The IEM Festival Band, Alchymy Viols, and Esteli Gomez

Sunday, June 27th 2:30 & 4:30. The 4:30 concert will also be streamed online for virtual viewing.

Glick Indiana History Center
Frank and Katrina Basile Theater
450 West Ohio Street
Indianapolis

PROGRAM NOTES (PDF)

TICKETS

Biographies of the Individual Performers:

Joanna Blendulf Liv Castor Mark Cudek Teresa Deskur Wendy Gillespie

Estelí Gomez Ronn McFarlane Erica Rubis Sarah Shodja Phil Spray

Praised for her “clear, bright voice” (New York Times) and “artistry that belies her young years” (Kansas City Metropolis), soprano Estelí Gomez is quickly gaining recognition as a stylish interpreter of early and contemporary repertoires. In January 2014 she was awarded a Grammy with contemporary octet Roomful of Teeth, for best chamber music/small ensemble performance; in November 2011 she received first prize in the Canticum Gaudium International Early Music Vocal Competition in Poznan, Poland.

Estelí can be heard on the Seattle Symphony’s 2017 recording of Nielsen’s Symphony No. 3, on the first track of Silkroad Ensemble’s Grammy-winning 2016 album Sing Me Home, and on Roomful of Teeth’s self-titled debut album, for which composer Caroline Shaw’s Partita was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize.

Highlights of the 2019-20 season include:  further performances of Vivier’s Kopernikus directed by Peter Sellars in Bilbao, Spain; recordings of Nico Muhly’s How Little You Are as soprano soloist with Conspirare; the world premiere of song cycle Dreams Have No Borders in Ashland, Oregon; solo appearances with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Winston-Salem Orchestra, Kingsbury Ensemble, Yarn/Wire, and A Far Cry; teaching residencies at Bucknell, University of Oregon, and Oregon Bach Festival; and concerts at Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Guggenheim, with additional tours throughout Europe, New Zealand, and Australia, with Roomful of Teeth.

Originally from Watsonville, California, Estelí received her Bachelor of Arts with honors in music from Yale College, and Master of Music from McGill University, studying with Sanford Sylvan.

Estelí is thrilled to be teaching at Lawrence University as assistant professor of voice, starting fall of 2019, in addition to continuing her work as a performer.  She is also a proud member of Beyond Artists, a coalition of artists who donate a percentage of their concert fees to organizations they care about. She is currently donating to RAICES and the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Alchymy Viols offers performances from some of the country’s finest players on the viola da gamba: Wendy Gillespie, Joanna Blendulf, Erica Rubis. Those who have attended performances know that Alchymy concerts include more than viols alone, a programming practice that derives from Alchymy’s name. Originally the art of alchemy was about mixing common and uncommon elements in order to create some new product.

According to Alchymy’s founder Philip Spray, Alchymy Viols’ mission is the same, to mix viols with other artistic elements to create a music event richer than the sum of its collaborative parts: with Indianapolis Early Music Festival bands, Bloomington Early Music, Dana Marsh and the Early Music Institute, Jacobs School of Music, Haymarket Opera dancers and director Sarah Edgar. Alchymy has drawn on less-likely collaborations as well: with Scottish folk fiddler Tim MacDonald to offer a chamber version of Scotland’s first opera, and with Paul Krasnovsky and Indianapolis’s contemporary music choir Mon Choeur. Alchymy also creates original masque entertainments, combining music, drama, dance, and mythology as in Cavalli’s Masque, American at Versailles, and the collaboration with Indianapolis Early Music Festival to present music, dance and fable for the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo Da Vinci. The upcoming season looks at English Renaissance anthems with the Men and Boys’ Choir of Christ Church Cathedral and an exciting step into something that hasn’t been tried to our knowledge: mixing viols and pedal harp with countertenor Michael Walker performing America’s early music, black spirituals.

The Indianapolis Early Music Festival Band is becoming a resident ensemble at our festival. This ensemble consists of local viola da gamba players (Alchymy Viols) and musicians from the East Coast and Midwest assembled by Mark Cudek, including some of Mark’s former students at Peabody. Lutenist Ronn McFarlane is a regular member and the instrumental band is augmented by a guest singer or singers. The ensemble’s debut was in 2019 for the “The World of Leonardo” concert which also featured collaboration with the Echoing Air Vocal Ensemble and dancers from Chicago’s Haymarket Opera as well as projections of Leonardo’s works and scripted narration by Phil Spray. GRAMMY-winning soprano Estelí Gomez was the vocal soloist and Estelí returns this summer for Marginalia on June 27.

Ronn McFarlane
GRAMMY-nominated lutenist, Ronn McFarlane brings the lute – the most popular instrument of the Renaissance – into today’s musical mainstream making it accessible to a wider audience. Since taking up the lute in 1978, Ronn has made his mark in music as the founder of Ayreheart, a founding member of the Baltimore Consort, touring forty-nine of the fifty United States, Canada, England, Scotland, Netherlands, Germany and Austria, and as a guest artist with Apollo’s Fire, The Bach Sinfonia, The Catacoustic Consort, The Folger Consort, Houston Grand Opera, The Oregon Symphony, The Portland Baroque Orchestra, and The Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. McFarlane has over forty recordings on the Dorian/Sono Luminus label, including solo albums, lute songs, lute duets, flute and lute duets, viola da gamba and lute, the complete lute music of Vivaldi, recordings with Ayreheart and recordings with the Baltimore Consort. Ronn has composed new music for the lute, building on the tradition of the lutenist/composers of past centuries.

His original compositions are the focus of his solo CD, Indigo Road, which received a GRAMMY Award Nomination for Best Classical Crossover Album of 2009. Ronn’s most recent solo album, The Celtic Lute, features his arrangements of traditional Scottish and Irish music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. ronnmcfarlane.com

Joanna Blendulf
Joanna Blendulf has performed in leading period instrument ensembles throughout the United States and abroad. Ms. Blendulf holds performance degrees with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where she was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate for her accomplishments in early music performance. Joanna has performed and recorded with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Pacific MusicWorks, American Bach Soloists, and the Nashville Chamber Orchestra and was a principal cellist of the New World Symphony under Michael Tilson Thomas. Ms. Blendulf is an active chamber musician, performing with the Catacoustic Consort, Ensemble Electra, Ensemble Mirable, Nota Bene Viol Consort, Parthenia, and Wildcat Viols. Joanna’s summer engagements have included performances at Tage Alter Musik Regenburg, Musica Antigua en Villa de Lleyva in Colombia, the Bloomington, Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, the Ojai Music Festivals as well as the Carmel and Oregon Bach Festivals. Joanna is also sought-after as a chamber music coach and is on the faculties of early music workshops across the country. Ms. Blendulf is Associate Professor of Baroque cello and Viola da gamba at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Wendy Gillespie
Wendy Gillespie was inexplicably attracted to renaissance polyphony long before she knew either word. A string player since childhood, she began playing the viola da gamba as an undergraduate. Wendy has performed on five continents, mostly as a founding member of Fretwork and long-time member of Phantasm, both ensembles of violas da gamba, but also as a bass viol soloist and not least as a very willing continuo player. She has explored medieval music on the vielle with the Ensemble Sequentia, Elizabethan Enterprise, and others, more recently specializing in renaissance viols and early notation with Nota Bene. Wendy can be heard on more than 100 commercially released recordings, sharing three Gramophone awards, several Gramophone and Grammy nominations, and two Grands Prix du Disque with colleagues.

In 2011, Wendy received Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award and in 2012 a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. She is Past President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. After 32 years on its faculty, Gillespie graduated in 2017 to Professor Emeritus at what is now called the Historical Performance Institute at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington IN. She often wonders how we got projected so far into the future.

Erica Rubis
Erica Rubis is a versatile performer on the viola da gamba whose work ranges from renaissance viol consort to improvising and co-creating new music. She is a member of Alchymy Viols, Les Ordinaires Trio, and also plays with Bourbon Baroque, Catacoustic Consort, Echoing Air, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. She also collaborates and performs regularly with composer/performer Tomás Lozano in his song project on the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez.

Erica’s recordings include, Les Ordinaires, Inner Chambers and Monteclair: Beloved and Betrayed, contemporary music of Tomas Lozano, Eternal Juan Ramón Jiménez, and The Colorful Telemann with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.

Active in music education, Erica holds regular workshops on the viola da gamba for string students and has pioneered a multi-media program, Shakespeare’s Ear, with regular tours since 2009.

Sarah Shodja
Persian recorder player Sarah Shodja was one of the first women in Iran who performed the recorder on the concerr stage. She also established a recorder consort, Tehran Recorder Atelier, along with three of her women recorder-player friends. She has taken the recorder to many venues throughout her home country. Sarah brings a passionate curiosity and a deep creative drive to all different types and sizes of the recorder instrument. She began her musical life as a classical piano player, while working on the recorder and getting an undergraduate degree in computer science at Tehran-North Azad University.

In 2017, Sarah was awarded a scholarship to study the recorder as a student of Gwyn Roberts at the Peabody Conservatory where she is pursuing an undergraduate degree in Historical Performance. As a member of Peabody’s Renaissance Chamber Ensemble she has performed in many venues in the United states, including the Bloomington Early Music Festival as part of Early Music America’s Young Performer’s Festival and the Conciertos de la Villa de Santo Domingo Festival in the Dominican Republic. Other past and current engagements include performances with the Baltimore Baroque and, Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, Shargh Chamber Orchestra and Pars Recorder Orchestra. She also has experience playing jazz and collaborated in two published contemporary music albums.

Philip Spray
Philip Spray (violone and colascione) performs with period instrument ensembles across the country in concerts and recordings. Co-founder of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra under Barthold Kuijken, he also is founding director of Musik Ekklesia whose first recording, The Vanishing Nordic Chorale, was nominated for a Grammy award in 2010, for Best Classical Producer. His current work with Alchymy Viols explores traditional literature for the viola da gamba consort but even more, as the name of the ensemble implies, the potential of mixing viols with both related and unrelated artistic elements to create something completely new and magical.

Liv Castor
Harpist Liv Castor seeks to combine old and new traditions through her playing. With a passion for song collecting and a deep love of melody-driven traditional music, Liv is constantly expanding her catalogue of knowledge and expertise. Her versatility as a performer has taken her around the globe from close to home on the east coast to Europe, Asia, and beyond. As a recent graduate of The Peabody Conservatory, Liv received prizes for performance and academic excellence, as well as a Career Development Grant to premier new works for harp. She was a Historical Performance minor at Peabody and played in early music ensembles for all eight semesters of her undergraduate degree. She is an enthusiastic collaborator with musicians and artists from across many different genres and disciplines, and is always looking for creative opportunities to bring early and traditional music to new audiences.

Teresa Deskur
Teresa Deskur performs music on horn and recorder from the middle ages to the present day. She balances a love for early music with a zeal for performing contemporary and classical works, eager to highlight both music that teaches us about the past and celebrates current innovations.

Teresa started playing recorder at age 5, and never stopped! Most recently, Teresa took first prize in the University-Instrumental category of Boulder Bach Festival’s World Bach Competition. In 2016, she won Philadelphia based Renaissance band Piffaro’s National Recorder Competition and appeared as a guest performer with the group in March 2017. She performs regularly with the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble, Peabody’s Renaissance Chamber Ensemble, and the Baltimore Baroque Band. In March, 2020, just before the shutdown, Teresa performed the Monteverdi Vespers with the Baltimore Choral Arts Society.

As a future educator and advocate for making music accessible and equitable, Teresa is passionate about community outreach. She frequently performs at elder care facilities, libraries, youth programs, and in healthcare settings. Teresa is currently pursuing her Bachelors in both Horn and Music Education with a Historical Performance minor at Peabody Conservatory, where she studies with Wei-Ping Chou and Gwyn Roberts. She also studied horn with Beth Shanfelt and recorder with Barbara Kaufman.

Mark Cudek
Mark Cudek is the former Chair of the Historical Performance Department at the Peabody Conservatory, Artistic Director of the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, and a founding member of the Baltimore Consort. In recognition of his work as Founder/Director of the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble and the High School Early Music Program at the Interlochen Arts Camp, Mark received from Early Music America the 2001 Thomas Binkley Award and the 2005 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Early Music Education. Mark is the 2014 recipient of the Johns Hopkins University Alumni Association’s Global Achievement Award.

He has performed with Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland Baroque Orchestra), Catacoustic Consort, Folger Consort, and Hesperus, and in his youth, worked as a café guitarist in the Virgin Islands. Mark is also director of the Peabody Renaissance Chamber Ensemble, an group consisting of select students from Peabody’s Historical Performance Department which has toured Rome, Taiwan, Japan, and the Dominican Republic. Mark has appeared at the Boston Early Music Festival, Glasgow International Early Music Festival, Ottawa International Chamber Music Festival, and Tage Alter Musik/Regensburg, as well as the Kennedy Center, Metropolitan Museum, National Theatre of Panama, and Vienna Konzerthaus. He has recorded on the Dorian, Eclectra, Koch International, Linn, and Windham Hill labels. In 2019 Mark was promoted to Full Professor at Peabody.