Baroque Workshop

Faculty 2026

A woman with long brown hair holding a violin outdoors against a stone wall.

Lindsey Strand-Polyak

director and violin

A Pacific Northwest native, Lindsey Strand-Polyak lives a hyphenated life to go along with her hyphenated name: divided between viola and violin; living in Whidbey Island, WA and Santa Monica, CA. In California, she serves as Artistic Director of Los Angeles Baroque, Adjunct Professor of Baroque Violin at Claremont Graduate University, and is excited to be joining SFEMS as Director of the Baroque Workshop. In Washington, she performs as Principal Violist for Seattle Baroque Orchestra and tours regionally with the Salish Sea Early Music Festival. She has performed across the West in concert and festival appearances, including Musica Angelica, Baroque Music Montana, Bach Collegium San Diego, American Bach Soloists, Pacific MusicWorks, Baroque Festival Corona del Mar, Oregon Bach Festival, and fringe concerts of Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals. She holds a PhD/MM in Musicology and Violin performance from UCLA.

  • Dr. Strand-Polyak is also a passionate educator and arts advocate. In 2016, she co-founded the community baroque orchestra Los Angeles Baroque (LAB), and has grown the organization to include the flagship “Big Band” Baroque Orchestra, chamber music, and two Consort Clubs serving viol players (more info at losangelesbaroque.org). Previously, she restarted the UCLA Early Music Ensemble with Elisabeth LeGuin in 2010, and then served as its Associate Director. Guest talks and residencies have included Michigan State University, University of Southern California, University of Oregon, Northwestern State University of Louisiana, University of Richmond, Sacramento State University, Montana State University, University of the Pacific, and California State University-San Bernardino. In 2021-22, Dr. Strand-Polyak consulted with and designed workshops for Bitterroot Baroque in Hamilton, MT, and served as Artistic Advisor to Kensington Baroque Orchestra in San Diego. She serves on the Boards of Early Music Seattle as SBO Orchestra Liaison and Pacific Northwest Viols as Program Chair.

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baroque cello, viola da gamba

Erik Andersen

  • Erik Andersen teaches and performs on baroque cello, viola da gamba, and modern cello. He performs on all sizes of viola da gamba, including pardessus de viole. His background in language pedagogy and historically informed performance inspire his search for expression and meaning in each musical work, which he relishes sharing with audiences. An avid teacher, Erik can be found teaching at home in San Francisco and at workshops in the Bay Area and around the country.

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Aki Nishiguchi

recorder, oboe

  • Aki Nishiguchi, oboist, is an active performer and teacher in the Los Angeles area. She completed a Doctorate of Musical Arts in oboe performance at the University of Southern California where she studied with David Weiss, Joel Timm and Allen Vogel. Beyond her interest in standard solo and orchestra repertoire, she has devoted much of her study at USC to performing New Music and Early Music. She studied historical performing practice and historical wind instruments under the instruction of Adam Knight Gilbert, Rotem Gilbert and Paul Sherman. As an early wind player, she enjoys performing with baroque oboes, shawms, recorders and doucaines. She has performed with groups including Ciaramella, Musica Angelica, Bach Collegium San Diego, Harmonia Baroque Players, California Bach Society.

Vicki Boeckman

recorder

  • Vicki Boeckman is a passionate musician who has been performing and teaching since the 1980s. Her career as a professional recorder player has been a highly rewarding journey which has taken her to many countries and given her the opportunity to record numerous CDs with incredible musicians in various ensemble settings. Currently residing in the Seattle area, she is honored to be an integral part of Seattle’s vibrant early music community as well as being in demand as a teacher at workshops and seminars across the US. 

    Before settling in Seattle, Vicki resided in Denmark from 1981-2005, first as a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, later collaborating with some of the finest musicians and composers of the day including Per Nørgård, Hans Abrahamsen, Ole Buck, and Markus Zahnhausen to name a few. Her Danish recorder trio Wood'N'Flutes had a fantastic 15-year run performing all over Europe and received government grants to work with contemporary composers in addition to children's theater. She was an adjunct professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen for 12 years and taught at the Ishøj Municipal School of Music for 23 years. Many of those students are now professionals, performing and teaching in conservatories in Denmark and around Europe. 

    In the Pacific Northwest Vicki has been a featured soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Yakima Symphony, Portland Baroque Orchestra, The Oregon Symphony, Portland Opera, Medieval Women's Choir, Gallery Concerts, Boise Philharmonic, Philharmonia Northwest Orchestra, and the Skagit Symphony. She is currently a member of the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Music director for the Seattle Recorder Society, co-director for the Recorder Orchestra of Puget Sound (ROPS), and Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop. She adores teaching children as well as adults, and has been on the faculty at Music Center of the Northwest since 2005 in addition to having a thriving home and Zoom studio. Vicki is a two-time recipient of the recorder residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon, and a two-time recipient of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

    Vicki embraces opportunities to laugh and appreciate friends and family, spend time outdoors, cook and eat good food, drink wine (responsibly), walk briskly, and make things grow in the garden. She is thrilled to be returning to the SFEMS Baroque workshop. 

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Rita Lilly

voice

  • Rita Lilly is familiar to audiences in oratorio, recital, and opera, but most notably for her performances of baroque and early music. Ms. Lilly is a native New Yorker who has appeared as a featured soloist with the American Boychoir, American Classical Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, among other organizations. Since coming to the Bay Area, Ms. Lilly has been a soloist with the Albany Consort, American Bach Soloists, AVE, Bay Choral Guild, Berkeley Early Music Festival, California Bach Society, Chora Nova, Magnificat Baroque Ensemble, Musicsources, S.F. Concert Chorale, S.F. Renaissance Voices, and other groups. Ms. Lilly is on the faculty of the SFEMS Baroque Summer Workshop as voice instructor and maintains an active vocal studio in her home in the Bay Area. Ms. Lilly is on the faculty as Choral Director at Mills College, served for five years as Music Director at St. Jerome Catholic Church in El Cerrito and is presently the Music Director of the Lafayette Christian Church in Lafayette, CA. Ms. Lilly is the vocal instructor and coach for the SFEMS Baroque Summer Workshop and Marin Baroque Workshop and maintains an active vocal studio in her home.

TBA

bassoon

TBA

traverso

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Peter Sykes

harpsichord, continuo

  • Peter Sykes is Associate Professor of Music and Chair of the Historical Performance Department at Boston University, where he teaches organ, harpsichord, clavichord, performance practice, and continuo realization, Music Director of First Church in Cambridge, and instructor of harpsichord in the Historical Performance Department of the Juilliard School in New York City. He performs extensively on the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ, including recent appearances in London, Paris, Amsterdam, Berlin, Sao Paulo, and Leipzig, and has made ten solo recordings of organ repertoire including his acclaimed organ transcription of Holst’s “The Planets.” Newly released is a recording of the complete Bach harpsichord partitas on the Centaur label, and an all-Bach clavichord recording on the Raven label; soon to be released will be the complete Bach obbligato violin sonatas with Daniel Stepner. He also performs and records with Boston Baroque and Aston Magna. A founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society, he is the recipient of the Chadwick Medal (1978) and Outstanding Alumni Award (2005) from the New England Conservatory, the Erwin Bodky Prize (1993) from the Cambridge Society for Early Music, and the Distinguished Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation (2011). He is the newly elected President of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies.

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David Wilson

violin, viola

  • An avid chamber musician, David Wilson is a member of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Heartland Baroque, the Galax Quartet, and other ensembles. In recent years he has performed and recorded classical music of India and the Ottoman Empire with Lux Musica, contemporary music with Wyoming Baroque and the Galax Quartet, and 17th century chamber music with Heartland Baroque. He has taught baroque violin at Indiana University, where he earned the Doctor of Music degree in Early Music, and he holds degrees in violin from Bowling Green State University in Ohio and The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His interests outside of music include cosmology, zymurgy, and science fiction (and he would love to discover a science fiction novel about a homebrewing cosmologist). He is the author of Georg Muffat on Performance Practice, published by Indiana University Press, and of the article on Georg Muffat in The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Historical Performance in Music.

    “I always look forward to the SFEMS Baroque Workshop. I’m inspired by the way the participants are supported by each other and by the faculty, and I think the near-unique quality of being open to players of all levels gives Baroque Workshop a wonderful energy. It’s an exciting week of honing old skills and developing new ones, and as a faculty member I feel I benefit from the process as much as the participants.”