastman School of Music, studying organ with Robert Anderson and Russell Saunders. Dr. Stowe holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree and Performer's Certificate from the Eastman School and was the first-place winner in 1978 of the National Open Organ Playing Competition of the American Guild of Organists.   Since joining the faculty at UW-Madison, Dr. Stowe has held the posts of Associate Director of the School of Music (1990-93) and Director of Graduate Studies (1996-99, 2005-06). From 1998 to 2004, he served the American Guild of Organists as National Vice President. In addition to organ and harpsichord, his instructional activities currently include improvisation, continuo playing, organ design and literature, and coaching the UW-Madison Early Music Ensemble.

 

Anton TenWolde (beginning Baroque 'cello) was born in the Netherlands where he studied with Sylvain van Amerongen, cellist with the The Hague Philharmonic Orchestra (Residentie Orkest). While earning his degree in Applied Physics at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, Anton performed with Ton Koopman, and toured with the Netherlands Student Chamber Orchestra and the Netherlands Student Baroque Orchestra. In 1973 he moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where he worked for 28 years as a Research Physicist and Project Leader at the Forest Products Laboratory. For many years he played principal cello with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. He is a founding member of the Wisconsin Baroque Ensemble, and is a member of Con Vivo! a Madison chamber music group, and regularly performs with the Fort Wayne Bach Collegium.

 

Bob Wiemken (historical winds; Piffaro) began his musical life as a French hornist but began playing early reeds while a graduate student in Classics at the University of Pennsylvania. His love of early double-reed instruments has only increased as he has studied and explored shawms, dulcians, bassoons, krumhorns and more.  As Artistic Co-Director of Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, he has performed worldwide, recorded extensively, built over 100 programs of Renaissance and early Baroque music and commissioned new works for early winds and chorus. He has performed with numerous of the world’s leading early music ensembles, in festivals in North and South America and throughout Europe, and in performance spaces contemporary with the music. He teaches and lectures in college and university settings and at festivals and workshops throughout the country, bringing the world of early reeds to modern players and amateurs alike. In addition to these responsibilities, he continues to attempt to plumb the depths of early reed technique in an effort to understand the mysteries of these glorious instruments.

 

Michelle Bray Wilson (lecturer—historian) is an active member of the French-Canadian / Acadian Genealogists of Wisconsin and President of CAGGNI, the Computer-Assisted Genealogy Group of Northern Illinois.  Michelle has lectured on topics including French-Canadian history and genealogical research, Getting Started in Genealogy, and Genes for the Genealogist at CAGGNI at societies around the Chicago area.  Michelle is an engineering director at a biotechnology firm.  She resides in Long Grove, Illinois.

 

Tom Zajac (recorder, historical winds; Piffaro; lecturer – musicology) is a multi-instrumentalist praised for his versatility and stylish playing of music from the medieval and Renaissance periods. As a member of Piffaro and Ex Umbris, he has toured extensively, appearing in concert series and festivals on five continents. As a guest artist Tom appears frequently with the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading U.S. ensembles. His playing has been heard in the East Wing of the White House, on A Prairie Home Companion, and on a 2001 space shuttle mission. Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency,with Ensemble Aziman and playing percussion for BEMF opera productions. Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making and has directed research and performance projects on the music of Colonial Latin America, pre-expulsion Spain, and Eastern Europe. Tom teaches at several other workshops throughout the U.S. and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.