Friday at 2: Live viola da gamba and harpsichord in our studio!

Listen Friday at 2 for another live performance from our studio. This week we’ll be joined by early music performers Gail Ann Schroeder and Webster Williams, viola da gamba, and Barbara Weiss, harpsichord.  The instruments and music they’ll bring with them are not well known to most of us so, not only will this Friday’s performance give us an opportunity to hear great music performed by local artists, it will also offer insights into a new musical world.

Gail Ann Schroeder, viola da gamba, graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Music degree in Music History. She furthered her studies on viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Music Conservatory of Brussels, Belgium, where she obtained the First Prize and the Higher Diploma, with distinction. From 1988-2002 she was assistant to Wieland Kuijken at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels, where she taught viola da gamba, didactics of viola da gamba and directed the viol consort. Since returning to the USA in 2006, she has participated in numerous radio and television productions throughout Europe and on CD recordings for such labels as DHM, Sony Classical, Ricercar and Erato. Schroeder has taught at numerous workshops for various chapters of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, the Amherst Early Music Festival, San Francisco Early Music Society and Mountain Collegium, where she is also assistant director. Currently living in North Carolina, she teaches privately, free-lances and performs with her Baroque Ensemble Muses’ Delight.

Barbara Weiss, harpsichord, has performed at the Boston, San Antonio and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, and at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. She has taught at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the Madison Early Music Festival, the Indiana University Recorder Performers Seminar, and the Indiana University Recorder Academy.  She has served on the faculties of the University of Minnesota, the Peabody Conservatory of Music, Concordia College, and as visiting professor of harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory. She served as music director of the opera company Ex-Machina, and as staff accompanist at the Chicago Opera Theater. Ms. Weiss is a member of the Baroque ensemble Belladonna and has performed with the Newberry Consort, the New International Trio, King's Noyse, Apollo's Fire, The Washington Bach Consort, Piffaro and Tempesta di Mare. She has recorded on Dorian, Flying Fish and Harmonia Mundi USA. 

 Webster Williams has worked many years as a viola da gamba soloist and chamber musician, living until recently in New York City. There he cofounded the internationally acclaimed viol consort Parthenia, as well as performing with many baroque and renaissance ensembles, among them the Princeton Baroque Orchestra as a soloist in J.S. Bach’s Matthew Passion and as a continuo player for Concert Royal and New York Baroque and the Four Nations Ensemble. He also has an interest in contemporary music, working with voice and movement as a Dalcroze teacher and with the Meredith Monk ensemble, and is working on a recording of the music of contemporary American composer Frank Russo