Baroque Music Workshop
June 24-30, 2012

Frances Blaker, Recorders
Frances Blaker performs on recorders of all types and sizes with Ensemble Vermillian, Farallon Recorder Quartet, Sitka Trio, and Tibia Recorder Duo. As a member of Ensemble Vermillian she explores, transcribes, performs, and records chamber music of the 17th and 18th centuries. She has performed as soloist with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Wild Rose Ensemble, and numerous other groups in the US, Denmark, England, France, Italy, and the Netherlands. She is conductor and music director of the newly-formed North Carolina Baroque Orchestra and of BABO (Bay Area Baroque Orchestra), a community orchestra for accomplished amateur players.

Ms. Blaker received her Music Pedagogical and Performance degrees in recorder from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, where she studied with Eva Legêne. She also studied with Marion Verbruggen in the Netherlands. As co-director of Tibia Adventures in Music, she organizes workshops for small groups of adult students in the US, France, and Italy, with Cornwall to be added in May 2012. She is co-director with Kathleen Kraft of the SFEMS Baroque workshop and is an assistant director of the Amherst Early Music Festival, Inc. She teaches private recorder lessons both in person and long distance via Skype and is a sought-after instructor at workshops all around the US. Ms. Blaker is the author of The Recorder Player's Companion and the "Opening Measures" column in the American Recorder, and a collaborator and performer on the Disc Continuo series of play-along recordings.

As a composer, Frances Blaker has been awarded month-long residencies focusing on music composition at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, Oregon, in April 2003, 2006, and 2011. She has received commissions to compose works for Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley, California, and for the Oregon Coast Recorder Society. She is currently working on a number of pieces begun in Oregon, and is pondering how to depict in music the crystalline structures found in certain meteorites. Her compositions have been published by PRB Productions and Lost in Time Press.

Ms. Blaker can be heard on Ensemble Vermillian's two-volume survey of German 17th century chamber music centering around Buxtehude's opus 1, Stolen Jewels and Buried Treasure, and with the Farallon Recorder Quartet in works by Ludwig Senfl and on their newly released recording of music from England, From Albion's Shores.

Sand Dalton, Baroque Oboe
Sand Dalton began playing the Baroque oboe in 1975 after graduating from the California Institute of the Arts, where he studied modern oboe with Alan Vogel. A year later he made his first instrument and began an extensive and on-going study of historical oboes. Concurrently, he has pursued an active career as a performer and teacher. Over the years he has performed and recorded with many ensembles, including the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Baroque, the Handel and Hayden Society, Magnificat, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Baroque, and the Pacific Baroque Orchestra of Vancouver, B.C. Sand was described by CBC Radio as "one of the leading Baroque oboists in North America, whose fine instruments are played around the world." His long experience playing Baroque orchestral and chamber music has provided him with an ideal "laboratory" in which to test and refine his ideas about making good musical instruments.

Sand has been on the faculties of the New England Conservatory, the University of British Columbia, and Longy School of Music and has taught as well at the summer workshops for the San Francisco Early Music Society, Vancouver Early Music Program, Amherst Early Music, and the International Baroque Institute at Longy. In 2007- 2008, while living in Italy, Sand exhibited his instruments and performed throughout Europe.

Kathleen Kraft, Baroque Flute
Kathleen Kraft completed studies in flute with Frans Vester at the Royal Conservatory of Music in the Hague, the Netherlands, where she began specializing in Baroque flute with Frans Bruggen. She has performed extensively as a soloist and chamber musician, including concerts for the San Francisco Early Music Society, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the National Flute Convention, the Locronan Festival de Musique in France, and Tage Alte Musik in Regensburg. She has performed with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the CBC Vancouver Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Concerto Amabile, Sonoma Baroque, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver. She teaches privately in Sonoma county and Berkeley and is co-director of the San Francisco Early Music Society's Baroque Workshop at Sonoma State University. Ms. Kraft has recorded with Concerto Amabile and American Bach Soloists. She lives in a secluded paradise in the coastal hills outside of Occidental, California. An expert on California native grasslands, she is active in watershed restoration and native coastal prairie conservation projects.

Kati Kyme, Baroque Violin
Kati Kyme has been a frequent leader and soloist with both Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists since the inaugural seasons of each. An avid chamber music player, she has played in the acclaimed Artaria Quartet, the Sierra String Quartet, and, currently, with the New Esterházy Quartet, which has just finished performing and recording all sixty-eight of Haydn's string quartets. Additionally, she performs regularly with Ensemble Mirabile, Voices of Music, and Harmonie Felice. Her many recordings can be heard on the Bayer, harmonia mundi, and Koch International record labels. Kati has held faculty positions at the University of Puget Sound, the Cornish Institute of Allied Arts, and Sonoma State University. Currently she conducts the two levels of the California Youth Symphony's String Prep Division, where talented string players from all over the San Francisco Bay Area, ages 7-15, gather for fiery and fun music making.

Rita Lilly, Soprano
Rita Lilly is familiar to audiences in oratorio, recital, and opera, but most notably for her performances of early music. A native New Yorker, she has appeared as a featured soloist with the American Boychoir, American Classical Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, ARTEK, Bachworks, Bach Aria Group, Clarion Music Society, Collegium Antiquum, Concert Royal, REBEL, and the New York Consort of Viols, among others. As the soprano soloist of the Waverly Consort, she toured throughout the US and abroad. She has been featured on live broadcasts on New York's WNYC, WNCN, National Public Radio, and Radio-Canada. She made her N.Y. Weill Recital Hall debut in Pergolesi's Stabat Mater with Collegium Antiquum and has toured with harpsichordist Anthony Newman.

Since coming to the San Francisco Bay Area, Ms. Lilly has been a soloist with AVE, American Bach Soloists, Bay Choral Guild, Berkeley Early Music Festival, California Bach Society, Chora Nova, City Concert Opera, Magnificat Baroque Ensemble, MusicSources, New Music Works in Santa Cruz, S.F. Concert Chorale, S.F. Renaissance Voices, and Sacramento Baroque. Her recordings include three with the Waverly Consort on EMI, Handel and Vivaldi's Dixit Dominus with the American Boychoir on Musical Heritage, Scarlatti's St. Cecilia Mass on Newport Classic, Sowerby's Medieval Poem on Naxos, a German Baroque Christmas with American Classical Orchestra on Musicmasters, and Orff's Carmina Burana with the S.F. Concert Chorale.

Critics' reviews:
"The performance by soloist Rita Lilly was most notable for its strength, clarity and virtuosity:…….Robert Haskins (Chorus Magazine)
"Rita Lilly's performance was excellent. Her personality blossomed in contrasting sets of lyric songs…with coloratura all beautifully rendered"….….James R. Oestereich (NY Times)
"The best songs were the simplest and quietest, especially the plaintive solos by The Waverly Consort's soprano, Rita Lilly"……..Richard Taruskin (NY Times)
"Rita Lilly deserves to be singled out: She is a soprano of strong voice and a fine bell-like tone."……..David Bratman (SF Chronicle)
"Rita Lilly gave special pleasure in the Vaillant"……..Bernard Holland (NY Times) -->

Anna Marsh, Baroque Bassoon
Anna Marsh owns five bassoons and likes to play them. She is currently principal bassoonist in Tempesta di Mare and Opera Laffayette and has also appeared with Tafelmusik, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Opera Atelier, Seattle Baroque, The National Cathedral, Opera Lafayette, Washington Bach Consort, Ensemble Voltaire, Apollo's Fire, Foundling Orchestra, Americantiga, Chicago Opera Theater, the Hollywood Bowl, Banff Centre for the Arts, Musica nel Chiostro, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, Sante Fe Pro Musica, Aradia Ensemble, Indianapolis Museum of Art, and others. Anna has also taught or given master classes at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, the Eastman School of Music, the Los Angeles Music and Art School, the Albuquerque Double Reed Workshop (now the Western Baroque Music Festival); she also teaches privately. She co-directs the group Ensemble Lipzodes, which toured Brazil in 2008 and Ecuador in 2010, and has recorded two CDs. Anna also enjoys playing with Circa 1800, a classical woodwind quintet, and From the Depths, a group devoted to music and literature. Anna has been a concerto soloist with the Foundling Orchestra, Americantiga Orchestra, the USC Early Music Ensemble, and the Indiana University Baroque Orchestra. She has also worked in the library and/or in administration at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Washington National Gallery of Art, Museum of the City of New York, and the Weyerhauser Technology Center. She has recorded for Centaur, Avie, Naxos, the Super Bowl, and Musica Omnia record labels.

William Skeen, Baroque Cello
William Skeen joined Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in 2003 and often serves as continuo cellist. He is an integral member of the American Bach Soloists as well as principal cellist of Musica Angelica in Los Angeles and the Bach Collegium-San Diego. Summers are spent with family in Carmel, where William is viola da gamba soloist and associate principal cellist of the Carmel Bach Festival. William also performs with Portland Baroque, the San Francisco Bach Choir, and other period ensembles. Most of William's time is spent, however, playing chamber music with his excellent colleagues in the New Esterházy Quartet, Voices of Music, La Monica, El Mundo, and Galanterie.

William earned a bachelor of music from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where he studied with famed pedagogue Alan Harris. After leaving Cleveland, he headed to Los Angeles to work with L.A. Philharmonic Principal Cellist Ronald Leonard at the University of Southern California. While pursuing a master of music degree, Skeen was invited by Leonard to be a teaching assistant at USC. Since 2000, William has lectured in Baroque cello and viola da gamba at USC and given master classes at UCLA and the Colburn School. Mr. Skeen's pupils have gone on to perform with Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists, Carmel Bach Festival, and Musica Angelica.

Skeen was associate principal cellist of the Stockton Symphony for many years, continuo cellist for San Diego Opera, and principal cellist of the Young Musicians Foundation Debut Orchestra. He has performed over fifteen different concertos with orchestra and has performed solo recitals in the San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles, Carmel, Cleveland, Miami, and New York City. William has recorded over thirty discs, for Koch, Delos, BIS, Hannsler, Sono Luminus, and Pandore records. He lives in Wildcat Canyon in San Francisco's East Bay with his wife Ondine Young and their two young children, Talia and Liam.

Mary Springfels, Viola da Gamba

For most of her adult life, Mary Springfels has devoted herself to the performance and teaching of early music repertoires. She earned her stripes performing with many influential pioneering ensembles, including the New York Pro Musica, the Elizabethan Enterprise, Concert Royal, and the Waverly Consort. For twenty years she directed the innovative Newberry Consort and can be heard on dozens of recordings. In 2006, Mary moved to the mountains of New Mexico, where she is active in the formation of an intentional community called the Wit's End Coop. She continues to teach and perform extensively. This year's activities have included solo appearances with Sonoma Bach and the Phoenix Bach Festival. She will be teaching at The Texas Toot, the SFEMS Renaissance and Baroque Weeks, The Pinewoods Early Music Week, the VDGSA 50th Conclave, and the Rio Rico Viol Week. She will be playing with Viols of Houston and the Folger Consort later in the year.

Peter Sykes, Harpsichord
Peter Sykes performs widely on the organ, harpsichord, clavichord, and fortepiano as a soloist and as an ensemble musician. With Christa Rakich he created "Tuesdays With Sebastian," an independent two-year benefit concert series in which he and Ms. Rakich performed the entire keyboard works of Johann Sebastian Bach for the organ, harpsichord, and clavichord in thirty-four recitals in five Boston-area locations in the 2003-04 and 2004-05 concert seasons. He appears regularly in concert and on recordings with Boston Baroque. In March 2004 he was given the honor of performing the dedication recital on the newly restored 1800 Tannenberg organ in Old Salem, North Carolina, a performance featured on the nationally broadcast television show "CBS Sunday Morning." In November 2005 he performed the inaugural recital on the newly restored 1866 Koehnken organ in the Isaac Wise Temple in Cincinnati.

Sykes's solo recordings include J.S. Bach's complete Leipzig Chorales recorded on the Noack organ of the Langholtskirkja in Reykjavik, Iceland, and music of Reger recorded on a Steinmeyer organ in Altoona, Pennsylvania. His recording of his organ transcription of Holst's orchestral suite The Planets was named Best of 1996 by Audio Review, called a "Super CD" by Absolute Sound in 1999, and garnered accolades in every review. He appears on the Cambridge Bach Ensemble recording The Muses of Zion, performing organ works of Tunder and Buxtehude on the Fisk meantone organ of Wellesley College; on the Music from Aston Magna recording of Handel's oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth, containing Handel's first known organ concerto; on a recording of the organ concerto Cymbale of Julian Wachner; and on the Grammy-nominated Boston Baroque recordings of Handel's Messiah, Bach's B-Minor Mass, and Monteverdi's Vespers. Just released is a recording of Bach's harpsichord partitas on the Centaur label.

As an ensemble musician Skyes has performed with Musica Antiqua Köln, Ensemble Project Ars Nova, the King's Noyse, the New England Bach Festival, Winsor Chamber Music, Mistral, Aston Magna Festival, Chameleon Ensemble, the Van Swieten and Borromeo Quartets, Cantata Singers, New England String Ensemble, and the Portland Chamber Music Festival. He was a member of the continuo team for the Boston Early Music Festival opera productions of Cavalli's Ercole Amante, Conradi's Ariadne, and Lully's Thesée and Psyché, and now directs its Keyboard Day mini-festival of performances on clavichord, harpsichord, and fortepiano.

He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Gabriel Chodos, Blanche Winogron, Mireille Lagacé, Robert Schuneman, and Yuko Hayashi, and Concordia University in Montreal, where he studied with Bernard Lagacé. In 1978 he was winner of the Chadwick Medal from the New England Conservatory for outstanding undergraduate achievement. He was the 1993 laureate of the Erwin Bodky Award for excellence in early music performance. In May 2005 he received the Outstanding Alumni award from the New England Conservatory for career achievement since graduation. In May 2011 Sykes was honored by the St. Botolph Club Foundation with its Distinguished Artist Award, a major gift awarded annually to an artist who has demonstrated outstanding talent and an exceptional diversity of accomplishment; previous recipients include painter Edward Hopper, poets Elizabeth Bishop and Stanley Kunitz, sculptor Alexander Calder, and writers George V. Higgins, Annie Dillard, and Sissela Bok. The award letter characterized him as "one of the major musical intellects and imaginations of our time." He is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, Director of Music at First Church in Cambridge, Congregational, a member of the faculties of the Longy School of Music and the New England Conservatory, and a founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society.
www.petersykes.com

Marion Verbruggen, Recorders
Amsterdam-born recorder player Marion Verbruggen is one of the most extraordinary virtuosos of her generation. Famed for her high-spirited, technically dazzling performances, she has earned an international reputation as a master of style on her instrument throughout North America, Europe, Africa, Japan, and Australia. Enamored of the recorder at an early age, she studied at the Amsterdam Conservatory in The Hague with Frans Bruggen. Upon completing her diplomas cum laude, she was invited to join the faculty at the Royal Conservatory. Her prizes include the first International Recorder Competition in Bruges, the Nicolai Prize for the Performances of Contemporary Dutch Music, and the Erwin Bodky Award for Early Music. As a soloist Marion Verbruggen plays with prestigious ensembles including Musica Antiqua Köln, Akademie fur Ancient Musick Berlin, the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and Tafelmusick Orchestra. She performs in chamber music ensembles with other renowned early music artists including harpsichordists Gustav Leonhardt, Bob Van Asperen, and Ton Koopman, gambist Wieland Kuijken, Baroque cellist Jaap ter Linden, and violinist Lucy van Dael. Her early music festival appearances include Utrecht, Berkeley, Berlin, Boston, and Tel Aviv. Marion Verbruggen also plays solo recitals throughout the world. She guest teaches at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and gives master classes and workshops around the world. Her diverse discography includes music ranging from 17th century Spanish songs and theater music to her own transcriptions of the JS Bach Cello Suites. Marion Verbruggen has recorded for BMG, EMI Erato, harmonia mundi usa, Ricercar, Sony, Titanic, and Accent.

Bob Worth, voice
Robert Worth recently retired as Professor of Music at Sonoma State University, where he taught choral music and many other subjects for 27 years. He is the founding music director of Sonoma Bach.

In addition to his work in the fields of choral and early music, Bob has a specialty in Kodály musicianship training and for ten years ran the ear training program at SSU. He is a composer and arranger of both choral music and jazz, and his vocal jazz arrangements have been performed by many groups throughout California and beyond. He was deeply involved in the Green Music Center project in its early years, serving as consultant to the architects on such issues as acoustics, choral performance facilities, and the Cassin pipe organ.

Bob received his BA in music at SSU in 1980 and earned his MA in musicology at UC Berkeley. He has received numerous community and university honors, including SSU's Outstanding Professor Award for 1996-97 and Distinguished Alumni Award for 2007-08. After completing numerous collaborative projects with Jeffrey Kahane and the Santa Rosa Symphony, he was named to the position of choral director at the Santa Rosa Symphony in 2002.

Email Address: worth@sonomabach.org; worth@sonoma.edu