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Biographies

VITA WALLACE (baroque violin) is known as a powerful, sensitive, and versatile musician. She is a sought-after baroque violinist: a member of ARTEK and Philomel, founding member of the Gotha City Baroque Orchestra, and guest artist with Parthenia, Concert Royal, the Dryden Ensemble, Festival Scarlatti in Sicily, and numerous other baroque ensembles and festivals. She has performed and recorded extensively as violinist of the Orfeo Duo, with which she also teaches improvisation and plays the piano in four-hand repertoire. The Duo’s latest CD, described as "daring and fresh" by the National Post, features the complete Schumann sonatas on period instruments, on the unedited Unacorda label. Their other recordings have been described as "impassioned and deeply involving…strangely moving" (American Record Guide), "excellent" (BBC Music Magazine) and "magnificent" (Classics Today).Ms. Wallace is also a member of the medieval ensemble Sendebar, in which she plays vielle and percussion. Her teachers included Louis Krasner, Julius Levine, Lorand Fenyves, and Nancy Wilson. She graduated from the Mannes College of Music with the Felix Salzer Award, and performs on a copy of an Amati made by Samuel Zygmuntowicz in 1991.

CLAIRE SMITH BERMINGHAM (baroque violin) received her MM in violin performance at The Boston Conservatory.  Her teachers have included  David Kim, Lynn Chang, Roy Lewis, Anna J. Choi,    Magdalena Richter  and  Ronan Lefkowitz.  Currently  she does baroque studies with Judson Griffin and modern studies with Joey Corpus.   Recent master classes include Julie Andrijeski, Cynthia Roberts, Marc Destrube, and Marilyn MacDonald at Amherst Early Music Festival and Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute.  She has performed with the Trinity Baroque Orchestra and Choir, Biber Baroque,  Vilas Baroque Ensemble, Siren Baroque, Big Apple  Baroque  and  the Vox Ama Deus ensemble in Philadelphia.     Claire is Concertmaster of the Astoria Symphony and Sinfonia  Celestis,  and plays with Greenwich Symphony, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Di Capo Opera Company,  Bronx Opera Company and the Orchestra of the Bronx.   Performances at Carnegie Hall, Avery Fisher Hall, Radio City Music Hall, and at the Apollo Theater and on a Broadway show.  Recent performances with Sean “Puffy” Combs on “Saturday Night Live,” “David Letterman” and “The View”.  She is currently on the faculty at the Spence School, the Third Street Music School Settlement and at Bank Street College of Education.

LAWRENCE LIPNIK (viola da gamba) performs with many acclaimed early music ensembles and is a founding member of the viol consort Parthenia and vocal ensemble Lionheart.  He has served as gambist and recorder player for staged opera productions including Monteverdi's Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria at Wolf Trap and Telemann's Orpheus with the New York City Opera, and has prepared an authoritative edition of Francesco Cavalli’s La Calisto, commissioned by the Juilliard School.   Recent performance highlights include concerts with lutenist Paul O’dette of Dowland’s complete Lachrimae at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, concerts at the Berkeley Festival, appearances with the Venice Baroque Orchestra, the Indiana University Historic Performance Institute at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and early opera residencies at Carnegie Mellon University.  He is a contributor to The Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare and Contemporary Dramatists, and The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare, as well as the journal Comparative Drama.   

ROSAMUND MORLEY (viola da gamba) was raised in Toronto where she studied viola da gamba with Peggy Sampson and performed on the historic instruments in the Hart House collection at the University of Toronto.  She plays all the viols from pardessus to violone, and their medieval ancestors and has worked with numerous renowned ensembles as diverse as ARTEK, The Boston Camerata, The Crossing, The Folger Consort, The Four Nations Ensemble, Piffaro and the Yale Schola Cantorum under Masaaki Suzuki.  She is a member of Parthenia, New York's premiere viol consort, and was fortunate to have seen much of the world in more than three decades of touring with the Waverly Consort.  She has played Vivaldi with the Venice Baroque Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Charpentier at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Les Arts Florissants,  and thirteenth century motets on tour in Europe with Sequentia.  Ms. Morley is a sought-after ensemble coach who teaches throughout the USA and Canada, as well as at festivals and workshops in the UK and Italy.  Born in England, raised in Canada, she studied at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague in the Netherlands and the University of Toronto.  Now she maintains a studio in Brooklyn, NY, and teaches at the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, CT where she plays with the Elm City Consort. From 2017 until 2020 she was the Music Director of the Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, and for many years directed and now co-directs the Viols West Workshop in San Luis Obispo, CA.

PATRICIA ANN NEELY (viola da gamba, violone) has appeared as a viola da gamba, violone, and medieval fiddle player with many early music ensembles including, Tempesta di Mare, Gotham Early Music Open Gates Project, the Folger Consort, Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Washington Bach Consort, ARTEK, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, the Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, The Newberry Consort, The New York Consort of Viols, the Waverly Consort and Early Music New York, among others, and was a founding member of the viol consort Parthenia. She spent three years touring with the acclaimed European-based medieval ensemble, Sequentia performing throughout Europe and North America on medieval fiddle at festivals including, Oude Muziek - Utrecht, Bach Tage – Berlin, Alte Musik – Herne, Wratislavia Cantans - Poland, Music Before 1800, The Berkeley Music Festival, and The Vancouver Early Music Festival. Ms. Neely began playing the viola da gamba at Vassar College and continued her studies, earning an MFA in Historical Performance at Sarah Lawrence College, with additional studies in Belgium with Wieland Kuijken.  She has recorded for Arabesque, Allegro, Musical Heritage, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Ex Cathedra, Classic Masters, Erato, Lyrichord, Music Masters, and MSR Classics labels. Ms. Neely has been a member of the faculty at the Amherst Early Music Summer Festival, the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, Pinewoods Early Music Workshop, and was a member of the music faculty at The Brearley School in New York for 22 years where she taught recorder, double bass, and coached an early string repertoire ensemble and at Mannes College of Music for 13 years in the Historical Performance Division. She is on the Board of Early Music America and was Chair of the Early Music America Taskforce on Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion from 2019 – 2021. In Addition, she is currently on the Board of the Viola da Gamba Society of America and Chair of its Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Committee. She is represented in the recently released publication, “Voices for Change in the Classical Music Profession – New Ideas for Tackling Inequalities and Exclusions,” ed. By Anna Bull, Christina Scharf, and Laudan Nooshin, © Oxford University Press 2023 – Chapter 17 entitled, “Inclusion and Diversity in the Early Music Scene in the US: A Conversation…”.

Early string specialist DONGMYUNG AHN is a performer, educator, and scholar whose interests span from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. She is co-founder of Guido’s Ear and has performed with the Sebastians, TENET Vocal Artists, Green Mountain Vespers, Raritan Players, Pegasus, and Marginalia. She has played rebec in the critically acclaimed production of The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters. A dedicated educator, Dongmyung is the director of the Queens College Baroque Ensemble and has taught music history at Vassar College, Rutgers University, and Queens College. She received her PhD in musicology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and has published an article on medieval liturgy in the Rodopi series Faux Titre.

JOHN MARK ROZENDAAL (viola da gamba) specializes in teaching and performing stringed instrument music from the Baroque and Renaissance eras. As founding Artistic Director of Chicago Baroque Ensemble, JMR performed and led seven seasons of subscription concerts, educational programs, radio broadcasts, and recordings for the Cedille and Centaur labels. Rozendaal served as principal 'cellist of The City Musick, and Basically Bach, and has performed both solo and continuo roles with many period instrument ensembles, including the Newberry Consort, Orpheus Band, and the King's Noyse. Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, and Soli Deo Gloria's Chicago Bach Project. JMR performs as a member of Trio Settecento with violinist Rachel Barton Pine and harpsichordist David Schrader; as a member of Repast Baroque Ensmeble; and as a member of the viol consort Sonnambula. Rozendaal's viola da gamba playing has been praised as "splendid" (Chicago Tribune), and "breathtaking" (Sun-Times). Recordings are available on the Cedille and Centaur labels. A dedicated teacher, Rozendaal is in demand as a workshop teacher and often joins the faculties of the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, Viols West’s annual workshop, Amherst Early Music, Madison Early Music Festival, and the Music Institute of Chicago’s annual Baroque Festival. JMR teaches private lessons and Viola da Gamba Dojo classes at his studio in Manhattan.

DONGSOK SHIN (harpsichord, chamber organ) studied modern piano for 20 years before converting exclusively to early keyboard instruments in the 1980s. He has been a member of the internationally acclaimed baroque ensemble REBEL since 1997. He has appeared with ARTEK, Concert Royal, Dryden Ensemble, EMNY, Pro Musica Rara, and American Classical Orchestra, among others. He has accompanied Renée Fleming, Rufus Müller, Jed Wentz, Marion Verbruggen, and Barthold Kuijken. He received international recognition as music director of baroque opera productions with the Mannes Camerata. He has toured and been heard on radio throughout the Americas and Europe. Mr. Shin is well known as an early music performer, recording engineer, producer, and editor for Acis, ATMA, Bridge, Dorian, Ex Cathedra, Helicon, Hollywood Records, Lyrichord, Naxos, and Newport. He tunes and maintains early keyboard instruments in the New York area, including for the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum and is featured in Met Museum YouTube videos demonstrating their earliest known Cristofori fortepiano.

 Past Artists

ADAM YOUNG (viola da gamba) identifies as a baroque and modern cellist, violist da gamba, ballet dancer, accompanist, and pianist .  His earned a Bachelor’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music in modern cello with an emphasis in baroque performance practice studying with Jennifer Culp, Elisabeth Reed, and Corey Jamason. Adam is co-founder of Cello Street Quartet, which under a federal-State Department Grant allowed the ensemble to perform and teach throughout Eastern Europe. Adam has performed at festivals such as the Oregon Bach Festival, Early Music Vancouver, the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave, and American Bach Soloists.  He received honorary mention in the 2017 San Francisco Conservatory of Music Marathon Composition Competition.  Adam’s mission is to seek a factual basis for artistic decision with special interest in historical performance practice. He is currently a master’s degree candidate at The Juilliard School where he studies viola da gamba with Sarah Cunningham in the Historical Performance program. 

JUDSON GRIFFIN (1951-2020) Founding member, Judson Griffin, passed away after a brief illness in May of 2020. He is remembered for his exquisite playing, skillful programming, impeccable scholarship, beautiful editions, and gentlemanly wit. We will all miss working with him, but his voice on the violin remains as vivid as it was yesterday. A full obituary written by cellist and member of the New York Classical Quartet, David Bakamjian appears in this link  http://www.nyclassicalquartet.org/judson-griffin-in-memoriam.html.  Judson plays Giovanni Antono Leoni's Sonata No. 3 for violin and continuo. https://soundcloud.com/neelyp/sonate-di-violino-a-voce-sola-op-3-1652-giovanni-antonio-leoni-d-after-1651-52720-1139-pm

MARGARET ZIEMNICKA (violin), is a founding member of Abendmusik.  She received her education in violin, piano, and chamber music at the Wieniawski Music Lyceum in her native Lodz, Poland. She toured Europe with the Lyceum's chamber choir, winning major prizes at competitions in Spain and Italy. While studying violin and sound recording at the Chopin Music Academy in Warsaw she became interested in baroque violin. After immigrating to the United States Ms. Ziemnicka continued her studies at DePaul University in Chicago and at McGill University in Montreal. As a member of the Chicago Civic Orchestra she performed under Sir Georg Solti, Daniel Barenboim, and Pierre Boulez. Since moving to New York Ms. Ziemnicka has been performing baroque and classical music on period instruments with REBEL, Concert Royal, Early Music New York, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Sinfonia New York, Gotham Chamber Opera, at Museum Concerts in Providence, and has made numerous recordings on modern and baroque violin. She appears regularly at Lincoln Center with the American Classical Orchestra, and has performed at the Kennedy Center and the Washington National Cathedral, and with the Rhode Island Philharmonic. Ms. Ziemnicka is a member of the recently formed New York Classical Quartet. She is a great fan of jazz and popular music of the 1920s.

DEREK LEE RAGIN (countertenor) is regarded as one of the foremost countertenors of our day.  In great demand as a master of Baroque vocal style, he is also an inspired interpreter of contemporary music. His performances of such diverse repertoire are characterized by an unusual warmth and expressivity, and he has received unanimous accolades from critics and audiences throughout the world.

Mr. Ragin sang the 1739 (first performance) version of Handel’s Israel in Egypt in Budapest, debuted Der Name der Rose by Munich composer Enjott Schneider (a composition for countertenor and organ written especially for him), and with the London-based group Florilegium, returned to the Budapest Early Music Festival and the Handel Festival in Halle, Germany. Mr. Ragin appeared in the Munich
Opera’s production of Rinaldo, and toured Austria and Germany with the Vienna Konzertverein. He sang Handel’s Messiah in Cleveland with Apollo’s Fire, collaborated with the Aulos Ensemble in a Christmas program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and appeared in San Francisco with the American Bach Soloists. He also returned to Australia for performances in Sydney and Melbourne with the Brandenburg Orchestra. He sang Belize and several other roles in the world premiere of Peter Eötvös’ Angels in America at the Châtelet in Paris. He sang the world premiere of Jonathan Dawe’s Prometheus at the Guggenheim, and toured throughout the US with the baroque ensemble Rebel.

Other highlights include the New York Philharmonic world premiere of Kancheli’s “And Farewell Goes Out Sighing”; performances of Bach’s St. John Passion with the London Philharmonic; Gluck’s Orfeo ed Eurydice in Vienna and at the Rheingau Music Festival; and Kancheli’s Diplipito with the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra at the Lucerne Festival and again in Stuttgart when the work was recorded for ECM. He performed Handel’s Alexander Balus in St. Paul, Minnesota; concerts with the Cologne Chamber Orchestra in Cologne and Munich; and Bach cantatas with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestra in Milan and London which were recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Other engagements include performances of The Messiah with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Louisville Bach Society; and the role of Anfinomus in Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria with the Netherlands Opera in Sydney.

SATONO NORIZUKI, harpsichordist, has performed frequently as a soloist in North America and her native country Japan. She has also involved as acontinuo player with numerous baroque orchestras and ensembles. As an educator, Satono has been invited to give historical keyboard lecture recitals at academic institutions, and has also hosted early music concert series. In order to raise public awareness of the historical keyboard instruments and sounds, Satono regularly appears on the live radio show and introduces early music. As a composer, Satono’s first composition titled “Flavor of D,” a harpsichord solo piece, was selected as an honorable mention in the Ninth Aliénor International Composition Competition. Satono received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in harpsichord performance from the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where she studied with Arthur Haas. She also received Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in harpsichord performance from the Music Conservatory at Chicago College of Performing Arts, Roosevelt University, where she studied with David Schrader. Satono has been serving as artistic director at Twelve-Note Music, a music management office in White Plains, NY since 2013.

CHRISTOPHER MORRONGIELLO, a former British Marshall Scholar, is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music, the Royal College of Music, and the University of Oxford, where he earned a Ph.D. in musicology.  As a recitalist, Christopher has performed to critical acclaim throughout Europe and the United States.  In 1993 he was a prizewinner in the BBC Radio Two Young Musician of the Year Competition and in 1996 was awarded a Marco Fodella Foundation Scholarship for studies and research in Milan, Italy.  In2006, the Lute Society of America conferred upon him its first Patrick O’Brien LSA Seminar Lectureship.

Heralded as an innovative musical director and creator of large-scale dramatic works, Christopher has a gift for bringing music of the Renaissance and Baroque to life in its literary and social context.  His musical portrait of the Elizabethan muse and songstress Penelope Devereux, created for soprano Emily Van Evera (My Lady Rich, Avie Records 0045), has been described by Renaissance Magazine as “a presentation of unusual quality and beauty” and by the NY Times as “an inspired idea… a vivid and touching portrait.”

Christopher is a professor in music history at Hofstra University and teaches lute and related historical plucked instruments in his private studio in Long Island, New York.  He is a member of the Venere Lute Quartet, performs regularly with soprano Marcia Young, and directs the New York-based Bacheler Consort.

SARAH CUNNINGHAM (viola da gamba) began her violstudies in 1969 in Boston where as a young player she was described as "one of the most satisfying players of anything in the area." She then went on to work with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague. In 1981 she moved to London where she was active as a soloist and chamber musician and won world-wide recognition for her eloquent, expressive and communicative playing. She was a founder-member, with baroque violinist Monica Huggett, of the acclaimed Trio Sonnerie, with whom she made many recordings and toured on three continents.

In 1992 she was invited by flautist James Galway to collaborate on his recordings of Bach's chamber music for flute. Since then, in addition to two recordings for BMG Classics, she has performed with him in several highly successful American and European tours. As a soloist she has appeared at Festivals from Helsinki to London to Boston to Vancouver. Her CD of solo viol music, entitled Play this Passionate, on Virgin Classics, coincided with the re-release of her CD of music by Marin Marais on ASV. A second unaccompanied CD, Spirit of Gambo, was on the Swedish label, Seagull Records. The two solo recordings were later released as a double CD by Virgin/EMI under the title Play this passionate.

After moving to West Cork, Ireland, in 1999, Sarah Cunningham was in demand as a soloist and chamber musician throughout Ireland, appearing  on Lyric FM as artist of the week. She was founder in 2003 and Artistic Director until 2008 of the highly acclaimed East Cork Early Music Festival. She held the professorship in viola da gamba at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen from 1990-2000. After moving back to the Philadelphia area in 2009 she joined the Historical Performance department at the Juilliard School, teaching the viol to ever-increasing numbers of young musicians, as well as coaching chamber music and viol consorts.

JASON PRISET (lute, theorbo) is a regular soloist and performer in the United States. Jason has appeared through the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Early Music New York, and the Riverside Symphony to name a few, and includes performances in such prestigious venues as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine and Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in Manhattan. Jason holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) from Stony Brook University and specializes in a variety of plucked guitar and lute related instruments. Currently, Dr. Priset is serving as Executive Director for the Lute Society of America (LSA) summer festival and works as staff for Amherst Early Music (AEM). Other festival experience includes the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College, the International Baroque Institute at Longy (IBIL), the Long Island Guitar Festival, and the Ithaca College Winter Guitar Festival.

DREW MINTER(countertenor) Regarded for over three decades as one of the world’s finest countertenors, Drew Minter grew up as a boy treble in the Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys.  After obtaining music degrees at Bloomington, Indiana and Vienna, Austria, Minter appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others.  A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he has performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, and Maryland.  He has sung with many of the world’s leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM’s Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.  Mr. Minter was a founding member of the Newberry Consort, with whom he performed, toured and recorded for twenty-five years.  He is also a founding member of the medieval trio TREFOIL, with whom he tours frequently, singing and playing early harps.  The ensemble specializes in music of the 14th century.  Other early music ensembles with which Mr. Minter frequently collaborates are  My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, ARTEK, and the Folger Consort.  Mr. Minter has made over 60 recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Decca/London, Newport Classics, Hungaroton and others.  He appears in two films: as Tolomeo in Peter Sellars’s Giulio Cesare, and as the Devil in In the Symphony of the World; a Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.


Drew Minter is also a lauded stage director. He began as director of the operas at the Göttingen Händel Festival for five years, directing period baroque productions.  Since then he has directed productions in many styles for the Opéra de Marseilles, Caramoor, the Boston Early Music Festival, the Cloisters Museum, Lake George Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Handel and Haydn, Boston’s Opera Aperta, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Boston University’s Opera Institute, Amherst Early Music, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, the Five Colleges in Northampton, Tempesta di Mare and Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire. In 2006 he was made Artistic Director of Boston Midsummer Opera, a summer opera company he co-founded to provide outreach through excellent and inventive productions of opera in translation (many of them in Minter’s own English translations).  There he has directed Peter Brook’s Tragedy of Carmen, Mozart’s Così fan tutte, and pastiches of Offenbach and Mozart.

In addition to numerous workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Mr. Minter has taught voice for the past ten years at Vassar College, where he also directs the Vassar Opera Workshop and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers.  He has taught since 1989 at the Amherst Early Music Institute.  In addition to an active singing career of his own, he teaches frequent masterclasses in opera and oratorio; in recent years these have taken place at Indiana University, Boston University, the University of Massachusetts, West Chester University and the Crittendon Opera Workshops in Boston.