Board of Directors

Following is a list of Early Music America's Board of Directors for 2008-2009.
Click here to see additional Board Member photos.

 

President: Ron Cook


Ron Cook is engaged in the financial transaction practice of the law firm of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP. He is also the director of The Early Interval, an early music ensemble based in Columbus, Ohio, which has performed throughout Ohio since 1977. He is a frequent speaker and writer on early music topics. He has taught recorder at workshops and as an adjunct instructor at the Conservatory of Music at Capital University, and he has appeared as a recorder soloist with a variety of ensembles. He has also performed extensively on historical harps, and has taught historical harp at and served as artistic director of the national Historical Harp Society Workshop. He is a past officer and trustee of The American Recorder Society and a past president of The Historical Harp Society. He has chaired the boards of a number of Columbus arts organizations, including the Greater Columbus Arts Council, the ProMusica Chamber Orchestra and the Friends of Early Music.

Vice-President: Thomas Forrest Kelly

Thomas Forrest Kelly is a professor in the Music Department at Harvard University. He is a scholar of medieval music, and has been involved in early music as Director of the Historical Performance Program at the Oberlin Conservatory, as director of the Five College Early Music Program in Massachusetts, and as music director of the Castle Hill Festival. He is the author of First Nights: Five Music Premieres, and of First Nights at the Opera (Yale University Press.)

Vice-President: Angela Mariani

 

Angela Mariani is host of Harmonia, WFIU's nationally-syndicated weekly early music radio program. She is also a member of the medieval ensemble Altramar, which has toured throughout the United States and Europe and has seven CDs on the Dorian label. A native of Massachusetts, Angela spent the 70s and most of the 80s as a freelance rock and folk musician; however, a growing passion for early music led her to Bloomington, Indiana in 1987 to study with Thomas Binkley. She completed a Master's degree from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University in 1990, and pursued postgraduate studies there for several years. She is now Visiting Professor of Music History and Literature at Texas Tech University, where she teaches various early music history courses, directs the Collegium, and teaches History of Rock and Roll (!). Angela is also actively involved with a range of traditional musics, as well as literature, yoga, and meditation. She lives in Lubbock, Texas with her husband, guitarist and musicologist Chris Smith.

Secretary: Susan Weiss


Susan Weiss is a professor of Music History at Peabody Conservatory, John Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland. She received her B.A. from Goucher College, her M.A. from Smith College and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. In addition to papers delivered at numerous international conferences in the U.S. and Europe, publications include articles in a number of national and international journals such as The Journal of The American Musicological Society, the book Bologna Q 18: An Introduction and Facsimile Edition (1999), as well as entries in the forthcoming edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. She served on the AMS Council from 1995 to 1997.

 

Assistant Secretary: Rebecca Baltzer


Rebecca A. Baltzer, PhD, is a professor of musicology at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a specialist in medieval music, especially that of the Notre-Dame School and Ars Antiqua. She also has interests in the Delta blues tradition of her native Mississippi. She is a past recipient of the American Musicological Society's Alfred Einstein Award and is widely published, including articles in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. She edited Volume 5 of a seven-volume critical edition of the Magnus liber organi (Monaco, 1995), co-edited The Union of Words and Music in Medieval Poetry (Texas, 1991), and co-edited The Divine Office in the Latin Middle Ages (Oxford, 2000), which won an award from the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers. One of the founders of UT's Medieval Studies program, she also served for four years as an Associate Dean of the Graduate School.

Treasurer: Robert Birman


Robert Birman is Executive Director of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra in San Francisco, having served for four years as the General Manager of the Santa Barbara Symphony and General Manager of the Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra of Boston. He served as an arts administration fellow with the National Endowment for the Arts, the New World Symphony, and the Colorado Music Festival. Since moving to California, Mr. Birman has been a member of the Board of Directors and is currently past President of the Board of the Association of California Symphony Orchestras. He has served on grants panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and the Heinz Endowments and is a presenter and participant in programs of the American Symphony Orchestra League's Orchestra Leadership Academy. Mr. Birman is a percussionist and has a Bachelor of Music degree from Temple University and graduate training in arts administration from Drexel University in Philadelphia. He currently serves on the Advisory Board for Seattle Baroque Orchestra.

Assistant Treasurer: Jeffrey Barnett


Jeffrey P. Barnett is a partner and Chief Operating Officer of Granite Point Capital, a Boston-based money management firm. He is responsible for all aspects of the firm's business, including investor relations, marketing, human resources, systems, and trading. Earlier in his career, Mr. Barnett worked in alumni relations, fundraising and program development at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and the University of Minnesota School of Music. Mr. Barnett is a graduate of Saint John's University (Minnesota) and received an M.B.A. from Stanford University. Mr. Barnett is also a professional lyric tenor and has performed with many early music and modern orchestras, including Apollo's Fire, American Bach Soloists, California Chamber Symphony, and an all-Bach recital with members of Philharmonia Baroque. Currently, he performs at Boston's Emmanuel Church, famous for its Bach Cantata series. He is also a member of the Board of Overseers of the New England Conservatory of Music.

President-Elect: Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson is a partner in the Buchanan Ingersoll law firm, where he has practiced from the firm's Pittsburgh, PA office since graduating from the Harvard Law School in 1969. His law practice is tax-law focused on employee benefits, executive compensation, and tax-exempt nonprofit organization law. He has been elected a Fellow of the American College of Tax Counsel and a Fellow of the American College of Employee Benefits Counsel. Outside of work and family (wife Selina and two children at university), he loves watching NHL ice hockey and reading political opinion journals. However, his consuming love since a boy has been music, especially early music. He currently serves on the Boards of Chatham Baroque, the Renaissance & Baroque Society of Pittsburgh (Vice President), the River City Brass Band Charitable Endowment, and Friends of the Music Library (Treasurer), which supports the music collection at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Library.

 

Members


Barry Bauguess is one of North Americas most sought-after Baroque trumpet concert and recording artists. He frequently appears with many of Americas finest period ensembles including the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Chatham Baroque, Apollo's Fire, Chatham Baroque, Tafelmusik, The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Magnolia Baroque Festival, The Washington Bach Consort, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and Opera Lafayette, and was a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra for fourteen years. He is currently on the faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory and is the owner of The Baroque Trumpet Shop in New Bern, North Carolina.


Following a career as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Bernice Chen has spent the past 25 years in various capacities in association with the Boston Early Music Festival, and has served as President of the Board for the past 10 years. She attended the first Festival in Boston in 1981 as a volunteer selling posters in the lobby, and her involvement grew along with the field of Early Music.

She has also been an active amateur musician studying the recorder, harpsichord, and viola da gamba as well as enthusiastic attendee for 28 years of the Amherst Early Music workshops.


Pablo Corá holds music degrees from Ithaca College and Indiana University. Originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Mr. Corá has sung both as a soloist and chamber musician in a wide variety of repertory ranging from early music and oratorio to twentieth century opera. He performs regularly with the Los Angeles Master Choral, L.A. Chamber Singers and Cappella, Musica Angelica, Camarata Pacifica Baroque and the Catacoustic Ensemble.

Mr. Corá is a founding member of the Concord Ensemble, which won first prize in the EMA/Dorian Records Recording Competition. The group's debut recording, "The Victory of Santiago: Voices of Renaissance Spain" earned a five star distinction in Goldberg Magazine. He has recording credits with Dorian Recordings, Harmonia Mundi, RCM, Gothic, and several independent labels.

Dr. Frank Gerbode is a Psychiatrist and Certified Trauma Specialist. He studied philosophy at Stanford and Cambridge Universities during the sixties, then went on to receive his M.D. from Yale Medical School and complete his Psychiatric residency at Stanford University Medical Center. He spent more than twenty years studying alternative methods of helping individuals achieve their potential and enhance the quality of their lives. Frank "Sarge" Gerbode is also an accomplished lutenist and maintains a lute page on the web with over 3000 lute pieces in French tablature. (www.gerbode.net)


Susan Hellauer is a founding member of the vocal ensemble Anonymous 4, whose award-winning recordings of medieval, contemporary and traditional music have sold over a million and a half copies worldwide. She was born and raised in the beautiful Bronx, New York, where she rooted for the Yankees, and excelled at knock hockey. Susan earned a B.A. in music from Queens College as a trumpet player, but an increasing fascination with medieval and Renaissance vocal music led her to convert to singing, and to pursue degrees in musicology from Queens College and Columbia University. Susan handles Anonymous 4's medieval music research, teaches and directs the Collegium at Queens College, plays Baroque guitar, and is a volunteer EMT with the Nyack Community Ambulance Corps. She and Anonymous 4 colleague Marsha Genensky have also just launched "The Lost Girls" to explore traditional music of America and beyond. Stay tuned . . .


Gerald Hoekstra is Professor of Music at St. Olaf College, where he teaches music history and directs St. Olaf's early music ensembles, the Collegium Musicum and the Early Music Singers. His area of specialization is music of the Renaissance, particularly the French and Flemish chanson. He has published articles in Early Music, Musica Disciplina, Speculum, and The Choral Journal, and he has published critical editions of music of Hubert Waelrant and André Pevernage. He is a member of the American Musicological Society, Early Music America, and the Viola da Gamba Society of America and in 2002 was awarded the Thomas Binkley Award by EMA for contributions to early music in higher education.


Valerie Horst received a B.A. from Fordham University and an M.F.A. in Historical Performance from Sarah Lawrence College (studies in musicology with Richard Taruskin). She is Director Emerita of Amherst Early Music, Inc., producers of the largest teaching festival of early music in the Western Hemisphere. She was a founding board member Early Music America, and served a term as president. She was a longtime board member of the American Recorder Society and served as its vice president. She has for many years been Music Director of the Miami chapter of the American Recorder Society. She has been a member of the Historical Performance faculty at the Mannes College of Music since 1982, and served for several years as the director of the Historical Performance Program there. She is a former member of the Renaissance choir Cappella Nova, and she toured as a recorder player with the New York Chamber Soloists. She is the recipient of the American Recorder Society's 2003 Distinguished Achievement Award, in recognition of her long career of service to the world of early music.


Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the Renaissance wind ensemble Piffaro, turned to early music performance full time after a number of years as an educator. She is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private students and coaches recorder ensembles as well as a newly formed Renaissance bagpipe band. She has also performed with New York's Ensemble for Early Music, The Philadelphia Classical Symphony, The Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and with numerous instrumental and vocal ensembles in the Philadelphia area. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro on Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, and Dorian, she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical and Vox Amadeus.


Alexandra MacCracken is the founder and director of Ensemble Gaudior, which is based in the Washington DC area and presents concerts of chamber music from the Baroque and Classical eras, using instruments from those periods or careful modern copies. She has performed as a baroque violinist with the Washington Bach Consort, Opera Lafayette, and Modern Musick, as well as with other period-instrument ensembles in Richmond, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and New York. After earning both bachelorπs and masterπs degrees in music from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, Ms. MacCracken taught for several years at the University of Virginia, where she also played in the Piedmont Chamber Players, a faculty ensemble. Other highlights of her extensive experience as a chamber musician include membership in the Squareknot Quartet, whose repertoire ranged from the classics to innovative arrangements in popular, folk, and jazz styles; and more recently in the Virginia-based baroque groups La Stravaganza and Harmonia Nova. Ms. MacCracken currently freelances on modern as well as baroque violin and in addition occasionally finds time to play Renaissance consort music on the treble viol.


Deborah Malamud is the An-Bryce Professor of Law at New York University Law School, where she teaches and writes on labor and employment law and constitutional law, with an emphasis on issues of race and class. She served as a law clerk to two federal judges (the Hon. Louis H. Pollak and Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun), and practiced labor law on the union side (Bredhoff & Kaiser, Washington, D.C.) before turning to legal academia (University of Michigan and New York University Law Schools). As recently described in the pages of Early Music Magazine, Vol. 11 No. 4, Winter 2005 "My Ideal of Perfection: Amateurs Talk About Their Lives in Early Music," she is a life-long passionate amateur singer, and has performed with many early music groups, including Capella Nova, the University of Chicago Collegium, the Washington Bach Consort, and, most recently, the New York Continuo Collective. She is a frequent participant in early music workshops, most often the Madison Early Music Festival and the workshops of the Western Wind Vocal Ensemble.


Michael McCraw is cited in the newest edition of "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians" as one of the most important early bassoon players and pedagogues of our time. A pioneer in the field of baroque performance with original instruments, he began his career in New York City as a member of the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra . Mr. McCraw has played with such ensembles as Musica Antiqua Koeln, Concentus Musicus Wien, London Baroque, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, and Camerata Koeln. From 1991 through 2002, he was principal bassoonist of the Tafelmusik Orchestra. Mr. McCraw has taught at festivals and workshops all over the world and was a faculty member of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. His recordings number more than 140 and include a highly acclaimed CD of Vivaldi bassoon concerti with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra. Mr. McCraw serves as musical director of the baroque double reed workshop in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He currently is the director of the Early Music Institute at Indiana University.


Recorderist and teacher Natalie Michaud joined the Baroque music society Les Idées heureuses in 1990 as co-artistic director. Contemporary music also remains important in her activities. In 1991, she was selected by the American Recorder Society to perform the Canadian première of a quintet for recorder and strings written by Ezra Laderman. Since then, Canadian composers such as Martin Arnold and John Rea have written works for her.
Michaud teaches recorder and chamber music at McGill University and at the Music Conservatory of Mc Gill. She is well-known in summer music academies such as CAMMAC and Amherst Early Music. She has recorded numerous concerts for Canadian Radio, as well as CDs on Atma, Dorian and Analekta labels. Her most recent recordings with Les Idées heureuses are Christoph Graupner’s Ouverture and Concerto for recorder and strings. Photo by Didier Bertrand.


Gene Murrow is active in both early music and the traditions of country dance. Currently the general manager of the Early Music Foundation in New York City, he also teaches at numerous early music workshops, American Recorder Society chapter meetings, and is a past president of the American Recorder Society. He has a BA in music from Columbia University and studied oboe with Lois Wann at Juilliard. He is a former Program Director of Early Music Week at Pinewoods Camp.


Lyle Nordstrom is professor of music history and director of early music at the University of North Texas. He was honored by Early Music America with the Thomas Binkley award. Nordstrom is founder and co-director of "The Musicians of Swanne Alley," the well-known Elizabethan music ensemble with whom he has recorded on the Virgin Classics, Harmonia Mundi and Focus labels. With that ensemble and others he has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, the Bath Festival, several times on "St. Paul Sunday", as well as German, Danish, French and English radio and television. Nordstrom also is founder and artistic director of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. He has published several articles on lute-related subjects, and written a book on the 16th-century wire-strung bandora. He is editor of the Lute Society of America Scholarly Editions project. He is past president of the Atlanta Early Music Alliance.


Florence Peacock, soprano, received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Hollins College and her Master of Music degree from Yale University. She has performed as a soloist in oratorio, recitals, and opera throughout the United States and in Canada, England, Japan, Indonesia, and Russia. A regular soloist at Oberlin College's Baroque Performance Institute, Florence also performed at the Franz Schubert Institute in Austria. She has broadcast songs by Stephen Foster on NPR's "Performance Today." Florence received critical acclaim for her solo performances with the Atlanta Symphony. Her Chapel Hill performance in Handel's "Israel in Egypt" was cited as "one of the year's most thrilling moments!" (John Lambert, critic). In May 2004 Florence was the featured soloist with the Atlanta Pops Orchestra in Georgia. Florence teaches singing at her voice studio in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.


Jordan Sramek is Founder/Artistic Director of The Rose Ensemble, a vocal group based in St. Paul, Minnesota. Since moving to the Twin Cities in 1994, he has been active as a musician, scholar, teacher and arts entrepreneur. Also in demand as coach and consultant, Jordan has led musical workshops and master-classes in universities across the U.S., and has advised arts groups, boards and administrators throughout the world. Through his work with The Rose Ensemble he has developed award-winning educational programs, which are enjoyed by thousands of young people each year. Jordan has received several awards, most notably a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship for Performing Musicians and a Jerome Foundation Travel/Study Grant. The Rose Ensemble is a four-time nominee for a Minnesota Music Award (Best Classical Artist) and in 2005 the group was named recipient of the Chorus America Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence.


Laurence B. Sutter been a member of one or more performing ensembles as an instrumental musician or vocalist for most of his life, including the 199th Army Band (The Governor’s Own), New York Army National Guard; Pro Arte Double Chorale; The Dessoff Choirs; Amor Artis Chamber Chorus and Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble. A graduate of NYU School of Law, he specializes in First Amendment and communications law at Penthouse Media Group Inc. in New York City.


Lee Talner is Professor of Radiology at University of Washington. He received his BA from Amherst College and MD from Yale University. In Seattle, he serves on the advisory boards of the UW World Series (piano, chamber music, dance and world music) and Seattle Baroque Orchestra and is deeply committed to both organizations’ outreach programs that bring world class performing artists into Seattle’s public schools. Having played trumpet, recorder and other renaissance wind instruments including cornetto, and having performed regularly with the Guidonian Hand in the 1970s, Lee has only recently discovered the ecstasy of viola da gamba and is privileged to study with Margriet Tindemans. He is a member of “A Curious Collection," an ensemble of voice, flute and 2 gambas that performs Scottish traditional music. He commutes monthly to San Diego to be with family.


Christopher Thorpe is a computer scientist, finance professional, and semiprofessional musician living in the Boston area. He presently directs Babel Research LLC, a boutique hedge fund in New York, and teaches a graduate seminar in computational finance at Harvard University's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. Prior to graduate school, Thorpe worked as a software engineer and entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In addition to his professional work, Thorpe is an active supporter of early music, particularly through the development of and ongoing support of EMA's Unicorn Prize. As a tenor/countertenor and occasional conductor, Christopher has performed with numerous early music ensembles and church choirs in the Boston and San Francisco areas, including the Church of the Advent, Grace Cathedral, and the Harvard Early Music Society. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in Computer Science and Music from Harvard, and will receive the Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard in June 2008.


Michele Anne U is Canadian born and a retired critical care nurse with a long association with the arts. She was first introduced to early music at a harpsichord recital by Ralph Kirkpatrick 30+ years ago, and has since been involved in many aspects of early music including concert production, fundraising, musician liaison, and promotion of historically informed performances. In 1996 while serving on the Board of American Bach Soloists she organized and led ABS on their invitational tour to Singapore and Hong Kong. Pursuing her interest in arts and environmental education for young people, Michele has served on the educational committee of San Francisco Performances, and has volunteered as a docent with the Bay Shore Studies Program of the Tiburon Bay Audubon Sanctuary. She currently serves on the Board of Cal Performances. An avid sea kayaker and world traveler, Michele and her husband Kwei, a retired neurologist, live in Mill Valley, CA and Salt Spring Island, British Columbia. They have two adult children. Although she owns the first Blanchet harpsichord built by master builder John Phillips, she has never quite mastered the harpsichord.


Robina Young is Vice President and Artistic Director of Harmonia Mundi USA. She is Executive Producer of recordings by such early music artists in the Harmonia Mundi catalogue as Anonymous 4, Paul O'Dette, and Paul Hillier.


Nancy Zylstra has earned critical acclaim and recognition for her pure and expressive singing in a wide variety of repertoire. She has sung for such conductors as James DePriest, Andrew Parrott, Gustav Leonhardt, Ton Koopman, and Nicholas McGegan and with orchestras such as the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Oregon Symphony, Tafelmusik (Toronto), Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco). She has performed in the early music festivals of Vancouver, Berlin, Versailles, Berkeley, and Regensburg. In Seattle she was soprano soloist at St. James Cathedral and a member of Circa 1600 and the Versailles Ensemble. She is in demand as a vocal teacher and coach, teaching privately as well as at University of Washington, Pacific Lutheran University, and Cornish College of the Arts. Since 1979 she has been on the faculty of the Oberlin Conservatory Baroque Performance Institute.

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