FRANCES FELDON lives in Berkeley, CA, is a freelance musician in the San Francisco Bay Area, and performs with Flauti Diversi, a baroque/contemporary chamber music ensemble, and Danza!, a renaissance mixed consort. She teaches recorder and baroque flute privately at her studio in Berkeley, and is a regular conductor and faculty member at recorder workshops throughout North America.
Ms. Feldon has directed the San Francisco Early Music Society's Recorder Workshop for fifteen years, and teaches the recorder program at Albany Adult School. She has conducted her arrangements of Gershwin and Ellington classics at the international recorder festival "Les Journees de la Flute a Bec" (Montreal 2003) and again at the International Congress of Recorder Orchestras (Holland 2004.
Current projects include performing contemporary works for recorder and multiple percussion in a duo with multiple percussionist Karolyn Stonefelt, exploring jazz recorder, and interviewing and writing on jazz and pop recorder players for the magazine American Recorder. She produces her own concert series, "Baroque and Beyond." Ms. Feldon studied recorder and baroque flute at Indiana University, where she completed a doctorate in collegium directing. She has taught at Indiana University, UC Davis and The Greenwood School in Mill Valley,
KATHERINE HEATER, harpsichordist, fortepianist, and organist, is a frequent performer with early music groups such as Magnificat and the California Bach Society.
Ms. Heater received her B.A. in music from UC Berkeley and her M.M. in historical performance from Oberlin Conservatory. Thanks to fellowships from her alma mater and Philanthropic Ventures Foundation, Ms. Heater studied early keyboards at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam.
She has performed throughout the United States, including at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, and the Tropical Baroque Festival of Miami, as well as abroad in Iceland, Taiwan, France and the Netherlands. Ms. Heater has taught and co-directed the baroque and recorder summer workshops of the San Francisco Early Music Society.
JANET BEAZLEY is an accomplished performer on recorders and historical flutes, as well as a bluegrass banjoist, singer and songwriter.She has performed early music with Musica Angelica, Los Angeles Musica Viva, Concordia Clarimontis, Scaramella, Bach Collegium San Diego, Les Folies and with her own group, Accenti.
Janet received a Doctorate in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music, and now teaches there as an instructor of recorders and historical flutes and as a lecturer on early music performance practice. She is the director of the Collegium Musicum at the University of California Riverside, instructor on flutes and recorders at Claremont Graduate University, and has also taught music history and music appreciation classes at UC Irvine.
As a banjoist, vocalist and songwriter, Dr. Beazley is a member of the California band Chris Stuart & Backcountry, a nationally -- and internationally -- touring acoustic string band specializing in original bluegrass and Americana music. She has taught banjo, bluegrass history, music theory, songwriting and harmony singing at workshops throughout the United States, Canada, and the UK. Her solo bluegrass album, 5 South, was released last summer and spent 8 months on the Bluegrass Unlimited national airplay chart.
LISETTE KIELSON has performed to acclaim in both the United States and Europe. Enthralling audiences with her distinctive musicianship, she has been hailed by the press as “sparkling with life” and “performing with true character and style.” Lisette has been a frequent guest on classical music radio and television broadcasts. Her recordings are played nationally from coast to coast and have received enthusiastic reviews from American Recorder.
Lisette’s love of teaching and expertise in directing chamber music ensembles attracts frequent invitations to lead workshops and master classes throughout the country. She holds Bachelor and Master Degrees in flute performance from Indiana University and a post-master’s Diploma in recorder performance from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, The Netherlands.
Lisette serves as Vice President on the American Recorder Society’s Board of Directors. She is on the faculty of the Whitewater Early Music Festival (WI) and maintains a private studio in Bloomington-Normal, IL. Artistic Director of L’Ensemble Portique, Lisette is currently working on her fourth CD, a recording of JS Bach obbligato sonatas.
NORBERT KUNST studied recorder, double bass and bassoon at the Utrecht Conservatory and was active for several years as a maker of recorders. Following his specialisation in historical bassoon, he played in a number of European Baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants (Paris), Musica Antiqua Köln, Concerto Köln, La Grande Ecurie et La Chambre du Roy, Ensemble Bouzignac, Anima Eterna, Musica Ad Rhenum and Trio Passaggio.
In 1997 he became successor to his father Piet Kunst, who was the founding conductor of Recorder Orchestra Praetorius Leiden. He has directed a number of musical theatre performances with this orchestra. All disciplines of art came together in "The 4 Elements (1999)", La Spagna (2001)" and "March & Swing (2003)". For the 40th anniversary of Praetorius he programmed the International Congress of Recorder Orchestras, a workshop/festival for recorder players from all over the world.
From 1982 to 1989 and from 1999 to 2002 he conducted the student baroque orchestra "Het Kunstorkest". With this orchestra he performed three special projects: the Opera "Karel ende Elegast", the music theatre production "O Mio Sole" and the marathon-video-concert "Cembalo Concerti J.S. Bach". The Baroque orchestra "La Prunelle", which uses ancient instruments, is also under his leadership.
JUDITH LINSENBERG is recognized as one of the leading exponents of the recorder in the U.S. and has been hailed for her "virtuosity," "expressivity," and "fearless playing." Director of the Baroque ensemble, Musica Pacifica, whose performances and eight recordings on the Virgin Classics and Dorian labels have received international acclaim, she has performed throughout the United States 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 and Los Angeles Operas, the Oregon Symphony, LA Chamber Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists, the Portland and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, the Oregon and Carmel Bach Festivals, Musica Angelica of Los Angeles, and others. A Fulbright scholar to Austria, she 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, has been a visiting professor at the Vienna Conservatory and Indiana University’s Early Music Institute in Bloomington, and has taught at early music workshops throughout the United States.
HERB MYERS is Lecturer in Early Winds at Stanford University, from which he holds a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Performance Practices of Early Music; he is also curator of Stanford's collections of musical instruments.
As a member of the Concert Ensemble of the New York Pro Musica from 1970 to 1973 he toured extensively throughout North and South America, performing on a variety of early winds and strings; currently he performs with The Whole Noyse and Jubilate. He has taught at numerous summer workshops in the U.S. and Canada, including San Rafael, Idyllwild, Indianapolis, Toronto, and Vancouver.
As an expert in the history and construction of musical instruments, he is well known through articles and reviews contributed to Early Music, The American Recorder, the Galpin Society Journal, the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, the Historic Brass Society Journal, the Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, and the EMA Performer's Guides to Medieval, Renaissance, and Seventeenth-Century Music. His designs for reproductions of renaissance winds have been used by Günther Körber (Germany) and Charles Collier (Berkeley, California).
DAVID MORRIS is a member of Musica Pacifica, The King's Noyse and the Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, and has performed with Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, the Los Angeles, Portland and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, Musica Angelica and the Mark Morris Dance Company.
He was the founder and musical director of the Bay Area baroque opera ensemble Teatro Bacchino, and has produced operas for the Berkeley Early Music Festival and the San Francisco Early Music Society series. Mr. Morris received his M.A. in Music from U.C. Berkeley, and has been a guest instructor in early music performance practice at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Mills College.
He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, New Albion, Dorian and New World Records, NPR's St. Paul Sunday (with The King's Noyse) and New Line Cinema (with Shira Kammen).