Brittnee Siemon is a versatile performer, teacher, director, conductor and scholar. Her accomplishments include premieres of early and modern works, a debut at Jordan Hall in Boston, and numerous international appearances. She holds degrees in Voice Performance and Music Therapy, and carries Academic and Performance Distinction from Ohio University, the University of South Carolina, and the New England Conservatory of Music. Brittnee has been a faculty member at Brevard College since 2016, and is currently the President to the North Carolina Chapter of the National Association of Teachers of Singing. She is the Director of Music Ministry at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Brevard, NC, and founder of the Sounds at St. Philip’s concert series, which highlights chamber artists, celebrates the tradition of Evensong, and supports a growing Choral Scholar Program. 

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Guest Artists from Previous Seasons

The Reel Sisters are a duo steeped in the musical tradition of Scottish harp and smallpipes. Rosalind and Kelly share lifetimes of experience in the traditional music community and the technical expertise of classical training. Compelling tunes combine with The Sisters’ approachable, lighthearted personalities to create a unique and intimate musical experience. The Reel Sisters’ music is uplifting, stirring, and just sweet fun.

Rosalind Buda holds a BMUS from the University of Iowa and a MM from New England Conservatory in Bassoon Performance. She has taught and performed throughout the US and Europe. She teaches and performs classical chamber and orchestral music and Celtic music in her in her home of Asheville, NC and throughout Western North Carolina. Keeping to the mountain tradition, Rosalind plays banjo for fun and enjoys contra dance.

Kelly Brzozowski holds a BMUS and a Masters Diploma in Harp Performance and Musicology from the University of North Wales. She has taught and performed throughout Europe and the US. Kelly lives in Atlanta where she maintains a large teaching studio and performs both classical and Celtic music. When she is not performing or teaching, she is homeschooling her son. You will often find them designing and conducting experiments. Is it science or food?!

Rosalind and Kelly both enjoy coffee, chocolate, and wine, fiber arts, games of all kinds, playing tunes outside, learning with young ones, traveling, and meeting new friends.

www.reelsistersmusic.com

Jennifer Streeter, harpsichord and recorder, holds master’s degrees in harpsichord and recorder from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, studying with Elisabeth Wright and Eva Legêne. She has performed throughout the United States and Europe with critically acclaimed ensembles such as the North Carolina, Indianapolis, and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, Three Notch’d Road: The Virginia Baroque Ensemble, Alkemie, Raleigh Camerata, and as concerto soloist with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic, North Carolina Baroque, and Indiana University Baroque Orchestras. She has been a featured artist at the Bloomington, Magnolia, and Amherst Early Music Festivals and on the nationally syndicated radio show Harmonia. Originally from Europe, she now calls Cary, NC home where she is a freelance performer, recorder and harpsichord teacher, and Myofascial Release therapist.

Jeanne Johnson’s performances have been lauded by the press as “stunningly effusive,” and “delivered with gusto.” Her Baroque trio Music of the Spheres made its European debut at the 2006 Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany, and was featured in the chamber music magazine Ensemble. In 2016, Centaur Records released Ms. Johnson’s recordings of violin works by Johann Jakob Walther and Jean-Fery Rebel with Eco dell’Anima. She has performed with Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Portland Baroque, Brandywine Baroque, Musica nel Chiostro (in Tuscany), the Carmel Bach Festival and the Atlanta Symphony. Ms. Johnson has served on the faculty of Clayton State University and has maintained a large private teaching studio for twenty years. She studied with James Buswell and Stanley Ritchie, receiving her bachelor’s degree in performance with honors from Indiana University and her master’s degree with distinction in performance and academics from New England Conservatory.

Forest Lily, baroque flute, is a musical polymath whose repertoire runs the gamut from antiquity to contemporary. They studied flute, recorder, voice, keyboards, composition, and conducting at the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University (BM) and the Manhattan School of Music. Most recently, Forest studied baroque flute with Gwyn Roberts at The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University where they obtained their master’s degree and received the Excellence in Early Music Award. Forest has performed with ensembles such as Tempesta di Mare, The Thirteen, and with members of the Baltimore Consort and Alchemy Viols at the Indianapolis Early Music Festival. Formerly a member of the Chicago Composers Orchestra and Grant Park Symphony Chorus, they are the founder of the musical advocacy organization Rattle the Walls. Forest has recently moved to the Asheville area.

Frances Blaker performs on recorders as soloist and with Ensemble Vermillian, Calextone, Farallon Recorder Quartet, Sitka Trio and Tibia Recorder Duo. As a member of Ensemble Vermillian, she explores, transcribes, performs and records chamber music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. She has performed as soloist with the North Carolina H.I.P. Festival, and the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, as well as other groups throughout the United States and Europe. She is conductor and music director of the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, and of the Bay Area Baroque Orchestra. Ms. Blaker studied with Marion Verbruggen in the Netherlands and received her Music Pedagogical and Performance degrees in recorder from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen, where she studied with Eva Legêne. She teaches privately in person and long distance via Skype, and at workshops in the United States.

Soprano Margaret Carpenter Haigh is in demand as a soloist and consort singer in the U.S. and abroad. She regularly sings with Apollo’s Fire, the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra and Quire Cleveland and can be heard on recordings with the South Dakota Chorale, Simon Carrington Chamber Singers, and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. Margaret is co-founder of L’Académie du Roi Soleil, with which she has performed in Cambridge, Oxford, and York (UK); and throughout the U.S. Margaret was a Gates Cambridge Scholar and holds the M.Mus. in choral studies from the University of Cambridge, studying with Stephen Layton. She is a D.M.A. candidate in voice in the Historical Performance Practice program at Case Western Reserve University, where she studies with Ellen Hargis and sings under Todd Wilson at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. Upcoming projects include singing with L’Académie du Roi Soleil at the Nashville Early Music Festival, recording an album of Buxtehude and his contemporaries with Ensemble Vermillian, and touring with Apollo’s Fire.

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Sung Lee, baroque oboe, is a versatile musician who plays period oboes, baroque flute and recorders. He holds undergraduate degrees in architecture and music therapy, and a master’s degree in historical oboe performance from Indiana University, where he studied with his mentor, Washington McClain. He has performed with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Bourbon Baroque and Haymarket Opera Company, among others. Currently residing in Charlotte, NC, his stage has extended to the classrooms of Central Piedmont Community College, where he shares his passion for music with his students. Sung’s growing family is his fountain of zeal for life and creation. His children’s unhinged imaginations make him smile and appreciate the overlooked things in life.

Annalisa Pappano, viola da gamba and lirone, the founder and artistic director of the Catacoustic Consort. She has performed in Belgium, Canada, England, Ireland, Colombia, and the U.S. and has played at the Berkeley and Vancouver Early Music Festivals and the Ojai Music Festival. Ms. Pappano is a member of Atalante (London) and WildCat Viols and has performed with many other ensembles, including the Houston Grand Opera, the Cleveland Opera, the Portland Opera, Cincinnati Opera, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Opera Atelier, the Concord Ensemble, Les Voix Baroques, and Cappella Artemisia (Bologna). She has recorded on the Naxos and Destino Classics labels. Ms. Pappano teaches viol at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.

Praised by the New York Times for her “radiant sweetness,” Molly Quinn has appeared as soloist with Apollo’s Fire, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, The Knights NYC, Bang on a Can All-Stars, The Clarion Music Society, The Carmel Bach Festival, Catacoustic Consort, The Staunton Music Festival, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra, among others. Ms. Quinn performs frequently with New York’s early music ensemble TENET and has been a frequent collaborator with Music at Trinity Wall Street. She is a soloist on its 2013 Grammy-nominated recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt. Ms Quinn has also garnered acclaim for her work crossing genres in classical, folk, and contemporary music. This season she will perform with TENET at Carnegie Hall, tour with Early Music Vancouver and make her Kennedy Center debut with the Folger Consort in Dido and Aeneas. www.mollyquinn.com

Elisabeth Reed teaches viola da gamba and Baroque cello at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she is co-director of the Baroque Orchestra.  Recent teaching highlights include master classes at the Juilliard School, the Shanghai Middle School, and the Royal Academy of Music.  Her playing has been described as, “intense, graceful, suffused with heat and vigor” and “delicately nuanced and powerful” (Seattle Times).  A soloist and chamber musician with Voices of Music, Archetti, and Wildcat Viols, she has also appeared frequently with the Seattle, Portland, Pacific, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras, Pacific Musicworks, Byron Schenkman and Friends and Gallery Concerts. She has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the Ohai Festival, the Whidbey Island Music Festival, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival.  She can be heard on the Virgin Classics, Naxos, Magnatunes, Focus, and Plectra recording labels and on many HD videos on the Voices of Music Youtube channel.  She also teaches viola da gamba and Baroque cello at the University of California at Berkeley.  She is a Guild- certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method of Awareness Through Movement, with a focus on working with musicians and performers.

North Carolina native, Daniel Swenberg, specializes in Renaissance and Baroque performance practice, with special devotion to the role of basso continuo playing and the instruments central to its practice: theorbo, chitaronne, Renaissance and Baroque lutes and early guitars. He studied with Pat O’Brien at the Mannes College of Music where he earned a Masters Degree in Historical Performance. Prior to his concentration on lutes, Daniel studied Musicology at Washington University (St. Louis) and obtained a B.M. in classical guitar from the North Carolina School of the Arts. He has performed with a myriad of ensembles both in the US and abroad, including ARTEK, Metropolitan Opera, Canadian Opera Company, Tafelmusik, Apollo’s Fire, Les Violons du Roy, Piffaro, Musica Pacifica and Stadtstheater Stuttgart. Daniel is on the faculty at Julliard’s Historical Performance program.

Lutenist and guitarist David Walker has performed extensively throughout the United States, earning praise for his “surety of technique and expressive elegance” (Columbus Dispatch) and “tremendous dexterity and careful control” (Bloomington Herald Times). He has appeared with such ensembles as Boston Baroque, Catacoustic Consort, Chatham Baroque, Clarion Music Society, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, and Tempesta di Mare, and is a member of the chamber ensemble Ostraka. Mr. Walker has performed in numerous baroque opera productions, including those at Glimmerglass Opera and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. Recording credits include Ostraka’s critically acclaimed debut, Division, and Grammy-nominated recordings for Sono Luminus and Linn Records.

A versatile and engaging musician, Barbara Weiss’s diverse musical experiences range from recording and performing ancient classical Cambodian music to directing a baroque opera company to chairing a university’s early music program. Now an Asheville resident, Ms. Weiss has served on the faculty the Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Institute, and teaches at summer workshops, including the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute and the Mountain Collegium Early Music Workshop, in Cullowhee, North Carolina. She has collaborated with the Newberry Consort, Quicksilver, Chatham Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, and the Chicago Opera, as well as recording has recorded on the Dorian and Harmonia Mundi labels.