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Elizabeth Blumenstock, whose performances have been called “magical,” “rapturous,” and “riveting,” is one of the country’s leading Baroque violinists. Appearing frequently as soloist and concertmaster for Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach soloists, and Los Angeles-based Musica Angelica, she has also pursued her love of chamber music as a founding member of several of California’s finest period instrument ensembles, including Musica Pacifica, the Artaria Quartet, the Arcadian Academy, and American Baroque, which focuses on both Baroque repertoire and the growing body of new compositions for period instruments.
Ms. Blumenstock has recorded for harmonia mundi USA, Virgin Classics, Dorian, Koch International, Conifer Records and New Albion, among others. She is currently on the faculty of the University of Southern California and has taught at the International Baroque Institute at Longy and the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College. She is organist/choir director at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Richmond, and is an avid pinball and Scrabble player.
Soprano Christine Brandes enjoys an active career performing on the most distinguished series and festivals. In the past season, Ms. Brandes's concert appearances included performances of Mozart's Requiem with the Cleveland Orchestra and Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra; Bach's Magnificat and arias from Handel's Giulio Cesare with the Cleveland Orchestra under the direction of John Nelson; Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass with the Handel & Haydn Society; and performances with the Detroit, Minnesota, and National Symphonies. She also made her debut with L'Ensemble Orchestral de Paris in Handel's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso ed Il Moderato with Maestro Nelson, as well as recording the work for EMI.
On the operatic stage, Ms. Brandes bowed as Morgana in Handel's Alcina with the Opéra de Nancy; Drusilla in Opera/Columbus's L'Incoronazione di Poppea; and as Alceste in Handel's Arianna at the Göttingen Handel Festival. Previous engagements include, Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with the opera companies of Montréal and Québec and the roles of Clarine and Thalie at the Berkeley Festival in the Mark Morris production of Rameau's Platée.
Debut engagements for this season include appearances as Susanna in Le Nozze di Figaro with the Opera of Philadelphia and Opera Pacific; New York City Opera reprising her roles in Platée; the New York premier of Eric Moe's Sonnets to Orpheus on the Guggenheim Works and Process series; Orff's Carmina Burana with the Houston Symphony; Barber's Knoxville: Summer of 1915 and Mozart's Exultate, jubilate with the Canton Symphony; Haydn's Creation with the Madison Symphony, and Ravel's L'Enfant et les Sortilèges with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Sir Simon Rattle conducting. Ms. Brandes also makes her Glimmerglass Opera debut this summer as Galatea in Handel's Acis and Galatea.
Ms. Brandes has recorded for BMG/Conifer, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, harmonia mundi usa, and Koch International.
The American-born lutenist Jacob Heringman studied with Jakob Lindberg at the Royal College of Music in London, and later with Pat O'Brien in New York.
Based in England since 1987, he has established himself as one of the world's most respected and most innovative solo lute players, and as a much sought-after ensemble player performing regularly throughout Europe and North and South America, and making many CD and radio recordings of medieval and renaissance music with leading English ensembles, including The Rose Consort of Viols, Fretwork, Musicians of the Globe, The King's Singers, The New London Consort, Virelai and the Dufay Collective.
As a continuo player, Jacob Heringman has performed and recorded with The King's Consort, The English Baroque Soloists, The Parley of Instruments and The Taverner Consort, among others.
As a soloist, Jacob released his first CD, Holburns Passion: music for lute, cittern and bandora by Anthony Holborne, on the ASV label in 1998. This disc was chosen by Gramophone Magazine as one of the best CDs of 1999. Black Cow: lute music by Valentin Bakfark and Matthaeus Waissel was Jacob's first disc for Robert Fripp's DGM label. His second, the first lute CD ever to be devoted to the music of the great Josquin Des Prez, was released in the summer of 2000, and has received numerous superlative reviews, noteably in Gramophone and BBC Music Magazine. It had already attracted attention and a cover story in Early Music Today even before its release. Jacob's fourth solo CD is on the new AVIE label; entitled Jane Pickeringe's Lute Book, it was released in June of 2002, and has also been highly acclaimed in the music press. A fifth, entitled The Art of the Lute Player, was released in October 2002. Jacob has given solo recitals throughout Europe and in North America. In recent years, he made numerous USA and Canada tours performing the Josquin and Pickeringe programmes.
As an accompanist, Jacob Heringman has performed and recorded lute songs with Michael Chance and Barbara Bonney, among others. He is also part of a duo with the mezzo-soprano Catherine King, with whom he has toured extensively and recorded four lute song discs for ASV and Linn, all of which have been greeted with high praise from reviewers. One of these, entitled Airs de Cour, for which the duo was joined by the tenor Charles Daniels, was voted one of the top CDs of 1999 by both Gramophone and the BBC Music Magazine.
In 1990, Jacob founded the group Virelai with viol player Susanna Pell, singer Catherine King, and flute-player William Lyons. Virelai specialises in music of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, with occasional forays into modern music. Virelai has made three CDs for Virgin, and a BBC Music Magazine cover CD. A CD of specially commissioned modern settings of renaissance love poetry, entitled Sad Steps, was released by Riverrun Records late in 2002.
you can read additional information on Jacob Heringman at http://www.heringman.com, which includes information on his recordings.
Founded in 1988 by director David Douglass, The King's Noyse is North America's only Renaissance violin band. Modeled on the most popular of Renaissance ensembles, it has concertized throughout the United States, at London's Wigmore Hall, at the Regensburg and Utrecht festivals, the Boston Early Music Festival and the Berkeley Festival, and in its first European tour in the fall of 1997. Repertoire includes music of the 16th and 17th centuries from England, Germany, Italy, and France.
The King's Noyse records exclusively for harmonia mundi usa; the ensemble's first two recordings, The King's Delight and Canzonetta, both with lutenist Paul O'Dette, were released to critical acclaim in 1994; they were followed in 1996 by Stravaganze with guest artist Andrew Lawrence-King, Mascharada with harpsichordist Barbara Weiss, and Rosenmüller with Paul O'Dette and viola da gambist Mary Springfels. The ensemble's recordings also include a collaboration with the Theatre of Voices on the music of Thomas Tallis. Its 1997 releases include The Queen's Delight, a sequel to its popular first recording of English ballads, and Le Jardin de Mélodies, 16th-century French dances and songs. The King's Noyse and Kate van Orden (U.C.-Berkeley) won the 1997 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for a project to research and perform a program of minstrel song of 16th-century Paris.
The violin family, like most other Renaissance instruments, was made and played most often as a consort. It was customary for a wealthy patron to commission a set of instruments from one craftsman, so that they would match in design, style, and decoration. The practice was consistent with the matched-consort tone which was at the heart of Renaissance music. The set of instruments played by the King's Noyse is this sort of matched consort. They were made by Daniel Larson of Duluth, Minnesota, and are modeled after extant instruments made by Andrea Amati of Cremona, Italy, in the mid-16th century. The bows used by the King's Noyse are in the style of those used by Renaissance dance musicians; they were made by Larson and by Harry Grabenstein of Williston, Vermont.
Raphael Mizraki started working the age of fourteen as a professional jazz drummer and pianist, despite being at the time mostly a cellist. During three years at York University his interests became increasingly diverse, including school workshops, ballet accompanying, jazz big bands, rock bands, Japanese drumming, composing/arranging, touring theatre, and percussion in contemporary music.
For the last ten years his main instrument has been the electric bass, due to an involvement in jazz, blues and soul music, though he is also frequently employed on double bass and violone with some of London's leading early music ensembles such as His Majesty's Sackbutts and Cornets and The Gabrieli Consort. As well as regularly taking part in cross-cultural projects with African and Arabic musicians, he tours extensively with Maddy Prior and the Carnival Band, and was for several years a member of the Dufay Collective, in which he played oud, rebec, viol and medieval percussion. Mr. Mizraki has performed with the Newberry Consort on several occasions, including for tour concerts in Florence, Italy, and Regensberg, Germany in 1995.
John Mark Rozendaal is the artistic director of the critically acclaimed Chicago Baroque Ensemble (which records for Cedille) and plays the baroque cello and the viola da gamba with the ensemble. Rozendaal served as principal cellist of the City Musick and Basically Bach, and has performed both solo and continuo roles with many period instrument ensembles, including The Newberry Consort, Orpheus Band, the Harwood Ensemble, Ensemble Musical Offering, the Kansas City Early Music Consort, Apollo's Fire, the Second City Musick, and the Boston Early Music Festival. Mr. Rozendaal is a member of St. Luke's (Evanston) Choir of Men and Boys. He holds a doctor of music degree from Northwestern University.
Tenor James Ruff is comfortable in a wide variety of music on both the concert and operatic stage. He has sung as soloist with the Handel & Haydn Society in such works as Bach's Christmas Oratorio, St. Matthew Passion, and Charpentier's Messe de Minuit. James has also excelled in performancesof twentieth-century choral works such as Britten's St. Nicolas and Orff's Carmina Burana.
Recent concert engagements include Couperin's Lecons de Tenebres at Boston College, Handel's Chandos Anthems with Albany Pro Musica, an all-Byrd program with The King's Noyse, Messiah with the Arcadia Players, the J. S. Bach and C. P. E. Bach Magnificats with the Hampshire Chorale, the Steffani Stabat Mater with NYS Baroque, and Carmina Burana at Amherst College.
His operatic roles include Ferrando in Cosi fan tutte, Fenton in The Merry Wives of Windsor and Dov in the East Coast premiere of Tippett's The Knot Garden (at Boston University), Tamino in The Magic Flute and Pelleas. Mr. Ruff has received particular praise for his singing of Paris in La Belle Helene, as well as the high-lying Rossini tenor roles in such operas as Le Comte Ory, L'Italiana in Algeri, and Il Turco in Italia, which he has sung (and covered) at Glimmerglass Opera, Canadian Opera Company, The Boston Academy of Music, Lowell House Opera at Harvard, and as guest artist at Boston University.
Mr. Ruff's recent operatic performances include his portrayal of the singing/dancing Western Union Boy in Britten's Paul Bunyan at New York City Opera, televised nationally on PBS: Live from Lincoln Center, and the role of Mengone in Haydn's Lo Speziale with the Orchestra of St. Luke's.
Following vocal study at the University of Southern California and Boston University, James participated in the Young Artist Programs of Glimmerglass Opera and the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, and studied art song repertoire at Tanglewood and the Steans Institute of the Ravinia Festival (with Thomas Hampson and Peter Schreier). He also attended the Britten-Pears School in Aldeburgh, England, where he studied bel canto operatic repertoire with Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge.
Equally at home in front of a harpsichord, organ, piano, or fortepiano, David Schrader is “truly an extraordinary musician…(who) brings not only the unfailing right technical approach to each of these different instruments, but always an imaginative, fascinating musicality to all of them. (Norman Pelligrini, WFMT, Chicago). Mr. Schrader has performed has performed at many music festivals, most notably those of Aspen and the Michigan Mozartfest where he performed as soloist with Roger Norrington, and the Connecticut Early Music Festival. He has performed as soloist and conductor at the Woodstock Mozart Festival, and will appear again in 2000 at the Peninsula Music Festival. Mr. Schrader’s recitals have been heard in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan and Europe. He returned to Europe in the Spring of 2000 with the Canadian baroque orchestra, Tafelmusik, under the direction of Jean Lamon.
A resident of Chicago, Mr. Schrader leads an active musical life. He is harpsichordist for The Chicago Baroque Ensemble, Music of the Baroque, and has also appeared with the Chicago Chamber Musicians, The Contemporary Chamber Players, The Newberry Consort, and The City Musick.
Doron David Sherwin was born in Los Angeles in 1962. The son of two nightclub singers, he became interested in early music at an early age, studying various early wind instruments before finally stumbling upon the cornetto. His first studies with Michael Collver brought him to Europe, where he settled in 1983.
Since that time he has performed throughout the world as a soloist and member or collaborator with ensembles such as Hespérion XX, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, the Taverner Players, Tragicomedia, Capriccio Stravagante, Cantus Cölln, and the Clemencic Consort.
He acquired a diploma in cornetto (the first in at least 350 years) from Bruce Dickey at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and has performed regularly with him since 1986 in the ensemble Concerto Palatino, universally acclaimed as the world's best early brass ensemble and among the leading interpreters of early Baroque music.
Mr. Sherwin is also active as a singer and arranger in the medieval ensemble La Reverdie. This Italian ensemble performs extensively throughout Europe; their recordings have won six Diapasons d'Or. Mr. Sherwin has performed for radio and television in all of Europe, the United States, Canada, Israel, and Japan and has a discography of over sixty recordings for companies such as EMI-Reflexe, Deutsche harmonia mundi, harmonia mundi France, Erato, Virgin, Arcana, Accent, and Sony Classical.
A specialist in the improvisational styles of the Renaissance, he has given courses and seminars at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, Italy, as well as in Vicenza, Göteborg, Trondheim, Fribourg, and Basel. Since 1994 he has taught cornetto and historical improvisation at the Staatliche Institut für Musik Trossingen in Germany. He has lived in Modena, Italy, since 1989 and is one of the few musicians never to have performed in duet with Luciano Pavarotti.
Since her childhood, Betty Xiang was deeply motivated and trained by her late father, Mr.Zuying Xiang, a renowned Erhu soloist and master in China and an Erhu professor at Shanghai Conservatory of Music. At age 17, Betty made her sol o debut with the premiere orchestra of China,the National Shanghai Orchestra.From 1987 to 1994, she appeared as soloist with orches- tras in France, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore,and Taiwan. Following a solo appearances with the Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra in 1994 through 1996,she performed several solo concerts to great acclaims.Betty has won numerous awards in nationwide Chinese music competitions.She made a number of Erhu solo and concerto recordings.
Wei Yang started learning Chinese musical instruments at the age of six. At the age of 13,he started concen- trating all his efforts into mastering Pipa.He was privately tutored by a few great Pipa masters in China, including the renowned Professor Dehai Liu, Principal of the Chinese Conservatory of Music. At eighteen, he performed as a Pipa soloist with the National Shanghai Orchestra,one of the premier orchestras in China.Over the years he soloed with the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra,Shanghai Broadcasting Symphony orchestra,the Singapore Chinese Orchestra, the National Taipei Orchestra, and the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra. Additionally, he has given several concerts in Belgium,France, Malaysia,and Japan over the years.
Mr.Yang has also won numerous awards in music competitions.His solo and concerto recordings have been released through well-known recording companies in China, Hong Kong,and Singapore.