October 23–26, 2019 Oberlin Conservatory of Music Oberlin, Ohio 44074 Conference Performers and Speakers | Main Page | Conference Schedule |

_________________________________________________

Anne Acker is a full time historic keyboard specialist, despite having accumulated various degrees in mathematics and computer science once upon a time. Much more happily, she builds, restores and decorates harpsichords, clavichords and historic pianos for clients internationally as well as acting as an appraiser, researcher, consultant, lecturer and writer. She served as a Senior Editor and Contributor for Oxford University Press’s 2nd edition of the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments, responsible for stringed keyboard instrument related entries, electronics, computers, ‘weird cool stuff’, and touch. She plays various keyboard instruments professionally including with her own group, Savannah Baroque, as harpsichord and general continuo for the Savannah Philharmonic, has solo’ed with a number of orchestras, and plays with the medieval and Renaissance music group The Goliards on portative organ, percussion and sinfonye. She has workshops/homes in Savannah, Georgia and the mountains of Pennsylvania, both of which are well occupied with members of her keyboard collection. Panel Discussion
_________________________________________________

Before his retirement from teaching in 2017, Robert Bates served as Professor of Music at the Moores School of Music, the University of Houston, where he headed the organ department. He received a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University, where he later served as University Organist. In 2012, he became a Fellow at the Institute of Sacred Music and Senior Research Scholar at Yale University. Dr. Bates won top prizes for organ performance in Fort Wayne (both first and second), San Antonio, Detroit, and Bruges; he was awarded two French conservatory prizes, the Prix d'excellence and the Prix de virtuosité, both from the class of Marie-Claire Alain. He has performed widely in Europe and at many universities in the United States. He is a specialist in early French organs and organ music, and he is currently writing a multi-volume study of the organ of the French Renaissance. His articles have appeared in the Organ Yearbook, Music and Letters, Performance Practice Review, Les Cahiers d'Artes, and The Journal of Early Keyboard Music. His extensive discography includes the complete works of Johannes Brahms, Louis-Claude Daquin, Francisco Correa de Arauxo, and Jehan Titelouze (awarded the prestigious German Music Critics Award). Concert Program
_________________________________________________

Edoardo Bellotti has extensive teaching experience, having been Professor of Organ, Harpsichord and Improvisation in several musical institutions and universities including the Conservatory of Trossingen and the University of Bremen in Germany, the University of Udine and the Conservatory of Trento in Italy. A virtuoso organist and renowned improviser, Bellotti performs at leading festivals and concert venues throughout the world. He is currently collaborating in a project of new organ music and visual art in Milan, in conjunction with the art installation of the American minimalist Dan Flavin. He has performed the complete works of Cesar Franck, and has worked with orchestras in Italy and abroad, performing a wide spectrum of repertoire, including the Italian premiere of Satyagraha by Philip Glass. He is also considered a leading expert in the performance of renaissance and baroque keyboard music. He combines his international performing career with musicological research and teaching, publishing articles as well as new critical editions of music of the 17th and 18th centuries. He is a frequent guest lecturer at international conferences. He has made several critically acclaimed recordings on historical instruments, including Promenade (Loft), a recording of organ repertoire and original improvisations on the Eastman School of Music’s Italian baroque organ at the Memorial Art Gallery in Rochester. Masterclass
Concert Program

Andria Derstine has served as the John G. W. Cowles Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College since 2012; she previously held curatorial positions there and at the Detroit Institute of Arts. She has curated numerous exhibitions of Renaissance through contemporary art, several in conjunction with such institutions as the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Phillips Collection, and the Yale University Art Gallery. Her scholarly expertise is in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French and Italian art. Among her numerous publications are the catalogues Allen Memorial Art Museum: Highlights from the Collection (2011) and Masters of Italian Baroque Painting: The Detroit Institute of Arts (2005). She has additionally contributed essays and articles on Renaissance and baroque painting, Rembrandt etchings, eighteenth-century interior decoration, Venetian art, Nattier, Monet, and Fred Wilson to publications of the Cincinnati Art Museum, Cornell University, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the El Paso Museum of Art, the Frick Collection, the Frist Center for the Visual Arts, the Getty Research Institute, Oberlin College, and the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, and to The Burlington Magazine. Derstine has taught at New York University and Oberlin College and has held fellowships from the Brown Foundation Fellows Program, the Center for Curatorial Leadership, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She holds a Ph.D. from NYU and an A.B. from Harvard.
_________________________________________________

Pianist Matthew Bengtson has a versatile combination of musical talents ranging from pianist, fortepianist and harpsichordist, to composer, writer, and scholar of performance practice. An advocate of both contemporary and rarely performed music, he offers a diverse repertoire, ranging from Byrd to Ligeti and numerous contemporary composers. He has performed in concerts across Europe and in the US including multiple recitals at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall. He has performed with violinist Joshua Bell on NPR’s “Performance Today” and XM Satellite Radio’s “Classical Confidential,” and in the multi-sensory festival “Scriabin in the Himalayas” in Ladakh, India. His recordings can be heard on the Romeo, Arabesque, Griffin Renaissance, Albany, Musica Omnia, and Navona record labels. Mr. Bengtson is best known as an interpreter of the music of Scriabin and Szymanowski, and his recordings have received outstanding reviews in Fanfare and American Record Guide, and others. He is Assistant Professor of Piano Literature at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, where he teaches studio piano, fortepiano, and courses in the repertoire, history, and culture of the piano.
Lecture Recital
_________________________________________________

Stephen Birkett is an Associate Professor of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His technical background is complemented by piano performance studies at the RCM, London. Dr. Birkett's research focuses on technology and design of historical and modern keyboard instruments, and the physical properties of critical materials such as leather, felt, and wire. This work has been applied to the commercial production of authentic historical iron, steel, and brass music wires.

_________________________________________________

Ruby Brallier, baroque cellist and violist da gamba, holds performance degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, the University of Michigan, and Lawrence University. A native of Seattle, Washington, Ruby is an avid teacher and chamber musician. Ruby was recently featured at Early Music America's 2019 Young Performer's Festival and soloed with the Oberlin Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Jeanne Lamon. Other appearances include Cranbrook Music Guild's Chamber Artist Series, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's Pre-Concert Series, the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin, and the Icicle Creek Chamber Music Festival.
_________________________________________________

David Breitman is equally at home with the fortepiano and the modern piano, and enjoys both solo and ensemble playing. His collaboration with the late Sanford Sylvan spanned more than thirty years, with several hundred recitals and four CDs, ranging from Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin, to the premiere recording of The Glass Hammer, a major song cycle by the Cuban-American composer Jorge Martin. He has recorded the Mozart piano-violin sonatas on historical instruments with Jean-François Rivest for Analekta, and, in a collaboration of a different sort, he is one of seven fortepianists on the 10-CD recording of the complete Beethoven piano sonata cycle on CLAVES. Beethoven has continued to be a major preoccupation, with recent recordings of the complete violin sonatas with Elizabeth Wallfisch and the cello sonatas and variations with Jaap ter Linden, for the Nimbus label. David is the director of the Historical Performance Program at Oberlin Conservatory where he teaches fortepiano and clavichord as well as courses in performance practice, and is currently working on a book titled Time-Travel for Pianists: How Today’s Players Can Learn from Yesterday’s Instruments. Masterclass
Concert Program

Baritone Thomas Meglioranza was a winner of the Walter W. Naumburg and Concert Artists Guild competitions. Highlights from recent seasons include an all-Hugo Wolf recital at Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, performances of Schubert’s Die schöne Müllerin with pianist Reiko Uchida and Winterreise with fortepianist David Breitman, the role of Lord Henry in Lowell Liebermann’s The Picture of Dorian Gray with Odyssey Opera, the role of Wreck in Bernstein’s Wonderful Town with the Seattle Symphony, and Bach’s solo bass cantatas with the Lyra Baroque Orchestra. In addition to Messiahs, Carmina Buranas, and Bach passions with many US orchestras, he has sung Copland's Old American Songs with the National Symphony, Eight Songs for a Mad King with the LA Philharmonic, Bach cantatas with Les Violons du Roy, and John Harbison's Fifth Symphony with the Boston Symphony. His operatic roles include Pierrot in Die tote Stadt, Chou En-Lai in Nixon in China and Prior Walter in Peter Eötvös' Angels in America. With pianist Reiko Uchida, he has given recitals around the world and recorded three albums of Schubert lieder, and Fauré’s La bonne chanson. His discography also includes orchestral songs of Virgil Thomson with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, songs of Louis Karchin with the Orchestra of the League of Composers, and Bach cantatas with the Taverner Consort. Meglioranza was born in Manhattan, grew up in northern New Jersey, and graduated from Grinnell College and the Eastman School of Music.

Susan Youens is J. W. Van Gorkom Professor of Music emerita at the University of Notre Dame. She has written eight books on Lieder, including Retracing a Winter's Journey: Schubert's Winterreise (Cornell University Press); Schubert, Müller, and Die schöne Müllerin; Hugo Wolf and his Mörike Songs; Schubert’s Late Lieder; and Heinrich Heine and the Lied (all from Cambridge University Press), as well as over-70 scholarly articles and chapters. She is the winner of four NEH fellowships, as well as Guggenheim, National Humanities Center, and Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton fellowships.
Lecture Recital
_________________________________________________

Deborah Campana assumed her current position as head of the Conservatory Library at Oberlin College and Conservatory in 1998. Prior to this, she held various positions including Music Public Services Librarian at Northwestern University. There she earned a PhD in music theory, and then at the University of Chicago, an Arts Masters in library science. Currently the editor of the Music Library Association’s (MLA) quarterly journal, Notes, Campana has also edited two monographic series for MLA: The Index and Bibliography Series and Basic Manual Series. Her research on John Cage’s music, information flow, and library administration has appeared in articles and book chapters published by the University of Chicago, Bucknell University, Oxford University, and others. She has also served on the boards of directors of the Music Library Association, the International Association of Music Libraries-US, and the American Music Center/New Music USA.
_________________________________________________

John Cavanaugh, RPT, is the director of the Artist Diploma in Piano Technology program and executive director of keyboard technology. Cavanaugh has had a strong connection with Steinway and Sons since his graduation from the North Bennett Street School. Immediately upon graduation, Cavanaugh worked for Steinway dealerships in Boston and Detroit. In 2001, he joined Oberlin’s piano technology department, where he became department head two years later. In 2003, he and John Patton of Steinway & Sons, created Steinway at Oberlin, a summer program of classes for the Steinway Academy. The conservatory remains the only offsite factory training facility for Steinway and Sons. Cavanaugh continues to direct this program with Kent Webb of Steinway.
Cavanaugh works on the concert stage preparing pianos for artists worldwide. He also has taught piano technology classes for students at the conservatory and has led special courses overseas, most notably in South Africa and China. Cavanaugh works as a concert technician every summer at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he also teaches piano technology to apprentice staff. He is a concert technician for the Steinway-sponsored Cleveland International Piano Competition. Cavanaugh received training from the C.F. Theodore Steinway Technical Academy in both the New York and Hamburg factories. His training in the New York factory included work in the classroom and in the forefinishing, damper, and voicing departments. At the Hamburg plant, he received special training in action and voicing service.
_________________________________________________

Matthew Dirst is the first American musician to win major international prizes in both organ and harpsichord. Widely admired for his stylish playing and conducting, he was recently described in the Washington Post as an “efficient, extremely precise conductor who has an ear for detail and up-to-date ideas about performing Bach.” Early Music America celebrated his solo recording of harpsichord works by François and Armand-Louis Couperin as a “stylish, tasteful, and technically commanding performance…expressive and brilliant playing.” As Artistic Director of Ars Lyrica Houston, he leads a period-instrument ensemble with several acclaimed recordings, one of which — the world premiere recording of Johann Adolph Hasse’s Marc Antonio e Cleopatra — was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2011 for Best Opera. Matthew holds the PhD in musicology from Stanford University and the prix de virtuosité in both organ and harpsichord from the Conservatoire National de Reuil-Malmaison, France, where he spent two years as a Fulbright scholar. Equally active as a scholar and organist, he serves currently as Professor of Music at the Moores School of Music, University of Houston, and organist at St Philip Presbyterian Church in Houston. Dirst is the author of Engaging Bach: The Keyboard Legacy from Marpurg to Mendelssohn (Cambridge University Press, 2012) and the editor of Bach and the Organ (University of Illinois Press, 2016).

Kathryn Montoya teaches historical oboes and recorder at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of North Texas. She appears with a variety of orchestral and chamber music ensembles including the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Tafelmusik, the Wiener Akademie, and Apollo’s Fire among others. Recent projects include performances and recording of Handel's Almira with the Boston Early Music Festival in Germany and concerts with the LA Philharmonic. Kathryn has been broadcast on NPR's Performance Today and can be heard on the Erato, Naxos, CPO, NCA, Analekta, and Dorian Sono Luminus labels. In her free time Kathryn can be found in Hereford, England working on an 18th century barn conversion with her husband, James.
Concert Program
_________________________________________________

First prize winner in the 2012 Musica Antiqua Bruges International Harpsichord Competition, Canadian harpsichordist and organist Mark Edwards is recognized for his captivating performances, bringing the listener “to new and unpredictable regions, using all of the resources of his instrument, [...] of his virtuosity, and of his imagination” (La Libre Belgique). Since 2016, he has been Assistant Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory. He has given solo recitals at prominent festivals and concert series, has performed concerti with award-winning ensembles, and is also an active chamber musician. He is the artistic director of Poiesis, collaborates regularly with Les Boréades de Montréal and Les Délices (Cleveland), and has performed with Tafelmusik, Il Pomo d’Oro, and Pallade Musica. His début solo CD, Orpheus Descending, was released in 2017 on the early-music.com label, and Passaggi (ATMA 2013) with recorder player Vincent Lauzer, was nominated for an ADISQ award. Mark is the recipient of academic grants from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). He studied at the Eastman School of Music, and completed graduate degrees at McGill University and the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg. His former teachers include Robert Hill, William Porter, Hank Knox, and David Higgs. He is currently a PhD candidate at Leiden University and the Orpheus Instituut, Ghent, where his research examines the intersection of memory, improvisation, and the musical work in seventeenth-century France.
Concert Program
_________________________________________________

Karen Flint, keyboard instrument collector, harpsichordist and artistic director of Brandywine Baroque since its founding, directs a series of concerts in Delaware, a harpsichord masterclass in January, and a weekend festival of harpsichord recitals called Harpsichord Heaven in April each year. The programs utilize the restored instruments of The Flint Collection. Ms. Flint holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin, as an organ and music education major with Fenner Douglass and organ and harpsichord with Egbert Ennulat, and a Master of Music from the University of Michigan, in harpsichord performance with Edward Parmentier. She is currently Adjunct Instructor of Harpsichord at the University of Delaware. In 2000, she founded the recording label Plectra Music, specializing in harpsichord and Baroque music, that currently has 55 CDs in its catalog. Panel Discussion
_________________________________________________

Jacob Fuhrman is Organist and Director of Liturgical Music at St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in Penfield, NY, where he oversees a program of about 100 volunteer musicians, conducts four ensembles, and manages a concert series. He studied organ performance at Wheaton College (IL) with Edward Zimmerman and at the Eastman School of Music with William Porter, Edoardo Bellotti, and Michel Bouvard, completing the Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Eastman in 2019. Additional coachings and masterclasses have been with David Higgs, Christa Rakich, William Bolcom, Hans Davidsson, Armando Carideo, and Roberto Antonello (organ); Edoardo Bellotti (harpsichord); Annie Laver and Joel Speerstra (clavichord); Edoardo Bellotti and William Porter (improvisation); and Christel Thielmann and Geoffrey Burgess (ensemble playing). His doctoral lecture recital dealt with a book of organ accompaniments to the Genevan Psalter, published in Amsterdam in 1777, and he is currently in the process of extending that research into several similar books published in the Netherlands between 1730 and 1780. Paper Abstract
_________________________________________________

Christina Fuhrmann is Professor of Music at Baldwin Wallace University and Editor of BACH: Journal of the Riemenschneider Bach Institute. Her research has been published in venues such as The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical, Nineteenth-Century Music Review, The Journal of Musicological Research, and The Encyclopedia of Romantic Literature. In 2012, she published an edition of Henry Bishop’s 1819 adaptation of Le nozze di Figaro with A-R Editions. Her book Foreign Opera at the London Playhouses, from Mozart to Bellini was published in 2015 by Cambridge University Press and in 2017 won the Diana McVeagh Prize for Best Book on British Music from the North American British Music Studies Association.

A native of Warren, Ohio, Dylan Sanzenbacher is a Music Education major at the Baldwin Wallace University Conservatory of Music in Berea, Ohio. He has studied piano with Thomas Solich and Dr. Sungeun Kim and organ and harpsichord with Professor Nicole Keller. Most recently, he has begun studying harpsichord with Lisa Crawford. He is expecting his Bachelor’s degree in Music Education in the spring of 2020. After he graduates, Dylan would like to continue his education in a Master’s program in early keyboard performance. Dylan currently serves as Director of Music and Organist at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Elyria, as well as the Riemenschneider Bach Institute (RBI) Educator, a newly established award that focuses on the collaboration between the RBI and the Community Arts School at Baldwin Wallace. Lecture Recital
_________________________________________________

Erica Johnson is a Boston-based organist and clavichordist. She recently joined the faculty of Wellesley College as College Organist and Instructor in Organ. As an organ instructor she has taught at the UNC School of the Arts, Salem College, and the Oberlin Conservatory, and she designed and taught the graduate course in organ literature at the Eastman School of Music from 2006-2008. In the realm of church music, Erica served as Organ Scholar at the Memorial Church of Harvard University from 1999-2001, and she currently is the Director of Liturgy and Music at Sacred Heart Parish in Newton Centre, MA. Erica is a graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, Oberlin College, New England Conservatory, and the Eastman School of Music. With a generous grant from the Beebe Fund for Musicians, she enjoyed two years of further study at the Hochschule fur Kunste in Bremen, Germany, where she learned from the instruments in Ostfriesland, particularly those of Schnitger. Her years in Germany yielded two honors: the 2004 International Arp Schnitger Prize awarded by the Arp Schnitger Gesellschaft for promoting the legacy of the organ builder, and also two performance awards during the 2002 Norddeutsche Rundfunk (NDR) Musikpreis, held on the instruments in Basedow, Stade-St. Wilhadi, and Norden-Ludgerikirche. In October 2017 she was featured as a performer during the Göteborg International Organ Academy in Gothenburg, Sweden. Concert Program
_________________________________________________

David Kazimir, curator of organ at Oberlin Conservatory, is a native of Caldwell, New Jersey. He began his musical studies on piano with Catherine Burell and studies in organ with Janet Hein. David received the Bachelor of Music in Organ Performance from Oberlin, where he was a student of David Boe. As a recitalist he has performed in major churches and cathedrals in Boston, Cleveland, New York, and Washington, D.C., and overseas in Cambridge, England; Rhonda, Wales; Lausanne, Switzerland, and at St. George’s Cathedral in Jerusalem. Kazimir previously served at Oberlin as assistant director of Conservatory Admissions from 1999-2002. A member of the staff of the organ building firm of C.B. Fisk, Inc., of Gloucester, Massachusetts from 2001-2010, Kazimir was involved in the construction of over 20 instruments including the firm’s magnum opus at the Cathedral in Lausanne, Switzerland, the first American organ in a European cathedral. From 2010-2015, he served as curator of the University Organs and Carillons and lecturer in music at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, Bloomington. While on the faculty at Indiana, he led several projects that enhanced and expanded the organ collection. Kazimir lives in Oberlin and is organist and director of music at Christ Episcopal Church.
_________________________________________________

Thomas Forrest Kelly is Morton B. Knafel Research Professor of Music at Harvard University. He also taught at Oberlin, where he was the founding director of the program in Historical Performance, and at the Five Colleges in Massachusetts [Amherst, Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire Colleges and the University of Massachuetts], where he was the founding director of the Five College Early Music Program. Born in Greensboro, NC, Kelly attended the Groton School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Two years in France on a Fulbright grant allowed him to study organ at the Schola Cantorum in Paris (diplôme de virtuosité) and the Royal Academy of Music in London. His graduate study was at Harvard University (A.M., PhD).
Kelly’s main fields of interest are medieval music and the performance of music of earlier times. He has published many books and articles on related subjects and is a frequent lecturer and broadcaster. Kelly is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres of the French Republic, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of the American Academy in Rome, and of the Medieval Academy of America; he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina.
>Guest Speaker
_________________________________________________

Samuel Kuffuor-Afriyie is a rising organist and a native of Brooklyn, New York. In 2016 he was a recipient of the Brooklyn chapter American Guild of Organist scholarship award and an E. Power Biggs Organ fellow in 2017. He currently studies organ performance with Dr. Anne Laver at Syracuse University. He is the organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Syracuse, NY, as well as the director of music for the Syracuse University Catholic Campus Ministry. In 2019, Sam was awarded a grant through Syracuse University’s THE SOURCE foundation to conduct research of Ghanaian traditional music to be later adapted as new compositions for the organ. Samuel also facilitated a workshop for organ and choral music in Accra, Ghana with invited clinicians from the US. Sam’s wish is to become a performer and motivational speaker who uses his talent to inspire and encourage young people, especially minorities, in music. Sam’s devotion to Christ and the music ministry is what keeps him motivated.
_________________________________________________

Elly Langford is a graduate researcher at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, where she is completing a Master of Music (Musicology) under the supervision of Dr. Erin Helyard and Dr. David Irving. She holds a Bachelor of Music (Honours) from the University of Newcastle, Australia, and at the end of 2019, will commence further study at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, as the Feilman Foundation First Fleet Restoration PhD Scholar. Elly’s current research examines the history of combination keyboards as both musical instruments, and objects of cultural and technological significance in early modern Europe.
Paper Abstract
_________________________________________________

Anne Laver performs frequently in the United States and Europe and has been a featured recitalist and clinician at regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, the Society for Seventeenth Century Music, the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative Festival, the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, and the Göteborg International Organ Academy in Göteborg, Sweden. In 2010, she was awarded second prize in the AGO’s prestigious National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance. Anne’s performances have been aired on radio programs including The Organ Loft on the Pacific Northwest’s Classic KING FM, American Public Media’s Pipedreams, and Nebraska Public Radio’s Nebraska Concerts series. Her debut recording, “Reflections of Light” was released on the Loft label in March 2019.
Anne is Assistant Professor of Organ and University Organist at Syracuse University’s Setnor School of Music. Prior to her appointment at Syracuse, she was Adjunct Instructor and Coordinator of Organ Outreach Programs at the Eastman School of Music. Her research interests include organ concert programming at nineteenth century world’s fairs, the pedal clavichord as a pedagogical tool, and the organ music of Judith Bingham. Anne is indebted to her teachers: Mark Steinbach, Jacques van Oortmerssen, Hans Davidsson, William Porter, and David Higgs.
Paper Abstract
_________________________________________________

Fanny Magaña Nieto studied restoration at the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography (ENCRyM). There she was a student of the Conservation and Restoration of Musical Instruments Seminar. To obtain her degree she developed a thesis cataloging the musical instruments, turntables, music boxes and radios of the Haghenbeck and the Lama Cultural Foundation. During her academic training she participated in the restoration of the San Juan Tepemazalco´s church pipe organ.
In 2012 she was the head of the Restoration Area of the INAH Oaxaca (INAHO); in 2014 she became a member of the Seminary of Organ Studies of Mexico, where she co-authored the book How to Inventory a Historical Organ? and co-author in the development of the Guidelines for Organs Conservation (INAH-06-01). She is also a member of the Sound Bells Conservation Permanent Seminar at the ENCRyM. In 2016 and 2017 she participated in the project Registration, Cataloging and Research of Historical Organs at the National Coordination of Cultural Heritage Conservation (CNCPC-INAH), in the development of the inventory of the organs in the A and B perimeters of the Historical Center of the CDMX and in the registration project of the San Bartolomé Matlalohcan´s organ, in Tlaxcala. In 2016 and 2018 she was organizer of the organ conservation colloquium and in 2019 of the Conservation bells Congress in Oaxaca.
Currently she works in the Technical and Legal Protection Project of Oaxacan Cultural Heritage, where she focuses on serving historical, archaeological and musical cultural objects. Since 2017, she has been part of the INAH Oaxaca Earthquake Office, where she is in charge of the management and coordination of restoration projects of the Oaxacan cultural heritage affected by the 2017 and 2018 earthquakes. She is developing the project to catalog the bells of the Historical Center of Oaxaca in conjunction with the Juan de León Mariscal Sound Library and with the Conservation of Metallic Heritage Seminary.

Jimena Palacios Uribe is a historian and musical instruments conservator with experience in research, conservation, assembly of exhibitions, management of collections and teaching. From 2007 to 2013, she coordinated the Musical Instruments Conservation Laboratory at the National School of Conservation, Restoration and Museography (ENCRyM). Later, in 2008, she developed activities of conservation and restoration of musical instruments at the National Music Museum (Vermillion, South Dakota) under John Koster’s supervision in order to learn more about conservation and museum management. Back in Mexico City, from 2009 to 2012, she coordinated the project of conservation and restoration of the San Juan Tepemasalco pipe organ (Hidalgo, Mexico), together with a team of students, specialists in organ building, organology and music research. In 2013, she performed a professional strengthening stay at the Cité de la Musique (Paris, France), where she collaborated with the conservator Thierry Maniguet on conservation activities and research, especially brass and music history in France during the XIXth century. In 2014, she was the Documentation Coordinator at the National Center of Research, Documentation and Musical Information “Carlos Chávez” (CENIDIM; www.cenidim.gob.mx), of the National Institute of Fine Arts (INBA), and later joined the team of researchers of this Center with the project of research and preservation of the collection of musical instruments, conformed by nearly 550 objects. She has curated the exhibitions CENIDIM: 40 years building the musical memory of Mexico and Tradition, Nature and Sound: the collection of musical instruments from CENIDIM. She also obtained a Master’s Degree at the Dr. José Ma. Luis Mora Research Institute (www.institutomora.edu.mx) with a project related to a Mexican brass band from the XIXth century.
Paper Abstract
_________________________________________________

John McKean is a harpsichordist and musicologist based in Boston, where he serves on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College. Critically acclaimed for his “intelligent” and “precise” playing (The Washington Post)
as well as his “sonorous brilliance and thrilling, dance-like energy” (Allgäuer Zeitung), John has performed throughout Europe and North America as both a soloist and a continuo player with numerous noted ensembles and orchestras. John holds degrees in German Studies and Harpsichord Performance from Oberlin College/Conservatory and an advanced performance diploma from the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg (Germany). He also holds an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. in historical musicology from the University of Cambridge (U.K). For several years he served as an assistant editor of the Oxford University Press journal Early Music. Beyond his musicological work and performing career, John also maintains an active interest in instrument building (he regularly performs on a 17th-century style Flemish harpsichord of his own making), music publishing, typography, and exploring the remote corners of his home state of Maine.
Paper Abstract
_________________________________________________

In her distinguished career as a performer and teacher, Catharina Meints has played and recorded on five instruments. She graduated as a cellist at the Eastman School of Music and became assistant principal with the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia. She soon met James Caldwell, the principal oboist, who also played viol and after a short courtship centering on the viol they married. In 1971 they moved to northern Ohio, he to become Professor of Oboe at Oberlin and she to join the Cleveland Orchestra. There they established the Baroque Performance Institute (now in its 47th year). Meints’ career on the early instruments included playing bass viol in the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble and the Cleveland Baroque Soloists, and treble viol with the Oberlin Consort of Viols. She also plays baroque cello extensively as well as the pardessus de viole.
Meints retired from the Cleveland Orchestra after thirty-five years. She continues teaching as Associate Professor of Viola da Gamba, Baroque Cello and Cello at Oberlin and has played frequently with Apollo’s Fire as well as solo concerts. In 2012 she authored a book, The Caldwell Collection, a catalogue and memoir of the large and important collection of antique viols that she and Caldwell collected over a thirty-year period. In 2018 she published an IBook chronicling the founding of Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute and the history of the first 18 years when August Wenzinger was music director. Meints is considered one of the finest teachers of Historical Performance and has mentored hundreds of viol players and baroque cellists over the years at BPI, the Viola da Gamba Society Conclaves and workshops all over the country. She enjoys being on the board of the Viola da Gamba Society of America.

Loren Ludwig is a scholar/performer based in Baltimore, MD. He studied viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory and completed his Ph.D. in musicology at the University of Virginia. As a scholar of early modern musical culture, he researches what he terms “polyphonic intimacy,” the idea that music in the Western tradition is constructed to foster social relationships among its performers and listeners. As a viol player Loren performs widely as a soloist and chamber musician. He is a co-founder of critically acclaimed ensembles LeStrange Viols and ACRONYM, a 17th century string band. Loren has served as musicology faculty at the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University, Grinnell College, and the New Zealand School of Music, and teaches chamber music and performance practice at residencies and festivals across several continents.

Cat Slowik is a PhD candidate in music history at Yale University. She completed her undergraduate work in art history and anthropology at Columbia and the Freie Universität in Berlin. Her dissertation considers the concept of musical technicity and the particular techniques of instrumental cantus firmus music in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Other research interests include classical philosophy, the music–language metaphor, and organology; Cat also co-convenes Yale’s Sound Studies Working Group. As a viol player, Cat performs frequently in New York, DC, and New Haven, and directs the Yale Consort of Viols.

Zoe Weiss is a PhD candidate at Cornell University where she is completing a dissertation on the Elizabethan In Nomine. She is a practicing musician on viola da gamba as well as a teacher and coach. Zoe serves on the board of the Viola da Gamba Society of America and as an editor for the Journal of the same organization. Her recordings with LeStrange Viols can be heard on the New Focus label.
Lecture Recital
_________________________________________________

Jonathan Moyer is chair and assistant professor of organ at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and is organist of the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, OH. He specializes in a vast repertoire from the renaissance to the 21st century, and has performed throughout the United States, and in Europe and Japan. He has performed with numerous ensembles including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Boston Pops, the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra, Richmond Symphony Orchestra, the Oberlin Symphony Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), Quire Cleveland, Concert Artists of Baltimore, and the Handel Choir of Baltimore. Recent concerts include St. Jakobikirche (Lübeck), Ludgerikirche (Norden), Laurenskerk (Alkmaar), the Marktkirchethe (Hannover), the National Convention of the American Organ Historical Society (Rochester, NY), the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception (Washington DC), St. Sulpice (Paris), Notre Dame de Bergerac, and J.S. Bach’s complete Clavierübung III at the German Reformed Church in Budapest, Hungary. He has also been a visiting-lecturer in organ at the Hochschule für Musik in Lübeck.
At the Church of the Covenant, Dr. Moyer oversees two pipe organs (E.M. Skinner/Aeolian Skinner/Holtkamp and Richards Fowkes, Op. 19) and a 47-bell Dutch carillon by Eijsbouts. Moyer holds an Artist Diploma in organ from Oberlin as a student of James David Christie and Olivier Latry, and a DMA and Graduate Performance Diploma in organ from the Peabody Conservatory of Music as a student of Donald Sutherland and Gillian Weir, where he also completed a Master's degree in piano as a student of Ann Schein. He received a bachelor of music degree in piano from Bob Jones University as a student of Laurence Morton. He further studied with organists Susan Landale, Marie-Claire Alain, Guy Bovet, and Michael Radulescu. In 2008, he received the second prize in the Sixth International Musashino Organ Competition in Tokyo, Japan, and in 2005 he was a finalist in the St. Albans International Organ Competition.
Concert Program
_________________________________________________

Robert A. Murphy, Assistant Director of Piano Technology and Curator of Fortepianos, is now in his 30th year as a College & University Technician (CAUT). In this capacity he has prepared pianos, fortepianos and harpsichords for numerous performances and recordings during tenures at Oberlin, Michigan State University, and Cornell University. In addition, he serves on the teaching staff of the Artist Diploma Program in Piano Technology at Oberlin, as well as acting as program co-coordinator and instructor for the annual C.F. Theodore Steinway Technical Academy - Steinway @ Oberlin Summer Workshop since its launch in 2004. Murphy also presents at regional and national conferences on topics ranging from tuning historical temperaments to regulating and restoring various genres of fortepianos and harpsichords. A native of Upstate New York, Murphy received his B.Mus. Ed. from Ithaca College in 1984 and apprenticed extensively in the shops of two prominent keyboard restorer-builders: Edward Swenson (OC ’63) in Trumansburg, NY and Eric Herz Harpsichords (Boston, MA).
_________________________________________________

James O’Leary specializes in popular music and opera, and focuses his research on Broadway musicals of the 1940s. He is currently editing his book, which will be published by Oxford University Press. In August 2017, O’Leary won the Transnational Opera Studies Conference Award for best paper by a scholar in the early stages of his career for his research on Kurt Weill. In 2019 he was awarded a John Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress to begin his next book about the Federal Music Project. In addition to his written work, O'Leary has lectured for the Metropolitan Opera and has worked as a pianist, music director, and arranger for the Yale School of Drama, the American Repertory Theater Oberon Stage, and the Williamstown Theater Festival.

_________________________________________________

A native of Southern California, John Phillips built his first harpsichord from a kit while an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz in 1969. There he studied harpsichord with Mark Kroll while completing a BA degree in German Literature and music. He later earned an MA in musicology at UC Berkeley, while continuing harpsichord studies with Laurette Goldberg and Alan Curtis and learning to build and repair the instrument on the side. Fortified by a commission for a complicated French double harpsichord from a prominent player, he opened his shop in Berkeley in 1975. Since then, with the help of a few talented co-workers, he has produced over one hundred-twenty new harpsichords and has also undertaken the restoration of several important ancient ones. His instruments may be found in the hands of musicians and institutions in both the USA and in Europe and may be heard on over fifty recordings.
_________________________________________________

Christa Rakich performs widely throughout North America, Europe, and Japan. She is Visiting Professor of Organ at Oberlin through the academic year 2019-2020. Near her home in Connecticut, she maintains two Artist-in-Residencies: St. John’s Episcopal Church in West Hartford and the Congregational Church of Somers. Past Artist-in-Residencies have included the University of Pennsylvania and First Lutheran Church in Boston.
As a Fulbright Scholar, Christa Rakich studied with renowned Bach interpreter Anton Heiller at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria. She holds Bachelor’s degrees in Organ and German from Oberlin and a Master's from New England Conservatory, where she joined the faculty and taught for many years, serving ultimately as department co-chair. She has also served on the faculties of Westminster Choir College, Brandeis University, and the University of Connecticut, and as Assistant University Organist at Harvard. An avid collaborator, Christa Rakich frequently performs with her colleague Susan Ferré at the Big Moose Bach Festival in New Hampshire. With flutist Wendy Rolfe and gambist Alice Robbins, she is a founding member of the Marion Baroque Ensemble, based in Massachusetts, and was for many years keyboardist for the Connecticut-based Fanfare Consort. With cellist Kathleen Schiano, Rakich commissioned and premiered a Sonata for Organ and Cello by Dutch composer Margaretha Christina de Jong. One of her recent concerts for the Boston Clavichord Society, an organization she also serves as Vice-President, included a performance with clavichordist Erica Johnson of Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony on 2 clavichords. Rakich has received particular acclaim for her interpretations of the music of J.S. Bach and has recorded his Clavierübung III, Leipzig Chorales, and Trio Sonatas. Other organ recordings include Deferred Voices: Organ Music by Women Composers, Live from St. Mark’s Cathedral, and the forthcoming Tribute to Yuko Hayashi: Richards-Fowkes Opus 14 at Duke University.
Masterclass
_________________________________________________

Annette Richards is a performer, scholar, and teacher specializing in the music and culture of the long 18th century. She was educated at Oxford University (BA, MA), Stanford University (PhD) and the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam (Uitvoerend Musicus), where she was a student of Jacques van Oortmerssen. She has won numerous honors, including prizes at international organ competitions (Dublin, Bruges) and fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center, the Getty Center in Santa Monica and from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
Annette has recorded the complete works of Melchior Schildt (on the Loft label) on the historic organ at Roskilde Cathedral, Denmark, and music from the library of Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia on the new Schnitger-style organ at Cornell University. She is currently preparing a recording of Italian and English music on Cornell’s 18th-century Neapolitan organ, and, with David Yearsley, a set of recordings of 18th-century music for multiple keyboards, with readings from the travel diaries of Charles Burney.
For ten years she was the Executive Director of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, bringing the Center to Cornell under the auspices of a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is founding editor of Keyboard Perspectives, a yearbook dedicated to historical performance and keyboard culture, but her scholarly work extends far beyond the organ and its music. Topics she has published on include the free fantasia and landscape theory, C.P.E. Bach, portraits and the construction of music history, Handel and charity, Mozart and mechanical music, Haydn and the grotesque, the glass harmonica and ghost music. With David Yearsley she has edited the complete organ works of C.P.E. Bach. Annette Richards is the Given Foundation Professor of the Humanities and University Organist at Cornell University.
>Guest Speaker
_________________________________________________

Grammy-nominated performer Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra thrives as improvisation expert, international concert and recording artist, and award-winning composer, conductor, pedagogue, and author. She frequently concertizes and teaches repertoire and improvisation on antique organs, harpsichords, clavichords, and carillons throughout North America and Europe, and strives to discover and reveal the beautiful soul of each instrument. Ruiter-Feenstra’s explorations as Senior Researcher with an international team at the Göteborg Organ Art Center in Sweden culminated in Bach and the Art of Improvisation, Volumes I–II. As Professor of Music at Eastern Michigan University, Ruiter-Feenstra conducted the Collegium Musicum and taught organ, harpsichord, and improvisation. A passionate advocate for marginalized populations, Ruiter-Feenstra’s newest improvisations, compositions, hymn texts, and concertatos focus on social justice themes and collaborations. As a 2017–2019 recipient of a Ronald Barnes Scholarship grant from the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America, she interviewed individuals from Arab and Muslim, African American, Jewish, and Latina/o communities. Inspired by their voices, she composed four pieces in a collection entitled Belonging: A Carillon Call to Care for All. Her Liturgy Live organ set features world music themes. She composed Our Time: Me Too and Enough is Enough: Sketches to ring out against violence, marginalization, and injustice; Peacemakers was composed as an antidote to hate speech and actions and as a positive attribute to model to our children. In her Muse in Peace, Muse at Work, Muse for the Soul, and Muse at School, Ruiter-Feenstra offers children songs about world peacemakers, finding peace within, academic subjects, psalms and liturgical topics, and the building blocks of music theory and listening. Muse is Ruiter-Feenstra’s action to keep music in the schools, and to promote access to the arts among underprivileged populations.
_________________________________________________

Tilman Skowroneck is a harpsichordist, fortepianist and musicologist, and senior lecturer of musical performance at the Academy of Music and Drama, University of Gothenburg. He also translates into German and maintains harpsichords. Beginning in 1991, he held a position with the baroque ensemble Corona Artis based in Göteborg, performing a wide variety of continuo and solo literature in all Baroque styles and in the earlier Classical style. Tilman specializes in solo performance on the harpsichord and continuo playing and has a special interest in the early piano, its construction and its repertoire. Since 1997 he conducted research in Beethoven performance practice on the piano. His Ph.D. dissertation combined historical and organological analysis to develop some guidelines for performing Beethoven’s early keyboard works, and his present research focuses on progressive and conservative influences on the development of Viennese pianos after 1800. Tilman Skowroneck is also co-editor of the peer-reviewed journal Keyboard Perspectives by the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies.
_________________________________________________

Kenneth Slowik is artistic director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society and a curator of musical instruments at the National Museum of American History. He is a founding member of the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Axelrod and Smithson quartets, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and the Castle Trio, appeared frequently in performance and recordings with L’Archibudelli, and has been a soloist and/or conductor with numerous orchestras, among them the National Symphony, the Baltimore Symphony, l’Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Filharmonia Sudecka, the KwaZulu Natal Philharmonic, the Vancouver Symphony, and the Cleveland Orchestra. His extensive discography, spanning composers from Monteverdi to Richard Strauss, includes more than seventy recordings -- many of them international prize winners -- featuring him as cellist, violist da gamba, keyboard player, baryton player, and conductor. A member of the University of Maryland and the American Bach Soloists Academy faculties, Slowik was named Artistic Director of the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute in 1993, and received the Smithsonian Secretary’s Distinguished Research Lecture Award in 2011.
Paper Abstract
Panel Discussion
_________________________________________________

John R. Watson is an independent conservator and maker of early keyboard instruments. He is emeritus curator/conservator of musical instruments for The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (CWF). His research on musical instrument conservation resulted in two books, Artifacts in Use: The Paradox of Restoration and the Conservation of Organs (2010 OHS with CWF), and Organ Restoration Reconsidered: Proceedings of a Colloquium (2005, Harmonie Park Press with CWF). His most recent book, Changing Keys: Keyboard Instruments for America, 1700-1830 (2013 Scarecrow Press with CWF) is a descriptive catalog detailing thirty-eight keyboard instruments in the CWF collection. His 2018 reproduction of the 1793 Mount Vernon harpsichord, now exhibited there, is his 33rd keyboard instrument.
Panel Discussion
_________________________________________________

Brian Wentzel is an organist, singer, composer, and writer. He currently serves as Director of Music at First Lutheran Church, Lorain, Ohio. In spring 2019 he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Organ at Oberlin Conservatory. Brian is an active performer in the Cleveland area, singing professionally and regularly playing organ recitals and hymn festivals. His musical compositions are published by Augsburg Fortress and Hope, and his writings have appeared in The Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology, Word and World, and the curriculum of Leadership Program for Musicians. Brian is currently Dean of the Lorain County Chapter of the American Guild of Organists and Subdean of the Cleveland Chapter of the AGO. Brian holds degrees in organ performance, mathematics, and sacred music.
_________________________________________________

Andrew Willis performs in the United States and abroad on pianos of every era. Keenly interested in the history of the piano, he is a past president of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society and a Trustee of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies. He served as a finals juror of the Westfield International Fortepiano Competition in 2011. Willis has recorded solo and ensemble music of three centuries on historically appropriate pianos for the Albany, Bridge, Claves, Centaur, and CRI labels, notably with Malcolm Bilson and other colleagues in the first complete Beethoven sonata cycle recorded on historical pianos. His recording of Op. 106 for this set was hailed by The New York Times as “a ‘Hammerklavier’ of rare stature.”
In recent seasons Willis has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, the Magnolia Baroque Festival, and the Staunton Music Festival and has performed with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, the Apollo Ensemble, and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony. He currently extends his investigation of historical performance practice into the Romantic era with performances on an 1848 Pleyel and an 1841 Bösendorfer, and into the Baroque with performances of J. S. Bach and Italian masters on a replica of an early eighteenth-century Florentine piano. As Professor in the UNC Greensboro School of Music, Willis teaches performance on instruments ranging from harpsichord to modern piano and for over a decade directed the biennial “UNCG Focus on Piano Literature” symposium. Willis received the Doctorate in Historical Performance from Cornell University, where he studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, the Masters in Accompanying and Chamber Music from Temple University under the guidance of George Sementovsky and Lambert Orkis, and the Baccalaureate in Piano from The Curtis Institute of Music, where his mentor was Mieczyslaw Horszowski.
Concert Program
_________________________________________________

Allan Winkler has been making harpsichords and clavichords for forty-eight years based on his research in the United States and Europe. As a Boston native, he grew up around the beginnings of the early music movement through his father’s performance and teaching in the field, and worked for Eric Herz Harpsichords in Cambridge from 1971 to 1977. He has also been a consultant and maintenance technician to the Musical Instrument Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 1991, and is currently leading weeklong courses in harpsichord voicing and regulation at the North Bennet Street School.
_________________________________________________