Artists

Julie Andrijeski

Recently lauded for her “invigorating verve and imagination” by the Washington Post, Julie Andrijeski is among the leading baroque violinists in the U.S. She is a full-time member of the early-music trio, Chatham Baroque, an award-winning ensemble that performs throughout the Americas. In addition, Ms. Andrijeski regularly appears with several other baroque groups including, among others, Cleveland's Apollo's Fire, the Washington Bach Consort, Cecilia's Circle, Spiritus Collective, and the King's Noyse. Ms. Andrijeski's unique performance style is greatly influenced by her knowledge and skilled performance of baroque dance, and she often teaches both violin and dance at workshops. Ms. Andrijeski has been on the faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute at the Oberlin Conservatory for the past ten years and this year also taught at the Madison Early Music Workshop and a Suzuki Institute in Greenville, South Carolina www.ospreyloan.com. Ms. Andrijeski received her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Early Music from Case Western Reserve University in May 2006. Previous degrees include a B.M. in Violin Performance from the University of Denver (1985) and an M.M. in Violin Performance from Northwestern University (1986). She has recorded for Dorian Recordings and Centaur, among others, and records with Chatham Baroque on the Sono Luminus label.

Christina Babich

After earning her Master's Degree in Music Performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music under Richard Aaron in 2004, cellist Christina Babich turned her attention to early music. From 2004 to 2006 she was a student in Case Western Reserve University's doctoral program where she focused on the baroque cello, the viola da gamba, and the medieval vielle. While running a private cello studio in her native Akron, she currently also teaches baroque cello at Case. She received instruction in historical performance practice from Phoebe Carrai at the International Baroque Institute at Longy (2005), Christina Mahler at the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute (2004), and Sarah Cunningham, John Mark Rozendaal and Rainer Zipperling at the Amherst Early Music Festival (2003 and 2004). Other coaches in baroque music have included cellists Catharina Meints and René Schiffer, and violinists Riccardo Minasi and Cynthia Roberts. In recent years Christina performed with the period ensembles Apollo's Fire (The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra) and New Trinity Baroque (Atlanta), collaborating with Marion Verbruggen and John Holloway, among others.

Christina started her cello studies at age eight under the Suzuki Method. She was a student of Deborah Newcomb at the Northern Ohio Cello Academy when she won the 1996 Akron Youth Symphony Concerto Competition. She continued her studies with Michael Haber at the University of Akron, while simultaneously obtaining a Bachelor's Degree in Spanish. In 2001 she was a winner in the University of Akron Concerto Competition, and the Tuesday Musical Club Competition. That same year Christina was awarded first prize at the Cleveland Cello Society. Christina has also taken master classes with Steven Isserlis and with the Miami String Quartet, and has been a member of the Cleveland Chamber Symphony, CityMusic, and the Canton Symphony Orchestra.

Vicki Boeckman

Vicki Boeckman is one of the leading recorder artists of her generation. She has performed throughout Scandinavia, the United States, England, Scotland and Germany, and has appeared on countless productions for Danish radio and television. As a soloist, she has performed with chamber orchestras in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, and the United States. She can be heard on the Kontra Punkt, Classico, Horizon, Musical Heritage America, Paula, Kadanza, and Primavera labels. Recordings in recent years include Telemann trio sonatas with distinguished colleagues, John Holloway and Jaap ter Linden and the highly acclaimed Journey with recorder trio Wood'N'Flutes.

Vicki resided in Denmark from 1981-2004. While there she taught recorder, chamber music, performance practices and pedagogy at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen, and recorder to children of all ages at the Ishøj Municipal School of Music. She co-founded a regional recorder orchestra for children and young adults and has coached and taught at workshops sponsored by early music and recorder societies in Arizona, California, Colorado, Indiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Oregon and Washington. She has been on the faculty of the Music Center of the Northwest in Seattle since February 2005. Ms. Boeckman was co-founder of two popular Danish-based ensembles: Opus 4, which concentrates on performing trio sonatas from the 17th and 18th centuries, and Wood'N'Flutes, a recorder trio playing works spanning the Middle Ages to the 21st century. Wood'N'Flutes has had two American tours, one in January 2003 and another in March of 2005. she has been the recipient of many grants and awards and was chosen to be the recorder Artist-in-Residence at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon in May 2005.

Steve Creswell

Stephen Creswell, violin and viola, inclines towards the more imaginative slopes of the classical spectrum: early/historical performance music, and contemporary music. His youthful studies took him to Indiana University and the Curtis Institute, in Philadelphia. Mr. Creswell has had the privilege of working with many great musicians, including Anner Bylsma, Mstislav Rostropovich, Gustav Leohnhardt, Abraham Skernick, and the Guarneri and Juilliard Quartets. He currently performs with the Northwest Sinfonietta, Seattle New Music Ensemble, and the baroque orchestras of Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver, B.C. Mr. Creswell teaches as Adjunct Professor of Violin at Seattle University, is a member of the Annas Bay Musicians group, and frequently acts as concertmaster for the Seattle Choral Company and Seattle Pro Musica. In the past summers, he has performed chamber music at Cascade Early Music Festival in Leavenworth with flutist Jeffrey Cohan, historical guitarist Oleg Timofeyev, gamba player Susie Napper, and lutenist/leader Stephen Stubbs. This season in Seattle, Mr. Creswell will present several contemporary music recitals, in addition to resuming his Walk to Bach series after a two children hiatus.

Tekla Cunningham

Tekla Cunningham, violin, is a native of Seattle, WA. She recently returned to the Northwest after seven years in northern California. She performs across the USA and in Europe with renowned early music groups including the American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica in Los Angeles, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the San Francisco Bach Choir, Seattle Baroque Orchestra and also plays at the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival and the Carmel Bach Festival. This year she founded Whidbey Island Music Festival, a summer chamber music festival presenting a variety of baroque and early classical concerts. Ms. Cunningham has appeared as a guest artist with many noted chamber music groups, including the Artaria Quartet, the Del Sol Quartet and Musica Pacifica. Tekla's string quartet, the Novello Quartet, delights audiences in the Bay Area and beyond with period-instrument performances of music by Joseph Haydn and his contemporaries. The Novello Quartet's debut CD of Haydn's op. 50 string quartets will be released shortly. She is also a member of La Monica, an ensemble dedicated to music of the 17th century whose most recent concert at the Bloomington Early Music Festival was described as “sizzling”. Ms. Cunningham studied history, German literature, and music at Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD. She continued her musical studies at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna, Austria, and graduated with a master's degree from the Conservatory of Music in San Francisco, where she studied with Ian Swenson.

Curtis Daily

Curtis Daily is the busiest early music double bassist in the Pacific Northwest. In addition to frequent appearances with SBO, he is the principal bassist with Portland Baroque Orchestra and Trinity Consort. This season he will also be performing with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. He has also played in Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Walla Walla Baroque Orchestra, the Brandenburg Consort, and the Grand River Baroque Festival. Mr. Daily is the principal bassist of the Portland Chamber Orchestra and the Ernest Bloch Music Festival Orchestra and has been a long-time member of the Oregon Bach Festival Orchestra. He is heard on recordings for Virgin, Hannsler Classics, Centaur, Wild Boar, Sub Pop Records, and NPR.

Jillon Stoppels Dupree

Hailed as “an undisputed star of the Northwest Early Music firmament” (Seattle Times), harpsichordist Jillon Stoppels Dupree has captivated audiences in such cities as London, Amsterdam, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. Her playing, described by the Chicago Tribune as “lively and colorful,” can be heard on the Meridian, Wild Boar, Decca and Delos record labels; she has also appeared live on BBC England, Polish National Television, CBS Television and National Public Radio. Ms. Dupree has been a featured artist at the York Early Music Festival (England), the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the National Music Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and numerous universities and colleges. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with violinists Stanley Ritchie, Carla Moore and Jaap Schroeder; singers Julianne Baird, Ellen Hargis and Ann Monoyios; and recorder virtuosi Marion Verbruggen, Clea Galhano, and Vicki Boeckman. Ms. Dupree's world premiere recording of Philip Glass' Concerto for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra (with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra) will be released in fall of 2006, on the Orange Mountain Music label. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalists grant,

Ms. Dupree has taught at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the University of Washington, the University of Michigan, the Northwest Center for Early Music Studies, and the Cornish College of the Arts. She is the founder and co-artistic director of Seattle's Gallery Concerts early music series.

Maxine Eilander

Maxine Eilander was born in Deventer, Holland, and grew up in South Africa. There she earned her Bachelor of Music on the classical harp at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg in 1992. Her special interest in early music led her to further study at the Hochschule für Kunste in Bremen, Germany. She completed her post graduate diploma in early harps and continuo practise there in 1997. Since then she has appeared as a continuo player and soloist with many ensembles including Teatro Lirico, Tragicomedia, Les Talens Lyriques, Tafelmusik, The Toronto Consort, Les Voix Humaines, The Sixteen, and Seattle Baroque. She has appeared around the world in productions of Monteverdi's three operas (L'Orfeo, L'Incoronazione di Poppea and Il Ritorno d'Ulisse): Vancouver, Toronto, New York, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Hamburg, etc.

Maxine plays on a range of specialized early harps: the Italian arpa doppia, the Spanish cross-strung harp, the German “Davidsharfe,” the Welsh triple harp for which Handel wrote his harp concerto, and the classical single action pedal harp.

There is an increasing list of recordings featuring her as a soloist—Handel's harp concerto with Tafelmusik (A Baroque Feast Analekta, 2002), Ay que si Spanish 17th century music with Les Voix Humaines (ATMA, 2002), Sonata al Pizzico a recording of Italian music for harp and baroque guitar with duo partner Stephen Stubbs (ATMA 2004), and Teatro Lirico with Stephen Stubbs (ECM, 2006). Other recordings include: Scarlatti's oratorio Hagar and Ishmael with Seattle Baroque (Centaur, 2003), Monteverdi Vespro della Beata Vergine, Tragicomedia (ATMA, 2002) and 2005 Grammy nominated Conradi's Ariadne for the Boston Early Music Festival (CPO, 2005). Maxine teaches harp at the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera.

Mahan Esfahani

Iranian-born keyboardist Mahan Esfahani is active as a recitalist and continuo player across the United States in repertoire ranging from the late Medieval through the early Classical periods. Among the ensembles with whom he has appeared are the highly-acclaimed Renaissance ensemble Ciaramella, the King's Noyse, the Pacific Northwest's Cappella Romana, “Idiom Idiots” with jazz pianist and composer Mark Applebaum, the Whole Noyse, New York's Spiritus Collective, and Cincinnati's Catacoustic Consort. He has appeared or will appear this season as a performer at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, Oberlin College, Berkeley's MusicSources, Case Western University's Chapel Court & Countryside Series, New York Early Music Days, Milwaukee Early Music NOW, Seattle Early Music Guild, USC's Huntington Library, the Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque Society, the San Francisco Early Music Society series, Tage Alte Musik Regensburg (2007), the San Diego Harpsichord Society, Columbus Early Music, and the Washington D.C. Early Music Festival. Among the awards he has received are the 2005 Louis Sudler Prize in the Creative Arts, an Early Music America Scholarship, and the 2006 Legacy Award from the D.C.-based Creativity Foundation.

He can be heard as a solo organist on “Sacred and Secular Music of Renaissance Germany” with the Ciaramella ensemble on the Naxos label. This year he will be starting work on a major recording project encompassing the complete solo works for harpsichord, virginals, and organ by English composer John Bull (c. 1562-1628), “the Liszt of his Age,” with mentor and collaborator Peter Watchorn, for the Musica Omnia label.

Mahan studied Musicology and Theory at Stanford University (BA with Honors and Distinction, 2005), where he studied principally with Adam Gilbert and George Houle. He has presented papers on topics ranging from 15th-century keyboard intabulations to Arabic music theory of the Middle Ages, and is active as a clinician for workshops and masterclasses in early keyboard literature and technique. He currently studies early keyboards with Peter Sykes at the Longy School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he is a candidate for the Artist Diploma. He also studies privately with harpsichordist Peter Watchorn.

Olga Gussow-Hauptman

Olga Gussow-Hauptman has been in the Seattle area since the summer of 1999. Prior to that she lived in New York City and was performing with such groups as NYS Baroque, Concert Royal, ARTEK, Orchestra of the Old Fairfield Academy, Philadelphia Classical Orchestra, Brandywine Baroque (DE), and American Bach Soloists. She performed Monteverdi with The Ensemble for Early Music's Grande Bande in Hong Kong, on ARTEK's critically acclaimed recording of Orfeo, with the Miami Grand Opera's production of Poppea, and in Seattle performances of Combattimento di Tancredi et Clorinda and Ballo delle Ingrate at Town Hall, Seattle. Since moving here Ms. Gussow has performed with Seattle Baroque, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver, BC). She also took part in the all-day Bach and Schubert festivals organized by husband Fred Hauptman.

Jamia Hansen-Murray

Jamia Hansen-Murray, a member of Seattle Early Dance since 2001, was trained in classical ballet. She has performed in a wide variety of dance genres, including ballet, musical theater, Scottish Highland and other folk styles, and has danced with Seattle Opera and as a principal with Tacoma Opera. Jamia was a founding member of the Radost Folk Ensemble and served as a dance master and president of the board. She has studied 16th- and 18th-century dance with Anna Mansbridge, Mary Collins (UK), Catherine Turocy (NY Baroque Dance Company), and Cecilia Gracio Moura (Paris). Jamia has performed in Baroque operas with Early Music Guild in Seattle and with Æstas Musica in Croatia. She is also a professional costume designer. Jamia holds a degree from the University of Washington and recently retired from a career as an environmental planner for the U.S. Forest Service.

Carrie Krause

Carrie Krause, violin, performs with Apollo's Fire, Seattle baroque, and as concertmaster of New Trinity Baroque in Atlanta. She is a frequent recitalist in her hometown of Bozeman, MT, where she will lead a baroque workshop this winter. She has also performed with Chatham Baroque, Early Music New York, the Case Collegium, and as concertmaster and soloist with the Case/CIM Baroque Orchestra. On modern violin, Carrie performs as concertmaster of the Bozeman Symphony and as a founding member of the Meritage String Quartet. She maintains a full teaching studio and overseas student chamber music for her area. Carrie received her master's degree from the Cleveland Institute of Music and her bachelor's from Carnegie Mellon where she studied with Andres Cardenes.

Courtney Kuroda

Courtney Kuroda graduated from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University where she studied Baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie. After receiving a B.M. in performance at UC Irvine, her interest in early music developed while pursuing her Master's degree in musicology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She has performed with a variety of period chamber ensembles and orchestras throughout the U.S., including LA Baroque, Ars Antigua in Chicago, and Opera Lafayette in Washington D.C. She recently performed at the Boston Early Music Festival with Les Brunettes and the Bloomington Early Music Festival with the Atwater Consort and Bath Street Studio. She also performed under the direction of Barthold Kuijken with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and recently recorded Antonio Sacchini's Oedipe à Colone with Opera Lafayette under the Naxos label.

Todd Larsen

Todd Larsen, is a familiar bassist in many Seattle groups. Most recently he served as principal bass of Seattle Opera's Rosenkavalier and Macbeth productions. Mr. Larsen also serves as principal of a number of other orchestras including Pacific NW Ballet, NW Sinfoinietta, and the late NW Chamber Orchestra. This Fall he will be in Portland performing with Portland Baroque Orchestra and the series at Trinity Lutheran.

John Lenti

John Lenti has appeared as a solo recitalist and chamber musician on lute, theorbo and guitar throughout the eastern United States, at the Bloomington and Boston Early Music Festivals, and at the Magnolia Baroque Festival in Winston-Salem, NC. Following undergraduate study of classical guitar at the North Carolina School of the Arts, Mr. Lenti held a variety of teaching posts and performed both in recital as a guitarist and lutenist, and as a member of the Whistlepig Old-Time String Band in concerts, hootenannies and festivals throughout western North Carolina. Following a season of dividing time equally between the various instruments and genres, Mr. Lenti made a definitive transition to the lute in 2001, moving to London towards the end of that year for regular lute study with Jacob Heringman and Elizabeth Kenny, returning to the United States in 2002 for study with Nigel North at Indiana University. Other significant musical help and inspiration has come from Ricardo Cobo, Ronn McFarlane and Patrick O'Brien.

Judy Linsenberg

Judith Linsenberg is one of the leading exponents of the recorder in the United States. Her playing has been described as “superbly elegant...exemplifying the finest in historical performance today” (Early Music America Magazine). She has been hailed for her “virtuosity” (Washington Post), “expressivity” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer), “fearless playing” (SF Classical Voice), and combination of “masterly control with risk-taking spontaneity” (Early Music). She has performed extensively throughout the US and Europe, including solo appearances at the Hollywood Bowl and Lincoln Center; and has been featured with such leading American ensembles as the San Francisco Symphony, the San Francisco Opera, the Los Angeles Opera, the LA Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, the Portland, Seattle, and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestras, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, the Oregon and Carmel Bach Festivals, Musica Sacra of New York, Musica Angelica of Los Angeles, and others. She is the winner of national performance awards, and has premiered several pieces for the recorder, including a new work commissioned by her and, in March 2002 in Los Angeles, the US premiere of Vivaldi's recorder concerto, RV 312R.

Ms. Linsenberg is the director of the Baroque ensemble, Musica Pacifica, whose performances and seven recordings on the Virgin Classics and Dorian labels have received international acclaim—all have been chosen as CD of the Month by the German early music journal Toccata/Alte Musik Aktuell, and two of them have received other major awards: their Telemann CD won Chamber Music America and WQXR's 2003 Record Award honoring the best chamber music recordings of the year. Their Mancini recording was cited as a “Noteworthy Disc” in the 2000 International Vivaldi Awards for Italian Early Music in Venice. Ms. Linsenberg has also recorded for harmonia mundi usa, Koch International, Reference Recordings, Musical Heritage Society, and Hännsler Classics. A Fulbright scholar to Austria, Judith Linsenberg was awarded the Soloist Diploma with Highest Honors from the Vienna Academy of Music. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Princeton University, holds a doctorate in early music from Stanford University, and has been a visiting professor at the Vienna Conservatory and Indiana University's Early Music Institute in Bloomington. In demand as a teacher, she has taught at Stanford, the San Francisco Conservatory, and at early music workshops throughout the United States.

Anna Mansbridge

Anna Mansbridge, Artistic Director of Seattle Early Dance, is from the United Kingdom, where she studied dance for many years. She holds a First Class Honors Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, U.K., and an M.F.A. in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, California. She has been teaching and performing early European Court Dance (16th-18th centuries) since 1990. Anna has choreographed and performed in many baroque operas in both Europe and the United States. She is currently on the faculty of the Cascade Early Music Festival, Accademia d'Amore, and The Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera, and will be the Assistant Director for the Early Music Guild's upcoming production of Monteverdi's Poppea.

Seattle Early Dance was founded by Anna Mansbridge in 2000, and is now the Northwest's premier early dance company. It specializes in recreating the pageantry and pomp of the 16th- through 18th-century European courts. The dances are reconstructed using original manuals and treatises, and are performed in exquisite costumes to music performed on authentic period instruments. Recent performance credits include John Blow's Venus and Adonis, “Baroque Extravaganza” with Gallery Concerts, “Happy Birthday Mozart” with Seattle Symphony, Bach Around The Clock, and the Accademia d'Amore.

Ingrid Matthews

Violinist Ingrid Matthews, Music Director of Seattle Baroque Orchestra, is well established as one of today's most respected exponents of her instrument. She won first prize in the prestigious Erwin Bodky International Competition for Early Music in 1989, and in 1990 joined Toronto's Tafelmusik, with whom she performed extensively on three continents, appearing in venues such as the Proms and the Barbican Center of London, the Stuttgart Festival, the Utrecht Festival, and the Mostly Mozart Festival of New York. Matthews also worked with many other leading North American period-instrument ensembles, including Philharmonia Baroque of San Francisco, Joshua Rifkin's Bach Ensemble of New York, and the American Bach Soloists of San Francisco, before founding the Seattle Baroque Orchestra in 1994 with harpsichordist Byron Schenkman. In addition to her work in Seattle, she has served as concertmaster for the New York Collegium under Andrew Parrott and held the same position for the prestigious Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. Ingrid Matthews is a founding member of the chamber ensemble La Luna, with whom she has appeared on numerous early-music and university series as well as venues such as the New York Frick Collection and Woodstock Concerts. She was a frequent recitalist with harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, and has appeared as a guest director and soloist with groups throughout North America. Among the most-recorded baroque violinists, Matthews has won international critical acclaim for a discography which ranges from the earliest solo violin repertoire through the great Sonatas and Partitas of J.S. Bach. Of the latter recording, the critic for American Record Guide writes “this superb recording is my top recommendation for this music… on either modern or period instruments.” Ingrid Matthews has served on the faculties of the University of Toronto, the University of Washington, Indiana University, the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, the International Baroque Institute at Longy and Amherst Early Music. She is a graduate of Indiana University, where she studied with Josef Gingold and Stanley Ritchie.

Tracy Mortimer

Tracy Mortimore enjoys a diverse career performing extensively on modern and historical double basses and violone. A native of Toronto, he was a long-standing member of L'ensemble Denis Sching and co-founder of the flute and double bass duo Diaphony. He also appeared with New Music Concerts, Fifth Species, and Continuum. As an Early Music specialist Mr. Mortimore has worked with Santa Fe Pro Musica, Washington Bach Consort, Musica Pro Rara, Rebel, Tafelmusik, Opera Atelier, Toronto Consort, Wolftrap Opera, Chatham Baroque, Folger Consort and Aradia Ensemble with whom he has made over 25 recordings.

Since moving to Pittsburgh in 2000, he has devoted an ever- increasing amount of energy to contemporary classical and jazz movements as an improviser and composer, performing regularly with the jazz trio The Deciders, freestyle sextet Dust and Feathers, and Syrinx Ensemble, a unique quartet project focused upon direct interaction with the avian world. Mr. Mortimore has performed in New Zealand, Singapore, Switzerland, England, Japan, Italy and across the United States and Canada.

Elisabeth Reed

Elisabeth Reed is the principal cellist or gambist for the California Bach Society, the Dayton Bach Society, the Jubilate Baroque Orchestra, the Novello String Quartet, Ensemble Vermillion, the Wildcat Viol Consort, and the improvisational group, MOTOR. She also performs frequently with other West Coast early music ensembles including Seattle Baroque, Philharmonia Baroque, Musica Angelica, American Bach Soloists and Camerata Pacifica Baroque. She has played at the Boston, Berkeley, and Bloomington Early Music Festivals as well as at Seattle's Bumbershoot Festival, and can be heard on the Virgin Classics and Focus recording labels. 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 has taught at Mills College, the Music Center of the Northwest, the Northwest Center for Early Music Studies, and the San Francisco Community Music School. She was the director and founder of the Viols for Youth program in conjunction with the Seattle Early Music Guild and the Viola da Gamba Society-Pacific Northwest and is currently the principal teacher for the Youth Viols program in the San Francisco Bay Area. 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. Currently, she teaches viola da gamba at the University of California at Berkeley and teaches cello, baroque cello, viola da gamba, and Feldenkrais privately.

Ruth Sereque

Ruth Sereque attended the International String Congress in Puerto Rico as a teenager and earned her degree at the Manhattan School of music where she studied with famed teacher Raphael Bronstein. Her baroque training includes studies at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the Vancouver Early Music Program. She has been a member of the National Orchestra of Peru and the North Carolina Symphony as first violinist and the Fort Wayne Philharmonic, where she was assistant concertmaster. Presently she is a member of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra and SBO. She has appeared with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, the Northwest Chamber Orchestra and the Portland Baroque Orchestra.

Peggy Spencer

Violinist Peggy Spencer recently moved to the Seattle area from Vermont where she was concertmaster and frequent soloist with the New England Bach Festival and a member of the Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra in western Massachusetts. While living in Vermont, she enjoyed an active freelance career on modern and baroque violin and viola. She was a member of the New England Camerata, the Bella Rosa String Quartet, and she performed with the Vermont, New Hampshire, and Springfield Symphony Orchestras. She also concertized throughout the northeast with the Apple Hill Chamber Players. An avid chamber music coach, she has served on the faculties of the Bennington Chamber Music Conference, Keene State College, the Music School of the Brattleboro Music Center, and the Putney School.

Avi (Yoav) Stein

Joav Stein is the assistant organist-choirmaster at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral in Buffalo. He is now finishing his doctoral studies in organ and harpsichord at Indiana University where he was an associate instructor of harpsichord and won the Early Music Institute's concerto competition. Avi has performed on organ and harpsichord as a soloist and accompanist throughout the United States, in England, France, Sweden and Costa Rica. In his Carnegie Hall debut he was reviewed by the New York Times as “a brilliant organ soloist.” Avi has been an active continuo accompanist playing with many ensembles such as the Baroque Orchestras of Los Angeles and Indianapolis, the Warsaw and Indianapolis Symphonies, as well as his own groups La Monica and X579.

In addition to playing, Avi has also conducted a variety of ensembles. A recent concert of cantatas by Bach and Johann Kuhnau at the 2006 Bloomington Early Music Festival was described as “delectably sung and directed expertly and artfully by Avi Stein.” Avi holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music as well as the University of Southern California and received a Fulbright scholarship for study in Toulouse.

Janet Worsley Strauss

Janet Strauss was introduced to the Baroque violin while an undergraduate student at the University of Southern California. Since that time, she has appeared with the period instrument ensembles Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Los Angeles Bach Society, as both a soloist and principal violinist. She appears often with Seattle Baroque, the Portland Baroque, and Trinity Consort (Portland, OR) where she has worked with Monica Huggett, Eric Milnes, Reinhard Goebel, Paul Goodwin and Richard Egarr. Ms. Strauss has performed with American Bach Soloists, American Classical Soloists, San Francisco Bach Choir, Magnificat, and Camerata Pacifica. Internationally, she performed at Germany's Tage Alte Musik Regensberg and England's Brighton Early Music Festival. She is co-founder of the Los Angeles-based chamber ensemble Angeles Consort, and teaches privately at the Evergreen Conservatory in North Hollywood, California.

Stephen Stubbs

Stephen Stubbs, born 1951 in Seattle, has been engaged in music-making since early childhood. Parallel interests in new and pre-romantic music led him to take a degree in composition at University and to study the lute and harpsichord. Further years of study in Holland and England preceded his professional debut as lutenist at the Wigmore Hall, London in 1976. From 1980 to 2006 he lived in North Germany as professor for lute and performance practices at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen.

With his direction of Stefano Landi's La Morte d'Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, he began his career as opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble TRAGICOMEDIA which has since recorded over 20 CDs and completed tours of Europe, North America and Japan. Stubbs has been invited to direct opera productions in Europe, the US, Canada and Scandinavia, including Monteverdi's Orfeo at the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam 1997-8 to be revived in 2007, Since 1997 he has co-directed the bi-annual Boston Early Music Festival opera. The BEMF recording of Conradi's Ariadne was nominated for a Grammy this year.

Stephen Stubbs created the ensemble Teatro Lirico, who made their recording debut in 1996 with the CD Love and Death in Venice. A live recording of Antonio Sartorio's Orfeo of 1672 for Vanguard Classics was awarded the Cini Prize for best opera recording of 1999. Teatro Lirico now records for ECM records.

Stubbs' solo lute recordings include the music of J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss, David Kellner and the Belgian lutenist Jaques St. Luc. With baroque harpist Maxine Eilander he has recorded Sonate al Pizzico, released on ATMA in 2004. Since the inception of the Dowland Project on ECM he has played on all the group's recordings.

Margriet Tindemans

Margriet Tindemans has performed and taught early music on four continents. She has been called: “a rare combination of charismatic performing and inspiring teaching, a scholar with a profound knowledge of music, poetry and art of the Middle Ages—a national treasure.” Tindemans was a founding member of the German ensemble Sequentia and the Huelgas Ensemble of Belgium. As a player of early stringed instruments, such as viola da gamba, baroque and Renaissance viola, medieval fiddle, rebec, and harp, she performs and records as a soloist and with Medieval Strings, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Folger Consort, Gallery Players and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. She was a member of The King's Noyse and is a frequently invited guest with the Newberry Consort, Philharmonia, Tragicomedia, The Harp Consort, and other leading early music ensembles. She directs the Medieval Women's Choir, a Seattle-based choir that explores and performs medieval music written by and for women. For the Seattle Early Music Guild she has directed a bi-annual Medieval Workshop since 1990, attracting students from all over North America and Europe, and, in 1998 the Hildegard von Bingen Festival. In alternate years she leads a musical pilgrimage tour through Northern Spain, following the famous Camino de Santiago.

Linda Tsatsanis

Canadian-born soprano Linda Tsatsanis enjoys an active and diverse career. After graduating from the University of Toronto she continued her education at Indiana University's Early Music Institute in the studio of Alan Bennett, working with faculty such as Nigel North, Elisabeth Wright, Paul Elliott and Wendy Gillespie. During the years between degrees Ms. Tsatsanis remained in Toronto as a freelance soloist, movie and television actor, and full-time member/soloist of Canada's leading choir, The Elmer Iseler Singers. Currently she divides her time between opera and concert performance. She was featured as Venus in Blow's Venus and Adonis, Fanny in Arne's The Cooper, Arthebuze in Charpentier's Actéon and will be performing in Seattle's Early Music Guild production of L'incoronazione di Poppea. Her concert performances range from oratorio to renaissance song to a world premier performance of the Prelude's of the Bach Cello Suites arranged for soprano, cello and orchestra. Having made Seattle her home at the beginning of 2006, Ms. Tsatsanis is happy to call this city home and has co-founded Dulces Exuviae with lutenist John Lenti. The New York Times described her performance at the 2005 Boston Early Music Festival as “ravishing.” Ms. Tsatsanis can be heard on various recordings by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the new Norton Anthology recording.

Laurie Wells

A native of Chicago, Laurel Wells received her Master's degree in both violin and viola from Indiana University. She was a violinist with the Chicago Lyric Opera for 20 years. Ms. Wells was introduced to early stringed instruments in 1983 while playing chamber music in a festival here in Seattle. Inspired by her experiences, she went on to join two early music groups in Chicago—City Musik and Orpheus Band—and studied at the Vancouver Early Music Festival with Monica Huggett. Since settling in Seattle, she has played with the Seattle Baroque, Portland Baroque and Pacific Baroque Orchestras, along with performing in events sponsored by the Gallery Concert Series. She has been Principal Viola of the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, and is a violinist with Pacific Northwest Ballet. She plays often with Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera.

Nathan Whittaker

Nathan Whittaker, baroque cello, received his first cello at age eight and pursued study at the Georgia Academy of Music where he won the Alice B. Williams Award. In 1995, he was awarded the Woodward Scholarship at the Taft School where he studied cello with acclaimed performer and teacher, Peter Wiley. He graduated Cum Laude and was the recipient of the P.T.Young Music Award. He has studied and performed at the Brevard Music Center, Interlochen Music Festival, and the Killington Music Festival. In 2003, Mr. Whittaker graduated Cum Laude from Indiana University with a Bachelor of Music Degree in Cello Performance and received a Masters Degree in Cello Performance from Indiana University the following year. His private instructors have included Helga Winold, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Stanley Ritchie, Shelley Taylor and Robert Marsh. For five seasons, he has performed in the Bloomington Early Music Festival and was twice appointed cellist at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria. Currently, Mr. Whittaker is enjoying a career of teaching and performing. For the past several years, Mr. Whittaker has served on the faculty at the Indiana University String academy, the principle cellist of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic and associate principle cellist with the Terra Haute Symphony Orchestra, the primary lecturer for the “Behind the Scenes” program, and established a successful private studio in central Indiana. In addition to his activity as a modern cellist, Mr. Whittaker is a recognized baroque cellist and has performed both as a soloist and a continuo cellist with such recognized performers as Stanley Ritchie, Alison Edberg, and Rachel Barton Pine. Recently, he performed four concerts at the Bloomington Early Music Festival with such groups as The Atwater Consort, The Meridian Vocal Consort, and the Bath Street Studio. Now based in Seattle, Mr. Whittaker is pursuing a doctoral degree in cello performance with Toby Saks at the University of Washington, establishing a private teaching studio, and is a member of the Seattle Baroque Orchestra.

Lynn Wyckoff

Lynn Wyckoff has performed with Anna Mansbridge and Seattle Early Dance since its inception in 2000. She is from Napa, California. She received a BFA in Ballet at the University of Utah and an MA in Dance Theatre at San Francisco State University. She has taught at Pacific Northwest Ballet School, Olympic College, Western Washington University, and Everett Community College, where she was also choreographer for the annual musicals. She has also taught at numerous private ballet schools and directed her own school, North Seattle Ballet, for eleven years. She enjoys teaching and choreographing in many dance genres including character, jazz, modern, and tap.

Alicia Yang

Chinese-American violinist Alicia Yang leads an active and varied concert career. As a baroque violinist Ms. Yang has appeared in concert with SBO, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, Washington Bach Consort, The Violins of Lafayette, Brandywine Baroque, and at the Boston Early Music Festival. Each summer she joins the Carmel Bach Festival under the direction of Bruno Weil. On the modern violin, Ms. Yang has been a featured soloist with the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra in a “Mostly Mozart” program, and with the Ottumwa Symphony, performing the Brahms Violin Concerto. Chamber music appearances include collaborations with her husband, cellist Amos Yang; the Maia Quartet; and pianist Melvin Chen. A former member of the Oregon Symphony, Ms. Yang now plays frequently with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. She is a graduate of the Oberlin and New England Conservatories, where she studied with Marilyn McDonald and James Buswell. Ms. Yang is a recipient of the Knight Foundation Creative Empowerment Grant, and can be heard on the Opus One label.