Baroque Workshop
Faculty 2026
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.
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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.
baroque cello, viola da gamba
Erik Andersen
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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.
Aki Nishiguchi
recorder, oboe
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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.
Paul Leenhouts
recorder
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Paul Leenhouts has been active as professor, performer, conductor and director of early music programs at several institutions in Europe and North America. He has given recitals, masterclasses, clinics and lectures at more than 200 conservatories and universities around the world. A founding member of the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet from 1978 and from 2002 director of the contemporary music collective Blue Iguana, he is also composer, arranger and editor of numerous works for various chamber music ensembles. With his quartet he extensively toured around the globe and performed at major music festivals in Europe, North & South America and Asia. Mr. Leenhouts has recorded for Decca L'Oiseau-Lyre, Channel Classics, Vanguard, Lindoro and Berlin Classics. Two L'Oiseau-Lyre recordings received the prestigious Edison Award. His special interest in renaissance consort repertoire led to the founding of The Royal Wind Music in 1997. In 2004 Mr. Leenhouts was elected president of the European Recorder Performers Society. Next to his activities within the early music field, he also regularly performed with contemporary and music theatre groups such as Musikfabrik, Nederlands Vocaal Laboratorium, ZT Hollandia and NT Gent. In 2010 he founded the Baroque Ensemble Fantasmi. The group specializes in 17th and 18th century chamber music and participated in festivals in the Czech Republic, Germany, Austria, Croatia, Brazil, Peru, Vietnam and China. For his international activities as a musician, conductor and organizer, he received a UN Life-time Achievement Award in Hsin-Chu City, Taiwan in October 2017.
Rita Lilly
voice
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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.
Daniel deitch
bassoon
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Daniel Deitch is a multi instrumentalist playing in a variety of different groups in the SF Bay Area and abroad for the last three decades.
After Studies at San Francisco State University with the principal flutist of the SF Symphony, Paul Renzi, and then baroque bassoon lessons with Robin Howell the first bassoonist of San Francisco's Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, he went on to join Robin in various baroque orchestras, having picked up baroque flute and oboe along the way.
He has performed with Philharmonia Baroque, American Bach Soloists, Magnificat! Baroque orchestra, Jubilate Baroque Orchestra, California Bach Society, Chora Nova, Cantata Collective, West Edge Opera, Ars Minerva, The Academy Orchestra, Zephyr Baroque among others in the Bay Area and abroad with Vancouver's Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Montreal's Arion, New York's Apollo Ensemble, LA’s Musica Angelica, and various chamber ensembles.
He enjoys playing viola da gamba and cello as well, and plays baritone saxophone and other instruments in jazz bands in the Bay Area.
Besides making music, he runs a woodwind repair shop in SF and used to build historical woodwinds.
Bethanne Walker
traverso
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Known for her intensity and versatility in her performances and repertoire, flutist Bethanne Walker is dedicated to modern, orchestral, and historical performance practice. She is the principal flutist of the Stockton Symphony, and performs as a guest musician with the San Francisco Ballet, the San Francisco Opera, and the San Francisco Symphony, among several orchestras and ensembles in the Bay Area, on the West Coast, New England, and the Tri-State area.
She has had the pleasure of performing under the leadership of Esa-Pekka Salonen, Alan Gilbert, Michael Tilson Thomas, Herbert Blomstedt, Osmo Vanska, Ludovic Morlot, Masaaki Suzuki, Richard Egarr, Nicholas McGegan, Christoph von Dohnányi, and William Christie. As a historical flutist, she has performed with several ensembles including the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Boston Baroque, Portland Baroque Orchestra, Cantata Collective, Oregon Bach Festival, The San Francisco Bach Festival, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Baroque Music Festival Corona Del Mar, Tucson Baroque Music Festival, Joye in Aiken Festival, Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity, New York Baroque Incorporated, TENET, Sonnambula, and Les Arts Florissants.
She studied modern flute with Tim Day and historical performance at The San Francisco Conservatory of Music with Corey Jamason, and continued her historical performance studies with Sandra Miller at The Juilliard School. In her spare time, she enjoys drinking fine wine, discovering new restaurants, and going to various museums.
Peter Sykes
harpsichord, continuo
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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.
Jason Yoshida
lute, theorbo
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Jason Yoshida specializes in solo and continuo performance on lutes and historical guitars. In a Los Angeles Times review, Mark Swed described a solo lute performance of Yoshida’s as “eloquent and serious.” He received international recognition for his CD Mozart Encomium, featuring the world premiere recording of Scheidler’s virtuosic Variations on a theme by Mozart for baroque lute.
Yoshida has performed and recorded with Ciaramella, directed by Adam and Rotem Gilbert. Recent performances with the ensemble include concerts for the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Getty Museum, Da Camera Society and early music societies of Hawaii, Arizona and San Diego. Yoshida performed on theorbo, Baroque guitar and Renaissance guitar for their internationally acclaimed CD Dances on Movable Grounds, which features sixteenth- and seventeenth-century music and improvisations. Yoshida can also be heard on recordings released by Radio Bremen, Yale University and Yarlung Records.
In demand as a continuo player, Yoshida performed in L.A. Opera’s presentation of Handel’s Tamerlano featuring Placido Domingo. He has also been invited to play continuo in productions of the UCSB and USC Thornton Opera departments, Hawaii Performing Arts Festival, Bach Collegium San Diego and the Hawaii Early Music Society. He was selected by Early Music America to perform in the EMA Festival Ensemble at the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival.
Yoshida has performed with many Southern California-based ensembles including Les Surprises Baroques, Angeles Consort, Con Gioia, Corona Del Mar Baroque Festival Orchestra and the Los Angeles Chamber Singers.
Jason Yoshida holds a doctorate of musical arts in early music performance from the USC Thornton School of Music, where he also completed a master’s of music in classical guitar. He received a bachelor of music from UC Santa Barbara. Yoshida studied with renowned musicians such as Adam Gilbert, Rotem Gilbert, James Smith, Alejandro Planchart, Paul O’Dette, Xavier Diaz-Latorre, Jose Luis Rodrigo, William Prizer and William Skeen.Description text goes here
David Wilson
violin, viola
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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.”