Flutist Andrea LeBlanc is devoted to furthering the artistry and expression of the flute by performing on instruments from the baroque, classical, and romantic eras. She has been praised by Early Music America for her “sensitive and beautiful playing, with crystalline tone and execution [that] made you wonder why it was necessary to invent the Boehm system for flute” (Fall 2015). Andrea has performed and recorded with numerous ensembles in the Northeast, frequently serving as principal flute. She appears with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, the Boston Early Music Festival, Arcadia Players, Aston Magna, The Sebastians, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Blue Hill Bach Festival, and the Big Moose Bach Festival, as well as Mercury Houston; performing under such directors as Marin Alsop, Masaaki Suzuki, Richard Egarr, Nicholas McGegan, Harry Christophers, and Joshua Rifkin. She performs chamber music of the late-classical and early-romantic periods in recital with pianist David Hyun-Su Kim. In 2021 Andrea co-founded the ensemble Arpeggione with clarinetist Thomas Carroll, to explore the ways in which Classical and Romantic music was historically experienced outside of the concert hall and bring innovative performances to venues around her home on Boston’s North Shore. Ms. LeBlanc holds a B.Mus. with honors and distinction in performance from New England Conservatory and a M.Mus. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she was a teaching assistant in flute and early music. She spent a year furthering her study of the traverso at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague.

With a sound described as “beautifully warm” (Herald Times) and “sweet and agile” (New York Times), period clarinetist and instrument builder Thomas Carroll performs extensively throughout North America and Europe on historical instruments. He holds degrees from Oberlin Conservatory, Indiana University, and The Royal Conservatoire of The Hague.

Internationally, Thomas has performed under such directors as Christophe Coin, Richard Egarr, Philippe Herreweghe, Jos van Immerseel, Allessandro Moccia, and David Stern; and has performed at numerous festivals as an orchestral and chamber musician including Oude Muziek Utrecht, Muziekzomer Gelderland, Young Euro Classic, Festival de Saintes, and Musica Antiqua Brugge in venues ranging from the Kozerthaus in Berlin to the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. He has been featured as a soloist with Mercury: The Orchestra Redefined, Lyra Baroque, Ensemble ad Libitum, Boston Baroque, and Grand Harmonie to critical acclaim. In North America, Thomas has performed as the principal clarinetist with Boston-based Grand Harmonie, Houston-based Mercury, San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Chorale, and Philharmonie Austin, frequently collaborating with other early music specialists throughout North America including the Clarion Music and Handel and Haydn Societies, Sonoma Bach, Musica Angelica, and Boston Baroque. He has given faculty chamber recitals and guest lectures and masterclasses on both coasts and at the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival.

As an educator, Thomas is dedicated to training the next generation of historical clarinetists and cultivating an interest in performance practice and hands-on research. He has given guest lectures and masterclasses at universities throughout the United States and maintains a private studio of historical clarinet students. He is also a faculty member at the Festival de Música de Santa Catarina in Brazil.

An interest in instrument mechanics and acoustics has led Thomas to a secondary career as an instrument builder and extensive research into 18th and 19th century wood treatment and seasoning. He builds chalumeaux, baroque, and classical clarinets, and basset instruments for use in historically-informed performance ensembles, which are played throughout North America, Europe, and Australia.

Julian Donahue is a Brooklyn-based choreographer and a dancer with New York Theatre Ballet where he has danced masterworks by Jerome Robbins, Merce Cunningham, José Limón, Michel Fokine, Antony Tudor, Richard Alston, Pam Tanowitz, Nicolo Fonte, James Whiteside, David Gordon, and Martha Clarke. Julian also specializes in Baroque, Renaissance, and folk dance forms, performing with New York Baroque Dance Company and Boston Early Music Festival. He has performed Baroque dance at Lincoln Center (May 2023) and the Kennedy Center (May 2024). In 2021, Julian founded Julian Donahue Dance to create and showcase dances that express transformational political ideas, tell stories, and expand the public imagination. Julian has presented work at Battery Dance Festival, White Wave Dance Festival, Blue Hill Bach Festival, and more. A section of Julian’s choreography will be presented in the Opera Lafayette production of Les Fêtes de Thalie where he will dance and serve as Assistant Choreographer at the Kennedy Center in May 2024. In June 2024, Julian’s version of Midsummer Night’s Dream will premiere in Boston along with a new work set to Beethoven’s 6th Symphony with live music from the Arpeggione Ensemble.

Elise enjoys dividing her time between making, restoring, studying, and playing historical clarinets. She began her education by studying clarinet performance at Indiana University. While in Bloomington she also began to study instrument construction and historical clarinets. Then after completing the band instrument repair course in Renton, WA, she furthered her education by studying how to play and make historical clarinets at the Royal Conservatoire in the Hague. While in Europe she performed in numerous festivals such as the Utrecht Early Music Festival and won ‘selected promising ensemble’ at the AMUS in Belgium. After returning to the US she has been privileged to study a number of clarinets in museums and private collections alike as well as fortunate to perform in many wonderful organizations throughout the country.

Audiences have described violinist Emily Hale’s performances as animated, intuitive and elegant. Fueled by a sense of curiosity and discovery, Emily performs baroque and classical repertoire on period instruments and creates interactive performance experiences.

Her credits include recording with the London-based Early Opera Company for a BBC Channel 4 series about life in the 18th century. She’s played chamber music and opera repertoire at the Valletta International Baroque Music Festival in Malta and at the London Handel Festival. In New York, she has appeared with the Four Nations Ensemble and The Sebastians, and in Boston with Emmanuel Music.

From intimate house concerts to leading a pop-up baroque orchestra at Boston’s Roslindale neighborhood Porchfest, Emily is focused on connecting with audiences. Her Pajama Concerts have proved popular with family audiences at libraries and schools in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania. Pajama Concerts offer innovative “musical story-telling,” pairing classic children’s literature with chamber music in an open, inclusive format.

As founder and curator of the period ensemble The Halfmoon, Emily programs multi-disciplinary concert experiences that connect early music and culture with our lives today. Her latest project, PrintWorks, began its life as a mixed-media virtual concert featuring 17th century music, instruments and printing processes, newly commissioned musical works, and animations inspired by them. In 2022 the project will begin touring as a live performance, featured in conjunction with an in-person printmaking workshop. PrintWorks is a collaboration of artists across three continents, and explores how the tools we use shape us, and the things we create.

Committed to nurturing other musicians’ curiosity and growth, Emily is Instructor of Violin and Viola at Bridgewater State University, and has coached baroque ensembles in the Junior Department of the Royal College of Music and is on faculty at the Early Music Week summer festival in Conway, NH.

Emily holds a master’s degree in Historical Performance, with Distinction, from the Royal College of Music in London. At the RCM, she studied with Adrian Butterfield and Catherine Martin, and won the McKenna Prize for Baroque Music. Her work was featured as part of the College’s series of innovative student-curated concerts, Great Exhitibitionists. Emily also received degrees in violin performance from Houghton College and Penn State University.

Praised for her “unusually intelligent and sensitive playing,” Lisa Brooke performs in orchestras and chamber ensembles of all styles.

In the pop genre, she has played with the Boston Pops, New York Pops (with whom she toured Japan and Korea), and can be heard on recordings of Barbra Streisand’s Concert Tour, and as concertmaster for Liza Minnelli’s Minnelli on Minnelli on Broadway.

Amongst the numerous singers with whom she has performed are Andrea Bocelli, Jethro Tull, Charles Aznavour, Paul Anka, and Mannheim Steam Roller. She has tenure at the Boston Landmarks Orchestra, played Concertmaster of Musica Sacra, King’s Chapel, New England Classical Singers; Principal Second, Concertmaster, and soloist of Coro Allegro; Concertmaster and soloist of Symphony by the Sea and numerous orchestras in NYC, including at Carnegie Hall with Leonard Berstein.

Baroque affiliations have included the Handel and Haydn Society, Concertmaster and Soloist of Tempesta di Mare, member and soloist with Foundling, Concertmaster and Soloist of Newton Baroque, Concertmaster of the Harvard/Radcliffe Choir, and Principal second of Arcadia. She has performed soli and chamber music live on WGBH. As founder and music director of Très, reviews of her CD praised her performances as “Simple and Brilliant in execution... the fluttering of Brooke’s wings, as she deftly negotiates the soaring yet plaintive runs” (Early Music America). For her concerto with Foundling: “...perhaps the most rewarding offering on the program...Brooke negotiated ticklish passagework without slighting the work's lyricism”.

Beloved by her students, Lisa has also recorded with Orchestras for Deutsche Grammophon, Sony, Nonesuch, Telarc, and a world premiere of a septet for Opus 1.

Renée Hemsing, a native of Los Alamos, New Mexico, specializes in chamber music and early music performance on both violin and viola. She earned her doctorate at the University of Colorado where her string quartet (Ajax Quartet) was graduate Quartet-in-Residence with the Takacs Quartet. She earned her masters at the University of North Texas with Emanuel Borok where she also studied baroque violin​ with ​Cynthia Roberts, and her bachelors from the University of New Mexico under​ ​renowned Brazilian soloist Cármelo de los Santos. In addition to her primary instructors, Renée’s mentors include Brandon Chui, Paul Kantor, Charles Wetherbee, and David Halen. Renée has been presented in master classes with the Takacs Quartet, Pacifica Quartet, Jupiter Quartet, Escher Quartet, American Quartet, Augustine Hadelich, Don Weilerstein, Sylvia Rosenberg, Vadim Gluzman, Matt Albert, Stephen Rose, and Peter Otto. In Spring 2014, Renée was featured on the cover of Symphony Magazine. Currently, Renée lives in Arlington, MA, where she maintains her private studio of string students. Her concert engagements this season include performances with the Handel + Haydn Society, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Charlotte Bach Akademie, and Seraphic Fire.

Boston-based violist Lauren Nelson is a versatile chamber and orchestral musician who is equally at home on both modern and historically informed instruments. As a Waldorf student in rural New Hampshire, she fostered a love for the arts from an early age. Inspired by the collaborative spirit of chamber music, she quickly recognized that her viola would be a lifelong companion.

She performs regularly with Handel + Haydn Society and Boston Baroque, and has appeared on stages across the US, Canada and Europe on the Baroque and modern viola, including at festivals Valley of the Moon, Berwick Academy American Bach soloists and Tafelmusik.

An advocate of contemporary music, Lauren is the violist of the Semiosis Quartet, whose recent projects include a residency at Tanglewood celebrating Black composer, Joseph Bologne, and a program of works by female composers supported by the American Music Project. She also performs and records with Emmanuel Music, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Odyssey Opera, Cantata Singers, New Bedford Symphony Orchestra, and Monadnock Music.

When she’s not practicing or performing you can find Lauren playing with her daughter, or deep in the woods, foraging for mushrooms with her husband, composer Steven Snowden.

Equally at home on steel and gut strings, violist/violinist Anna Griffis keeps herself busy as a performer, teacher, and administrator. Her playing has taken her to Mexico, Turkey, Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Taiwan, and across North America and she's performed at the Kennedy Center, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC), Boston's Symphony Hall, Smetana Hall (Prague), and Carnegie Hall. Anna is a member of the New Bedford Symphony (principal) and the Albany Symphony and performs regularly with the Portland Symphony, Rhode Island Philharmonic, Emmanuel Music, Blue Heron, Les Bostonades, Odyssey Opera, and Boston Lyric Opera. She co-founded Chicago-based Trio Speranza, prize winners at the Early Music American Baroque Competition, and performs with and is executive director of the new music group Ludovico Ensemble. Anna studied at Lawrence University, The Hartt School of Music, Tanglewood Music Center, and Boston University. She teaches and coaches chamber music at The New School of Music (Cambridge) and Tufts University, and is an affiliate artist in the Emerson/Harris program at MIT. In addition to her playing and teaching, she oversees communications for the Tufts Music Department and is a freelance graphic designer specializing in concert programs and publications. Originally from Annapolis, MD, Anna is the proud product of her public school music program. She now lives in the great neighborhood of Lower Allston with her bassoonist husband and their cat, Pig. She gets excited about fonts, road trips, and diners.

Israeli-born cellist Guy Fishman is active as a concerto soloist, recitalist, chamber musician, and orchestral player. He is principal cellist of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, with which he made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005. Fishman is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and abroad, having performed in recital and with Boston Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Les Violons du Roy, Emmanuel Music, Rockport Music, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Boston Museum Trio, Arcadia Players, and El Mundo. He performs on standard cello with the Colorado Music Festival, Albany Symphony, Orchestra of St. Luke's, among others. Recent appearances include the Dvorak concerto with the Reading Symphony Orchestra and a highly-praised survey of Bach suites in Boulder, Colorado. He has performed in recital with Dawn Upshaw, Gilbert Kalish, Eliot Fisk, Daniel Stepner, Lara St. John, Richard Egarr, and Mark Peskanov, and has toured and recorded with pop artist Natalie Merchant.

Guy Fishman has performed in chamber music recitals in Boston’s Jordan Hall and Sanders Theater, and Weill Recital Hall, Merkin Concert Hall, (le) Poisson Rouge, and BargeMusic in New York. He has appeared at the Tanglewood, Kneisel Hall, Chautauqua, Aston Magna, Connecticut Early Music, BBC Proms, and Musicorda festivals. He was a member of the New Fromm Players at Tanglewood, principal cellist of the New York String Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. He has also appeared on NPR broadcasts. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by the New York Times, and “beautiful … noble” by the Boston Herald. A critic for the Boston Musical Intelligencer, listening to Guy’s recent performance of Haydn’s C-major concerto, related that he “… heard greater depth in this work than I have in quite some time.”

Guy Fishman has recorded for the CORO, Telarc, Centaur, Titanic, and Newport Classics labels. Recordings of sonatas by Andrea Caporale (world premiere, Centaur) and duos for cello & bass (Centaur) were warmly received. Forthcoming releases include Vivaldi cello concerti with the Handel and Haydn Society and the cello sonatas of Beethoven.

Fishman started playing the cello at age 12, and at 16 began his Baccalaureate studies with David Soyer at the Manhattan School of Music. He subsequently worked with Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten, and Laurence Lesser, with whom he completed Doctoral studies at New England Conservatory. In addition, Fishman is a Fulbright Fellow, and spent his fellowship year in Amsterdam studying with the famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma. He is on the faculty at New England Conservatory and Bridgewater State University, and has given over a a dozen masterclasses in conservatories and universities across the country and abroad, including Boston University, Penn State, University of Toronto, and San Francisco Conservatory.

Boston-based cellist Jacques Lee Wood has performed around the world as a solo artist, chamber, and orchestral musician. His activities as a performer reflects a broad range of interests - historical performance on period instruments, commissioning new works for both modern and baroque cello, improvisation that incorporates live electronics, and composing his own material are just a few of the areas he explores in his creative scope. Dr. Wood is Principal Cello of the Cape Symphony, and is a member of several musical groups including Aston Magna, StringLab, Pedroia Quartet, Antico Moderno, and the NYC-based bluegrass band Cathedral Parkway. He is a frequent guest artist with A Far Cry, Boston Baroque, House of Time, Yale Schola Cantorum, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Bachsolisten Seoul, Bach Collegium Japan, Juilliard 415, and the Handel and Haydn Society. A recognized pedagogue, Wood is the cello professor at the University of New Hampshire and holds additional faculty positions at the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra (Intensive Community Program, BEAM Program) and Concord Academy. He has held residencies at the Yale School of Music, Boston Conservatory, and Tufts University to name a few, and has received fellowships from the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, the Yale Center for East Asian Studies for research at Sogang University (Seoul, South Korea), and the Yale School of Music for postdoctoral studies in early music with noted scholar and baroque violinist Robert Mealy. Wood is the founder and artistic director of the UNH Cello Festival and currently the cello faculty at the Summer Youth Music School (University of New Hampshire), Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and Point Counterpoint. An active guest lecturer and clinician, Dr. Wood has presented on a broad range of topics ranging from historical performance practice for the modern musician to music technology in the pedagogical process. He is a frequent guest artist at the Great Mountains Festival (South Korea), Korea Strings Research Institute, Bari International Music Festival, Banff Centre, Avaloch Farm, Aston Magna, and the Manchester Summer Chamber Music Festival. A grammy-nominated recording artist, Wood has released recordings on the Hyperion, Musica Omnia, and Navona labels. Dr. Wood completed his BM at the New England Conservatory of Music under Laurence Lesser, and holds a MM and DMA from Yale University, where he studied with Aldo Parisot.

Cellist Anna Seda has dedicated her artistry to the mastery of not only the classical canon but explores contemporary, folk, and popular music. Anna began her cello studies in Denver, Colorado at age four catching the “bug” when she first learned a fiddle tune by ear.

Holding degrees from the University of Colorado, University of Denver, and the Boston Conservatory, some of her most influential mentors include members of the Boston Symphony, Tacaks String Quartet, and Grammy winning multi-style cellist Mike Block, of which she works as his executive assistant.

Internationally, Seda has appeared at the Adriatic Chamber Music Festival in Italy, the Singapore Symphony, Great Wall Soloists in Beijing featured on NPR, and took a sabbatical in Cusco, Peru to teach cello.

Prior to the pandemic her New England based life was dizzyingly full of appearances with orchestras, opera pits, concert series, and studio musician recordings but in the quietude of the “Long Pause”, Seda has stepped into the realm of content creation, bringing more than 60,000 people worldwide entertainment, education, and music on the daily.

Guinevere Fridley is a baroque bassist, modern bassist, and viola da gambist in the Boston area. She engages in the intricacy, passion, and knowledge that thrives in the world of Historical Performance. With this historically informed performance practice viewpoint, she strives to bring the music of the past to life.

Fridley has performed with various ensembles including the Handel and Haydn Society, Arpeggione Ensemble, Boston Early Music Festival, Crescendo Period Orchestra, Arcadia Players, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Worcester Chamber Music Society, Masterworks Chorale, and Music Worcester. She performs at Emmanuel Music, Church of the Advent, First Lutheran Church in Boston. Fridley is ecstatic to have been a part of Arpeggione’s debut album, Songs of the Seafarer, which was recorded this past summer.

Fridley holds a Master of Music in Baroque Bass/Violone and a Master of Music in Viola da Gamba from Longy School of Music of Bard College. Her prior education includes a Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance from Boyer College of Music and Dance at Temple University.

In her downtime, Fridley loves to visit Acadia National Park and hike numerous trails with her husband, bake sweet treats, and drink coffee with a book in her lap.

Multi-instrumentalist, Andrew Arceci has performed throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Recording credits include APM Music/Juice Music, Cedille Records, Centaur Records, Music & Arts, NPR, PRI, Silent Witness––television series by BBC One (UK), BBC Radio 3 (UK), Novum (UK), Bôłt Records/Monotype Records (Poland), Deutsche Harmonia Mundi (Germany), and Deutschlandradio (Germany). He has taught at several institutions, including Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, Wellesley College (Director, Collegium Musicum), and Worcester State University. Additionally, he has given lectures, masterclasses, and/or workshops at Illinois Wesleyan University, the International Baroque Institute at Longy (Bard College), the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, the Narnia Arts Academy (Italy), Institutum Romanum Finlandiae (Italy), Taipei National University of the Arts (Taiwan), and Burapha University (Thailand). Arceci was a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies during the 2019-2020 academic year. In addition to serving as Arcadia Players' Artistic Director, he is the Founding Director of the Winchendon Music Festival (Winchendon, MA).

Boston-based pianist April Sun enjoys a multi-faceted musical life as a performer, educator, and arts organizer who values curiosity, sincerity, and fun in her work/play. An avid chamber musician who relishes playing keyboards of all kinds, she has performed with a diverse array of small ensembles, including The Meadowlark Trio, Phoenix Chamber Orchestra, Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra, Newton Baroque, Boston Symphony Chamber Players, and A Far Cry. Deeply invested in community service, April works as Co-Executive Director of Music for Food, volunteers with Asian Musical Voices of America, and spent two years as an Artist in Residence in Judson Park's Intergenerational Living Program. She also teaches piano and chamber music at Brookline Music School, plays sonatas and concerto reductions at New England Conservatory and Boston University, and leads music ministry at First Church Somerville.

April holds a doctorate from the Cleveland Institute of Music, where she received the Bennett Levine Chamber Music Award. Concurrent with her time at CIM, she studied fortepiano in Case Western Reserve University's Historical Performance Practice Program. Her many incredible mentors have included Daniel Shapiro, Anita Pontremoli, Paul Barnes, Kim Kashkashian, Peter Salaff, Hyeyung Yoon, Francesca Brittan, and Susan McClary. She has spent summers at Centre D'Arts Orford, Toronto Summer Music Festival, Avaloch Farm Music Residency, and Caroga Lake Music Festival.

April was born and raised in Bozeman, MT, and kept moving east before settling in MA, where she is surrounded by people and other animals she adores. Away from the piano, she fills time with stories, bikes, strong beverages, and hikes.

George Wiese grew up in a musical family, taking piano and trombone lessons throughout his childhood in the Philadelphia area. He is a graduate of The Juilliard School (NYC) and The Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore) where he studied trombone, conducting, and chamber music. Since 2011 George has been the Executive Director of Mountain Top Music Center in Conway, NH, an organization through which he led the successful campaign to renovate Conway’s long-shuttered Majestic Theatre into a vibrant performance venue. George maintains an active performance schedule as a conductor and keyboardist; he is currently Music Director of the Mt. Washington Valley Choral Society, Music Director/Organist of Waterford Congregational Church, and is in demand as a freelance musician throughout the Northeast. He particularly enjoys an ongoing collaborative relationship with The Arpeggione Ensemble (Boston.) George resides in Waterford, Maine, in a farmhouse he shares with his partner Tabitha and their collection of instruments. He is an active member of the International Reed Organ Society, the American Guild of Organists, and currently President of the Estey Organ Museum in Brattleboro, VT.