Medieval & Renaissance Workshop
Faculty 2026
Adam Knight Gilbert
Adam Gilbert, musicology, recorder and historical double reeds, is one of the premier international players of the Renaissance shawm. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. The first graduate of 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, 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 fifteenth-century music in the U.S., Israel, and Belgium, and has recorded on the Naxos label.
director
viols
David Morris
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Dubbed a “continuo wizard” by Gramophone (UK), David Morris is a member of Quicksilver and the Galax Quartet. He has performed with Musica Pacifica, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Tragicomedia, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Mark Morris Dance Group, and Seattle’s Pacific Musicworks. 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, San Francisco Early Music Society series, and the Amherst Early Music Workshop.
Mr. Morris received his B.A. and M.A. in Music from The University of California in Berkeley, and has been a guest instructor in early music performance-practice at UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Mills College, Oberlin College, the Madison Early Music Festival, and Cornell University. He has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, New Albion, Dorian, New World Records, Drag City Records, CBC/ Radio-Canada and New Line Cinema.
recorder and historical winds
Rotem Gilbert
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Recorder player Rotem Gilbert is a native of Haifa, Israel and a founding member of Ciaramella, an ensemble specializing in music of the 15th and 16th centuries. Ciaramella has performed throughout the United States, in Belgium, Germany, and Israel, and released a CD on the Naxos Label, and two recordings with Yarlung Records. Their CD Dances on Movable Ground earned five stars by the British magazine Early Music Today and was picked the Editor's Choice, lauded for its "expressive fluidity and rhythmic vitality". Rotem was a member of Piffaro (1996-2007), and has appeared with many early music ensembles in the United States and in Europe, most recently with Voices of Music in the Bay Area and Utopia Early Music in Salt Lake City. Rotem recently performed and gave master classes at the Federal University in Juiz de Fora, Brazil for their 30th International Festival for Colonial Brazilian Music and Early Music. Rotem has been featured as a soloist for the Pittsburgh Opera, the LA Opera, Musica Angelica and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. After studies on recorder with Nina Stern at Mannes College of Music in New York, she earned her solo diploma from the Scuola Civica di Musica of Milan where she studied with Pedro Memelsdorff. She earned her doctorate in Early Music performance practice at Case Western Reserve University studying with Ross W. Duffin. Rotem is an Associate Professor of Practice at USC Thornton School of Music, teaching musicology courses in Early Music, Renaissance notation seminars, Renaissance and Baroque Performance Practice courses and directing Early Music ensembles. She recently led USC students for a summer course in Paris on music, culture and art. Rotem received the 2012 Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching at USC and is the joint recipient with Adam Gilbert of Early Music America’s 2014 Thomas Binkley Award for “outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a university or college early music ensemble.” She has been a regular faculty member of early music workshops and is the co-director of SFEMS Recorder Workshop in the Bay Area. Rotem can be heard on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana, Dorian, Naxos and Yarlung labels.
recorder, reeds
Aki Nishiguchi
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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.
vielle and harp
Shira Kammen
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Multi-instrumentalist and occasional vocalist Shira Kammen has spent well over half her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. A member for many years of the early music Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, the Balkan group Kitka, Anonymous IV, the King's Noyse, the Newberry and Folger Consorts, the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to providing music on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Morocco, Latvia, Russia and Japan, and on the Colorado, Rogue, Green, Grande Ronde, East Carson and Klamath Rivers.
Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune's Wheel: a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea, the early music ensembles Sitka Trio, Calextone, Cançonier and In Bocca al Lupo; as well as frequent collaborations with performers such as storyteller/harpist Patrick Ball, medieval music expert Margriet Tindemans, and in many theatrical and dance productions, including the California Revels and The American Repertory Ballet Company. She has worked with students in many different settings, among them teaching summer music workshops in the woods, coaching students of early music in such schools as Yale University, Case Western, the University of Oregon at Eugene, and working at specialized seminars at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy and the Scuola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland.
Multi-instrumentalist and occasional vocalist Shira Kammen has spent well over half her life exploring the worlds of early and traditional music. A member for many years of the early music Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, the Balkan group Kitka, the King’s Noyse, the Newberry and Folger Consorts, the Oregon, California and San Francisco Shakespeare Festivals, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to providing music on river rafting trips. She has performed and taught in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, Israel, Morocco, Latvia, Russia and Japan, and on the Colorado, Rogue, Green, Grande Ronde, East Carson and Klamath Rivers.
Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune’s Wheel: a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea; an English Country Dance band, Roguery,the early music ensembles Cançoniér and In Bocca al Lupo, as well as frequent collaborations with performers such as storyteller/harpist Patrick Ball, medieval music experts Margriet Tindemans and Anne Azema, and in many theatrical and dance productions. She has worked with students in many different settings, among them teaching summer music workshops in the woods, coaching students of early music at Yale University, Case Western, the University of Oregon at Eugene, and working at specialized seminars at the Fondazione Cini in Venice, Italy and the Scuola Cantorum Basiliensis in Switzerland.
She has played on several television and movie soundtracks, including ‘O’, a modern high school-setting of Othello and ‘’The Nativity Story’, and has accompanied many diverse artists in recording projects, among them singers Azam Ali and Joanna Newsom. Some of her original music can be heard in an independent film about fans of the work of JRR Tolkien. The strangest place Shira has played is in the elephant pit of the Jerusalem Zoo. She has recently taken courses in Taiko drumming and voiceover acting.
voice
Elena Mullins Bailey
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Dr. Elena Mullins Bailey is a passionate performer and educator of early music. She co-founded two medieval ensembles, Trobár (Cleveland) and Alkemie (Brooklyn). With Trobár, she leads a monthly series of community participation events called MuckAbouts; audience members are invited to join in on a variety of historical performance practices, including singing Renaissance polyphony and learning 15th c. dances. In 2024 she helped co-found a summer chant camp for grade and high school children. As a performer of period chamber music she has appeared with Les Délices, The Newberry Consort, Early Music Access Project, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and Apollo’s Fire. She holds a DMA in Historical Performance Practice from CWRU and a BA in Musical Arts from The Eastman School of Music. She returned to CWRU in 2016, where she directs the Early Music Singers and the Collegium Musicum, and teaches classes on baroque dance, medieval music history, and the development of musical notation. Since 2019 she has also taught on the voice faculty at Cleveland State University. In 2023 she and her husband Brian welcomed their beautiful daughter Laura into the world.
viols
Malachai Komanoff Bandy
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Multi-instrumentalist Malachai Komanoff Bandy is Assistant Professor of Music at Pomona College. He holds a Ph.D. in historical musicology from the USC Thornton School of Music, supported by Provost and Oakley Endowed Fellowships. Previously, Bandy graduated cum laude, with Distinction in Research and Creative Works from Rice University (double bass; music history). In 2019, he received both the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music’s Irene Alm Memorial Prize and the AMS Pacific Southwest Chapter’s Ingolf Dahl Award in Musicology. As a historical string and double-reed player, Bandy has performed with The Orpheon Consort, Ars Lyrica Houston, Bach Collegium San Diego, Voices of Music, Musica Angelica, Tesserae Baroque, Ciaramella, and as a viola da gamba soloist with Los Angeles Opera and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.
An active TV/Film recording artist, he is a featured soloist in Outlander, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Foundation, and others. Bandy’s scholarly projects concern Christian mysticism, esotericism, and numerology in German Baroque repertoires, as well as viola da gamba technique and iconography. His recent articles can be read in the journal Early Music (Oxford University Press) and in the volume Explorations in Music and Esotericism (University of Rochester Press).
Jason Yoshida
lute
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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.