Medieval & Renaissance Workshop

June 27 – July 3, 2010

Faculty Biographies

Annette Bauer, a native of Germany, holds a diploma in medieval and Renaissance performance practice from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she specialized in recorder techniques with Conrad Steinmann (2001). Supported by a scholarship from the DAAD ( German Academic Exchange Service), she pursued an M.A. in music from UC Santa Cruz (2004) in conjunction with her sarode studies at the Ali Akbar College of Music in California under her teacher since 1998, Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. As a recorder player, Annette performs with medieval ensemble Cançonièr, baroque group Les grâces, and Farallon Recorder Quartet and has appeared with early music groups throughout the US. She is currently working on the release of four new albums, with Cançonièr, Les grâces, (both supported by San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music grants), Farallon, and the Lost Mode project (with Shira Kammen and Peter Maund). Her music is available on Magnatune and CD Baby. She has served on the recorder faculty for several of the San Francisco Early Music Society summer workshops and the Amherst Early Music Festival, among others. Certified in Orff Schulwerk, she teaches recorder pedagogy to music teachers at the San Francisco Orff Course. Annette was selected for the 2009 recorder residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon. Annette's musical passions include original notation sources in early music, improvisation in modal music traditions, and playing music in beautiful acoustics. She is the co-founder of Magic Carpet, a duo dedicated to the art of improvisation. Annette also plays Brazilian percussion with Maracatu Luta and has studied Maracatu and other rhythms with groups in Recife, Brazil, and at the annual California Brazil Camp. She is currently learning how to play the duduk, an Armenian double-reed instrument, and is excited about taking a weekly class in circus arts. www.annettebauer.com

Contralto Karen Clark's distinguished performing career as a concert soloist and chamber musician and her breadth of experience as a voice teacher and practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method® bring expert guidance and benefit to musicians throughout North America. Karen has received international acclaim for her performances with eminent music organizations such as Joshua Rifkin's Bach Ensemble, Ensemble Sequentia, Boston Camerata, Waverly Consort, Newberry Consort, Ensemble Alcatraz, Magnificat, American Baroque, and Medieval Strings. She has recorded for several major labels, including Erato, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, New Albion, Music Omnia, and Musical Heritage Society. Due for release in 2010 are Karen's recording with the Galax Quartet of new music based on poems by Pulitzer prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and El Mundo's recording of the zarzuela Moro Cupido! by Sebastien Duron, where she is heard in the roles of both the goddess Diana and the spellbinding Morfeo. As a private voice instructor and ensemble director, Karen has taught in the prestigious music departments of Princeton University and Swarthmore College and in the Thornton School of Music at University of Southern California. In addition, Karen served as lecturer in voice at Sonoma State University from 2004-2009. Karen has led vocal ensembles at University of California, Berkeley, and the USC Thornton School's Early Music Collegium and has served on workshop and lecture series for outstanding organizations such as Chanticleer in Sonoma, the San Francisco Jung Institute, and Madison Early Music. She frequently serves on the faculty of the San Francisco Early Music Society summer workshops. Karen holds degrees from Indiana University School of Music and maintains private studios in Berkeley and Petaluma, California. www.karenrclark.com

Jennifer Davis received a degree in Studio Art, specializing in Graphic Design, from the University of Texas at Austin in the late 1980s. After many years of working as a successful graphic designer and 3D artist in the computer game industry, she returned to school to pursue her interests in music and theater. The interest in music led her to a Bachelor of Arts in Vocal Performance from Texas State University and to singing with several classical groups in the Austin and San Antonio area. She is presently involved with The Baron's Men, an Austin-based Shakespearean theater group, in which she and her friends create high-production-value performances of Shakespeare's plays in a scale copy of the Globe Theatre on the shores of Lake Austin. During her work with The Baron's Men, Jennifer refined the process of leather mask making, with which she had experimented for years, in order to create masks, costumes, and props.. The resulting masks were so popular that she took the next step in her life pilgrimage by becoming an independent artist and small business owner. Now she performs and creates in several media, sells masks, counts her blessings, and wonders where the next step in the journey will take her. www.pilgrimage.etsy.com www.pilgrimagedesign.com

David Douglass has been a leading figure in the world of early music performance for over thirty years. The New York Times has praised his playing for its "eloquence" and "expressive virtuosity," and through his groundbreaking work in the field of the early violin he has developed a historical technique that produces "a distinctively 'Renaissance' sound and style for the violin" (Fanfare). This exploration culminated in the founding of the King's Noyse, a Renaissance violin band. As Director of the King's Noyse, and through his recreation of the improvisational repertory of the early violin band, he has received praise for his "enterprise and imagination" (Stereophile). A founding member of the Newberry Consort, and the Consort's Director and Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library since 2007, David is much in demand as a writer and lecturer on early violin history, technique, and repertory. His chapters on the violin are published in Schirmer's Performer's Guides to Early Music, and his essays on the early violin can be found in Strings magazine. David has recorded extensively for Harmonia Mundi USA, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Virgin, Erato, BMG, Berlin Classics, and Auvidis/Astrée labels. Recently he formed Noyse Productions, an online record company selling compact discs and editions of music. www.noyseproductions.com

Adam Gilbert is an assistant professor of musicology and Director of Early Music Performance at University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music. As a performer on recorder and historical double reeds, he is one of the premier international players of the Renaissance shawm. Adam grew up in Columbia, South Carolina, and was graduated from the Early Music Program at the Mannes College of Music in New York City. He has performed as a member of New York's Ensemble for Early Music, the Waverly Consort, and Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. He has appeared with ensembles such as Calliope, ARTEK, the New York Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble, the Court Dance Company of New York, the Folger Consort, Concert Royal, The Bach Ensemble, Chatham Baroque, Newberry Consort, Canto (Colombia), and La Caccia Alta (Belgium), among others. He is also a founding member of ensemble Ciaramella, which performs concerts of 15th-century music in the United States, Israel, and Belgium, and has recorded on the Naxos label. Adam studied recorder at Rotterdam's Conservatorium and studied in Leuven, Belgium, from 1998 to 2000 as a recipient of the Fulbright and Belgian American Education Foundation Grants. There he worked on his dissertation, "Elaboration in Heinrich Isaac's Three-Voice Mass Sections and Untexted Compositions." He completed his Ph.D. at Case Western Reserve University in 2003 and taught for two years as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. Adam can be heard on Dorian, Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana, and Lyrichord labels. His research specialties include allusion in 15th-century song and Mass, pastourelles and their symbolism, improvisation, compositional processes, and embellishment from 1400-1700. Recently, Adam was awarded the 2008 Noah Greenberg Award for his work on historical improvisation, and the USC Early Music Ensemble performers won the latest Early Music America competition to perform at the 2010 Berkeley Festival.

Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings, and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, the New York Consort of Viols, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort and plays theorbo and lute with the baroque ensemble ARTEK and New York City Opera. He has been a guest artist with Brandywine Baroque, the Newberry Consort, the King's Noyse, and Apollo's Fire and has played continuo with Portland Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, Julliard Opera, Curtis Institute, and the Aspen Music Festival. Now teaching at Yale University, he was the music director for the Yale Baroque Opera Project's production of Cavalli's Giasone last May and their recent productions of the Handelian pastiche, Le Tre Stagioni, and Sacrati's La Finta Pazza. Grant also teaches classes in Renaissance music, 17th-century continuo song, and baroque opera at Mannes College of Music and directs the New York Continuo Collective. He is a regular stage director and musical coach at the Seattle Academy of Baroque Opera and also teaches and directs at Amherst Early Music Festival and Madison Early Music Festival. He has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the groups Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera.

This August, Julie Jeffrey will celebrate the thirty-fourth anniversary of her first viola da gamba lesson. Since that day she has developed a career that has taken her all over the world, performing, recording, teaching, and inspiring enthusiasm for that instrument and its music. She began her life in early music performance while pursuing graduate studies in musicology at the University of Chicago. Now based in the San Francisco Bay Area, she is a member of Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, the founder and creative mastermind of the acclaimed trio Wildcat Viols, and half of the viol duo Hallifax & Jeffrey. Ms. Jeffrey also freelances locally and abroad, appearing with such ensembles as Magnificat Baroque, American Bach Soloists, the Newberry Consort in Chicago, the Catacoustic Consort in Cincinnati, and Scaramella in Toronto. She has toured domestically and abroad with the Terra Nova Consort and has performed at the Carmel Bach Festival, the California Shakespeare Festival, the San Francisco Early Music Festival, the Regensburg Tage Alter Musik, the Melbourne Autumn Music Festival, and the Festival Internacional Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico. Devoted to promoting interest in her instrument, Ms. Jeffrey is a frequent instructor at early music workshops across the country, is a co-founder and active member of the Viola da Gamba Society, Pacifica Chapter, and currently serves on the board of directors of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. In 2009 she and her cohort Peter Hallifax launched a new concert series, Barefoot Chamber Concerts, aimed at expanding performance opportunities for the Bay Area's thriving early music community, reaching new audiences, and redefining the traditional concert experience.

Anna Mansbridge is from the United Kingdom but now resides in Seattle, Washington. 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. In 1995 she co-founded Footwork OffLimits in the U.K., which focused on blending different dance genres: Renaissance, baroque, modern, and classical ballet. In 1998 she immigrated to Seattle, and in 2000 she founded Seattle Early Dance, which specializes in recreating dances of the European courts from the 16th through 18th centuries. The company has performed with such prestigious ensembles as Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Bellevue Philharmonic, and Gallery Concerts. Anna also choreographs and directs early opera. Her credits include Venus and Adonis by John Blow and Rappresentatione di Anima et di Corpo by Cavalieri. In addition, Anna has served as a faculty member on a number of early music courses, including The Ringve Museum International Summer Course in Trondheim, Norway, Aestas Musica, Varazdin in Croatia, The President's Day Workshop with the Early Music Guild Seattle, and the Accademia d'Amore, directed by Steven Stubbs. Anna gives numerous lecture demonstrations and workshops in historical dance and the art of gesture in various educational settings, including the University of Washington and Pacific Lutheran University. For more information about classes and performances, please visit the Seattle Early Dance website. www.seattleearlydance.org

Eric Mentzel returned to the United States in 2002 after living in Germany for fifteen years. He has enjoyed an international career as an early music specialist, working with such conductors as Andrew Parrott, Howard Arman, Paul van Nevel, and Jean Tubery. He has appeared at major festivals and premier concert venues across Europe, including the Holland Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Brussels Palais de Beaux Arts, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Concert tours have taken him as far as Japan and Australia. Mentzel is also known for his close collaboration with the most highly regarded ensembles in the early music field, such as Sequentia, the Ferrara Ensemble, and the Huelgas Ensemble. He has appeared on more than forty CDs for Sony, Decca, BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Arcana, Opus 111, Raumklang, Naxos, and others and his recordings have been awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Grammy), the Diapason d'Or de l'Annee, and the Choc de Musique (French recording awards). In 1998 he founded Vox Resonat, an ensemble devoted to the performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music, which has recorded two CDs for the Marc Aurel Edition label. In addition to his work in early music, Mentzel has long been involved in the contemporary music scene, premiering new works by Alfred Schnittke, Henri Pousseur, Andrew Toovey, Johannes Fritsch, and Volker Staub both in the US and abroad. Most recently, he sang the role of Galileo in the world premiere of Stargazer, an opera by American composer Garrett Fisher. Eric Mentzel serves as Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Oregon and is frequently invited to teach workshops and master classes in Europe and North America. He is a guest professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands, and has taught at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, the Vancouver Early Music Programme in British Columbia, and at numerous workshops and summer courses.

Margriet Tindemans has performed, recorded, and taught early music on four continents. A 2005 Grammy nominee, she was named "Best asset to Seattle's Classical Music scene" in the Seattle Weekly's 2004 'Best of Seattle' issue. 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." As a student of Wieland Kuyken in Brussels she was awarded the Prix d'Excellence with honor. A player of early stringed instruments, from the medieval fiddle and rebec to baroque viola and viola da gamba, she performs and records with Medieval Strings, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, and Pacific Operaworks. Margriet was a founding member of the German ensemble Sequentia and the Huelgas Ensemble of Belgium, which was one of the prizewinners at the first International Recorder Ensemble Competition in Bruges. Margriet is a frequently invited guest with the Folger Consort, the Newberry Consort, and other leading early music ensembles. She has performed with both the Seattle Opera and the National Dutch Opera in Amsterdam. She directs the Medieval Women's Choir of Seattle. In addition to maintaining a busy private studio she is a much-sought-after director and teacher at many workshops, including the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop, the Pacific Northwest Viols Workshop, the Accademia d'Amore, Viols West, and the Seattle Academy of Opera. Margriet works closely with the Northwest Puppet Center, for which she has arranged and directed many operas, including The Magic Flute and Don Giovanni.

Bob Wiemken began his musical life as a French horn player many years ago and continued pursuing modern brass for some eighteen years. Eventually, however, he inexplicably became enamored of the double-reed players and their instruments and leapt at the chance to begin playing early reeds while a graduate student in classics at the University of Pennsylvania. That began a long love affair with medieval through early baroque double-reed instruments that has crescendoed over the past twenty-seven years of playing, exploring, studying, maintaining, servicing, and, above all, making reeds for shawms, dulcians, bassoons, krumhorns, and more for himself and many others. 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 been very fortunate to perform with many of the world's leading early music ensembles, in festivals in North and South America and throughout Europe, and in spaces contemporary with the music that helped him define the role, sound, and capabilities of double reeds in historic performance settings. He is an eager and well-appreciated teacher and lecturer in college and university settings, bringing the world of early reeds to modern players, and at festivals and workshops throughout the country. Currently, in addition to his performing, researching, recording, and educating responsibilities, he continues to attempt to plumb the depths of early reed technique in an effort to understand the mysteries of these glorious instruments. www.piffaro.com

As a performer on historic winds and percussion, Tom Zajac has been a member of several groups throughout the years—Piffaro, Ex Umbris, the Waverly Consort, and New York's Ensemble for Early Music—touring extensively and appearing in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. As a guest artist Tom appears frequently with the Folger Consort, King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, and other leading US ensembles. He performed 14th-century music in the East Wing of the White House during the Clinton years, played serpent in a piece by PDQ Bach on an episode of A Prairie Home Companion, and awoke the astronauts with the sound of his bagpipe every morning on a 2001 space shuttle mission (on a recording, of course). He has performed on the sound track of several PBS documentaries for Emmy award-winning producer and composer Brian Keane and has participated in over forty recording projects ranging from medieval dances to 21st-century chamber music. As a director, Tom has an abiding interest in the confluence of historical and socio-cultural approaches to music making, working happily in the realm where time and place meet. He has done research and performance projects on colonial Latin-American music as well as on the music of the three religious cultures of pre-expulsion Spain and on music in Eastern Europe, from Poland to the Ottoman court of 16th- to 19th-century Turkey. Recent performance projects include a 13th-century music-theater piece, the Tournoi de Chauvency, with the French-American company Ensemble Aziman, with performances in France, Luxembourg, and the US and work as percussionist for recent Boston Early Music Festival opera productions. This season, Tom is touring in Bolivia with Piffaro and to Istanbul with the Boston-based Turkish music ensemble Dünya. In addition to his work for the Med/Ren Workshop of SFEMS, Tom teaches at other workshops throughout the US and directs the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.

Last updated 02/26/2010.