Medieval & Renaissance Workshop
June 17-23, 2012
The Art of the Consort

Karen Clark, voice
Twenty years ago in her burgeoning early music career, contralto Karen Clark came to serve on the faculty of the SFEMS Medieval Summer Workshop, where she glimpsed from her dorm window at Dominican College her first ever view of Mount Tamalpais. She enjoyed it so much — the faculty, students and Mt. Tam — that she decided to move across country from New Jersey to California. In the fall of 1979 Karen was studying opera and art song in the Indiana University School of Music (Bloomington) when Thomas Binkley joined the faculty to found the Early Music Institute. Upon hearing Karen sing a Handel aria — with minimum but controlled vibrato — in a choral audition, Binkley invited Karen to join the Pro Arte Singers. It was a fruitful time, and Karen went on to sing with the world's leading early music specialists: Sequentia, P.A.N., Medieval Strings, Boston Camerata, Newberry Consort, New York Early Music, Pomerium Musices, Waverly Consort, the Rifkin/Bach Ensemble, and others. Karen has recorded with several of these fine folks on Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Erato, Focus, Musica Omnia, New Albion, and Innova labels. Recently, in 2011, Karen performed and taught master classes with the Galax Quartet at Bowdoin College (Maine) and at Dickinson College (Pennsylvania). Their concerts of Consort Songs Old & New juxtapose music of John Dowland with music by 21st Century composers. Karen's new music CD, On Cold Mountain: Songs on Poems of Gary Snyder (Innova label) was reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle by Joshua Kosman, who said, "It's mesmerizing.... unplaceable timelessness... Karen Clark's majestic, throaty singing hints of modernist extravagance and medieval troubadours." Even more recently, in January 2012, Karen coached Stanford University students in a Renaissance polyphony workshop titled Tinctoris Five. Karen holds B.M. and M.M. in vocal performance from the Indiana University School of Music and is Guild Certified as a practitioner in the Feldenkrais Method®. Karen has taught at Sonoma State University, Swarthmore College, Princeton University, UC Berkeley, and the Thornton School of Music of the University of Southern California. Karen lives in Petaluma, CA.
www.karenrclark.com

Cheryl Ann Fulton, harp
Recognized as a leading pioneer in the field of historical harps and a popular performer of Celtic lever harps, Cheryl Ann Fulton has had a rich international performing, recording, teaching, and scholarly research career since 1986. She earned a BS degree in pedal harp and an MM and DM in early music/historical harp from the School of Music of Indiana University, Bloomington. During her graduate work at Indiana University, she was a dedicated student of Thomas Binkley and served as Associate Instructor of Historical Harp.

A versatile recording artist, Cheryl Ann can be heard on over fifty albums and soundtracks ranging from medieval, baroque, orchestral, and contemporary music to Celtic music and film scores, most on major labels including PolyGram, Deutche Harmonia Mundi, Koch International Classics, Nonesuch, Erato, Dorian, Gourd Music, and others.

A leading scholar in the field of historical harps, Dr. Fulton is a contributing scholar for the latest edition of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and authored a chapter for A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (IU Press, 2000). She was awarded the Burton E. Adams Prize for Academic Research for her doctoral thesis on the history of the triple harp.

Cheryl Ann has been a member of and worked with many distinguished early music ensembles including Anonymous 4, Sequentia, Ensemble Alcatraz, Les Idees Heureuses, American Bach Soloists, American Baroque, the Boston Camerata, Camerato Mediterena, and Chanticleer. She has been on the faculty for the Amherst Early Music workshops for over twenty-five years and was the first Director of the San Francisco Medieval Music Workshop. She is the founding President of the Historical Harp Society.

Known for her exceptional artistry, she has become a highly sought-after teacher of her masterful and expressive Touch & Tone Technique for Harp and has a full private studio in the San Francisco Bay Area. When she is not harping she is playing with her Belgian Tervuren puppy or out riding her two Arabian horses on the trails in the East Bay hills.

Rotem Gilbert, recorder
Recorder player Rotem Gilbert is a native of Haifa, Israel and a founding member of Ciaramella, an ensemble that specializes in music of the fifteenth century. Ciaramella has performed in early music festivals and concert series in the United States, Canada, and Europe with performances most recently in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, San Diego, Houston, Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles. Ciaramella will be recording its third album this summer.

Rotem is an assistant professor at the USC Thornton School of Music in Los Angeles, where she teaches Baroque and Renaissance performance practice courses and is an instructor of early music winds. As a member of Piffaro (1996-2007), she toured the United States, Europe, and South America. Rotem has appeared with many American and European early music ensembles including Chatham Baroque, King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, and Capilla Flamenca and has been featured as a soloist for the Pittsburgh Opera (Corronatione di Poppea), the LA Opera (Britten's Noye's Fludde, Handel's Tamerlano, and the Play of Daniel), and Musica Angelica (Brandenburg #4). She recently made her debut at Disney hall with the LA Philharmonica (Living Toys by Thomas Adès and The Flowering Tree with John Adams). After studies on recorder 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. She has been a regular faculty member of early music workshops in San Diego, Seattle, Madison, Amherst, and Israel's Ayala and is currently the codirector of SFEMS Recorder Workshop. Rotem can be heard on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana, Dorian, Naxos and Yarlung labels. For more information see www.ciaramella.org.

Grant Herreid, lute and plucked strings
Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings, and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort and plays theorbo and lute regularly with ARTEK and SinfoniaNY. On the faculty at Yale University, he leads the Yale Baroque Opera Project and codirects their Collegium Musicum; in New York City he directs the New York Continuo Collective. Grant devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the groups Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera.

Greg Ingles, sackbut and loud band
Greg Ingles began his musical training at age twelve, when he took up the modern trombone. He attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory. Two days after graduation Greg won the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany. He returned to the United States and completed both a master's and doctoral degree in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook. It was during his graduate work that Greg became acquainted with the sackbut and historical performance. Soon after beginning his early music studies Greg became a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Chiaroscuro, Concerto Palatino, Quicksilve,r and Tafelmusik. Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and has recorded with this group on the Yarlung and Naxos record labels. He is Music Director of the Dark Horse Consort, an ensemble devoted to rarely performed brass music of the 17th century. Mr. Ingles has also recorded with Anakekta, Centaur, Dorian, Kleos, and reZound. Greg was the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University for over a decade. He teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer and taught at the SFEMS Medieval & Renaissance Workshop this past summer.

Loren Ludwig, viol
Loren Ludwig plays acoustic and electric viols in a range of styles. He has performed in Asia, South America, and across Europe and the US and has appeared as a recitalist and with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the New York and Oberlin Consorts of Viols, the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, Catacoustic, Les grâces, Les Délices, and many others. Loren is the recipient of both Fulbright and Mellon fellowships to study and do research in Holland and England, respectively, and completed his undergraduate degree in performance at Oberlin Conservatory with Catharina Meints. He recently received a Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Virginia, for which he wrote a dissertation on the cultural history of the viol consort in England. Loren is a founding member of both the Quaver and Sonnambula viol consorts and currently lives in Wellington, New Zealand, where he is a visiting lecturer at the New Zealand School of Music.

Peter Maund, percussion
A native of San Francisco, Peter Maund studied percussion at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and music, folklore, and ethnomusicology at the University of California, Berkeley. A founding member of Ensemble Alcatraz and Alasdair Fraser's Skyedance, he has performed with early and contemporary music ensembles including Anonymous 4, Chanticleer, Davka, The Harp Consort, Hesperion XX, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Voices of Music. Presenters and venues include Cal Performances, Carnegie Hall, Celtic Connections (Glasgow), Cervantino Festival (Guanajuato, Mexico), Confederation House (Jerusalem), Edinburgh Festival, Festival Interceltique de Lorient, Festival Pau Casals, Folkfestival Dranouter, Freight & Salvage, Horizante Orient Okzident (Berlin), The Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, Palacio Congresos (Madrid), Queen Elizabeth Hall (London), and Tage Alter Musik (Regensburg). Peter Maund is the author of "Percussion" in A Performers Guide to Medieval Music, Indiana University Press, 2000. He has served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, as well as in workshops sponsored by Amherst Early Music, the San Francisco Early Music Society, the American Recorder Society, and the American Orff-Schulwerk Association. D escribed by the Glasgow Herald as "the most considerate and imaginative of percussionists" he can be heard on over sixty recordings as well as film and television soundtracks.

Eric Mentzel, voice
Eric Mentzel returned to the United States in 2002 after living in Germany for fifteen years. He has enjoyed an international career as an early music specialist, working with such conductors as Andrew Parrott, Howard Arman, Paul van Nevel, and Jean Tubery. He has appeared at major festivals and concert venues across Europe, including the Holland Festival, the Edinburgh Festival, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, the Brussels Palais de Beaux Arts, the Alte Oper in Frankfurt, and the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham; concert tours have taken him as far as Japan and Australia. Mentzel is also known for his close collaboration with the most highly regarded ensembles in the early music field, such as Sequentia, the Ferrara Ensemble, and the Huelgas Ensemble. He has appeared on more than forty CDs for Sony, Decca, BMG, Harmonia Mundi, Arcana, Opus 111, Raumklang, Naxos, and others, and his recordings have been awarded the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (German Grammy), the Diapason d'Or de l'Annee, and the Choc de Musique (French recording awards). In 1998 he founded Vox Resonat, an ensemble devoted to the performance of medieval and Renaissance vocal music, which has recorded two CDs for the Marc Aurel Edition label.

In addition to his work in early music, Mentzel has long been involved in contemporary music, premiering new works by Alfred Schnittke, Henri Pousseur, Andrew Toovey, Johannes Fritsch, and Volker Staub both in the US and abroad. Most recently, he sang the role of Galileo in the world premiere of Stargazer, an opera by American composer Garrett Fisher.

Mentzel serves as Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Oregon and is frequently invited to teach workshops and master classes in Europe and North America. He has done several residencies at the Schola Cantorum in Basel, Switzerland, culminating in a four-month study/recording project in 2010, and he performs and teaches each year at the Mexican summer course for singers, Ars Vocalis Mexico. He is a guest professor at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague and has also taught at the Vancouver Early Music Programme and the Amherst Early Music Workshop.

Mary Springfels, viola da gamba and medieval ensembles
Mary Springfels remembers hearing New York Pro Musica perform early music for the first time when she was fourteen years old. She said she immediately fell in love with it and began learning early music instruments in college. She began playing viola da gamba and related early music instruments professionally in 1968, and is one of the most highly regarded interpreters of pre-1800 music. She was Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library from 1982 until her retirement from that post in 2007. Besides founding and directing the Newberry Consort, Mary has performed and recorded extensively with such ensembles as the New York Pro Musica, the Waverly Consort, Concert Royal, Sequentia, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Musica Sacra, the Marlborough Festival, the New York City Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater, where she has served as an artistic advisor.

In Chicago, Mary has also served as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago and Northwestern University. She has taught and performed in summer festivals throughout the US, among them the San Francisco, Madison, and Amherst Early Music Festivals, and the Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. In 2004 she delivered the keynote address to the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition for Early Music America. Over the past few years, Springfels has become very active in baroque opera, and she has performed with organizations such as the New York City Opera and Central City Opera. She will continue this involvement as well as providing lectures. She can be heard on over two dozen recordings, ten of which are critically acclaimed Newberry Consort projects, including Puzzles and Perfect Beauty: Italian Music at the End of the Middle Ages, released in 2007 by Noyse Productions.

Daniel Stillman, Renaissance reeds and loud band
As a player of a wide variety of medieval and Renaissance wind instruments, Daniel Stillman has toured extensively with the Boston Shawm & Sackbut Ensemble, Boston Camerata, and Waverly Consort and has performed and recorded with such groups as the Gabrieli Players and Taverner Players (London), Oltremontano (Antwerp), Apollo's Fire (Cleveland), Folger Consort (Washington, DC), La Nef and Les Sonneurs (Montréal), Trinity Consort (Portland, OR), and the avant-garde ensemble Roger Miller's Exquisite Corpse. Recent performances include a concert in Istanbul with the Boston-based group Dünya and concerts commemorating the 400th anniversary of the death of Tomás Luis de Victoria with Blue Heron Renaissance Choir. He is a member of the trombone section of the period-instrument orchestra Boston Baroque and has performed with such groups as the Handel & Haydn Society, Washington [DC] Bach Consort, Arcadia Players, and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. Dan is a highly sought-after instructor of Renaissance wind instruments, having taught at Wellesley College, the Longy School of Music, Tufts University, and the Five College Early Music Program (Amherst, MA), as well as at workshops for the Amherst Early Music Festival, the San Francisco Early Music Society, and the Texas Toot. He can be heard on some two dozen recordings for the Telarc, Erato, Harmonia Mundi USA, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, EMI, Dorian, Eclectra, and SST labels.

Tom Zajac, Renaissance flutes and workshop collegium
Multi-instrumentalist Tom Zajac is a member of the well-known Renaissance wind band Piffaro and is a frequent guest with the Folger Consort, Newberry Consort, Hesperus, Boston Camerata, Cançonièr, and others. He has toured extensively, having appeared in concert series and festivals in Hong Kong, Guam, Australia, Israel, Colombia, Bolivia, Mexico, and throughout Europe and the United States. He can be heard on over forty recordings of everything from medieval dances to 21st-century chamber music. With his group Ex Umbris, he performed 14th-century music at the 5th Millennium Council event in the East Room of the Clinton White House and 18th-century music for the score of the Ric Burns's documentary on the history of New York. He's played hurdy gurdy for the American Ballet Theater, bagpipe for an internationally broadcast Gatorade commercial, and serpent in a PDQ Bach piece live on Prairie Home Companion. He also performs on santur and zurna with the Boston-based Turkish ensemble, Dünya. This last August, he was invited by the Polish government to take part in a research visit to hear and meet Polish early music ensembles. Tom teaches at recorder and early music workshops throughout the US, is on the faculty of the Madison and Amherst Early Music Festivals, and directs the Medieval & Renaissance week of the SFEMS workshops as well as the early music ensembles at Wellesley College near his home in Boston.