Brearley Benefit | Fri April 30, 2004

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Meet the Artists

Oliver Brewer (tenor) has been lauded by The New York Times for his “attractive round tenor.” A graduate of the Eastman School of Music, he has appeared in concert and recording with The Publick Musik and Early Music New York. Mr. Brewer has also performed in concert as soloist with Musica Antiqua (NY), Parthenia, the New York Continuo Collective, Bach Works and the Lexington Bach Orchestra. His ensemble affiliations include St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, the newly formed Tiffany Consort, the artist roster of VOX Vocal Ensemble, Polyhymnia, and St. Luke-in-the-Fields.

Todd Frizzell (tenor) recently sang with the New York Virtuoso Singers, the New York Concert Singers, Musica Antica, and the Grove Street Singers. A Resident Artist of the New York’s Ensemble for Early Music since 1995, he has serenaded Dame Judi Dench at Broadway’s Ethyl Barrymore Theater, sung the tenor solos in Händel’s Israel in Egypt at Avery Fischer Hall with The National Chorale and is a featured soloist in a new CD, Responsoria, recorded with the choir of the church of St. Luke in the Fields, where he is also a frequent recitalist. Todd is a member of the Western Wind vocal ensemble.

Julie Goell (actor) grew up in Rome where she learned from the masters of commedia dell’arte. In Europe she worked in music and theatre, film, television and recording. She toured with “Mummenschanz,” and with the Swiss circus, “Schaubude,” she acted in the film “Cassandra Crossing” and was a regular on the TV series “Le Avventure di Saturnino Farandola.” In Rome Ms. Goell co-directed the clown troupe “I Gesti” and is certified to teach physical comedy skills by The Instituto per lo Studio dello Spettacolo, (Teatro Studio). Based in New York in the 80’s, she acted in the Broadway production of “Ghetto” and directed several regional theater productions. She has taught semesters of commedia dell’arte at Boston University as well as Colby College where her production of Goldoni's “Venetian Twins” was selected for remounting at the American College Theater Festival. Ms. Goell currently teaches Clown and commedia dell’arte at the Dell’Arte School of Physical Comedy and at the Celebration Barn Theatre, in collaboration with her husband, Avner “The Eccentric” Eisenberg. A graduate of Emerson College with a degree in acting and directing, she will soon complete a music degree at the University of Southern Maine. Ms. Goell plays Klezmer music on string bass with The Casco Bay Tummlers and was music director for the world premiere of the Holocaust play, “Manifest.” She tours with her solo mopera, “Opening Night…Carmen,” which previewed at Diorama Arts Center, London and recently garnered rave reviews at Light Opera Oklahoma and at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta.

Grant Herreid, lute, theorbo, cittern, is a versatile musician/director/teacher on the early music scene. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer he performs frequently with Hesperus, Piffaro, My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, ARTEK and New York City Opera. He teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York and directs the New York Continuo Collective. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows and explores the unwritten traditions of early Renaissance music with the group Ex Umbris. He has recorded for Archiv, Dorian, Koch, Lyrichord, Musical Heritage Society and Newport Classics, among others.

Kaspar D. Mainz. After appearing professionally as a ballet dancer in numerous European theatres and opera houses, Kaspar Mainz continued his studies in dance pedagogy and choreography, specializing in the reconstruction and choreography of historical dance forms. In the last five years he has appeared in more than 200 theatrical performances in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Mr. Mainz created and played the lead role in a theater piece with music and dance focusing on the life and work of Händel, which was premiered at the Händel Festival in Halle in June of 1999. In Leipzig, he has given many dance performances in such venues as the Gewandhaus and the Alte Händelorse. For six years, Mr. Mainz was the Artistic Director of Musica et Saltatoria, an ensemble which has performed throughout Europe offering music and dance from the Renaissance through the early nineteenth century. In the United States, he has presented Baroque dance workshops at New York University, Goucher College and SUNY Stony Brook; he has also performed with Piffaro. His reconstruction of Beauchamp’s Sarabande was presented at a dance conference in London in 1996, and published in the Derra de Moroda Festschrift in 1997. He has prepared a set of instructions for historical dances to accompany a piano method for children that has been published by Schott Verlag. Mr. Mainz has taught at Salzburg University, University of Leipzig, Salzburg Mozarteum, the University (Musikhochschule) of Nürnberg-Augsburg, and the University of Graz, and currently directs a Baroque dance ensemble at the Händelhaus in Halle, Germany. Mr. Mainz is the Artistic Director of The New York Historical Dance Company. Mr. Mainz has co-authored (with Dorothy Olsson) four books on historical dance.

Patrticia Ann Neely holds a BA in music from Vassar College and an MFA in early music from Sarah Lawrence College, specializing in the performance of early music on replicas of early-bowed strings, including the vielle, viola da gamba, violone, and Baroque double bass. Her teachers have included Grace Feldman and Judith Davidoff in the United States and Wieland Kuijken in Brussels. She is currently on the faculty of the Mannes College of Music Extension Division and The Brearley School where she teaches double bass. Her daughter Allegra is in Class II.

Ms. Neely has appeared with many early music ensembles in the United States and abroad including Early Music New York and its Grande Bande, The Boston Camerata, The Boston Early Music Opera Orchestra, the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Rheinischen Kantorei, Köln, The New York Collegium, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and Orchestra, The American Classical Symphony, Gimmerglass Opera, and New York City Opera, to name a few. For three years she was a member of the medieval ensemble, Sequentia, based in Cologne, Germany, and directed by Benjamin Bagby and the late Barbara Thornton. She was a founding member of Parthenia, a consort of viols. She has also appeared at many early music festivals throughout the United States, Western and Eastern Europe, and Scandinavia including the well-known Oude Muziek Festival in the Netherlands and the Boston Early Music Festival in the United States. Ms. Neely produced and co-directed Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo virtutum with the Mannes Camerata in honor of the 900th anniversary of the composer's birth.

Ms. Neely has recorded for Arabesque Records, Allegro, Musical Heritage Society, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Ex Cathedra, Classic Masters, Erato, Lyrichord, and Music Masters.

Dorothy Olsson received her B. M. in Music Education, major in Bassoon, from the Crane School of Music (State University College at Potsdam, NY), and her Master of Music in Musicology from Manhattan School of Music. She completed her Ph.D. in Performance Studies at New York University, with a dissertation on early twentieth-century dance, entitled Arcadian Idylls; Dances of Early Twentieth-Century American Pageantry. For ten years, she was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Dance Education at New York University. Dr. Olsson’s article on “Seventeenth-Century Dance” appears in A Performer’s Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music (ed. Stewart Carter, Schirmer Books). Dorothy is the founder and director of The New York Historical Dance Company, a group of dancers devoted to the study, recreation and performance of dances from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. Costumed in period clothing, the company performs social and theatrical dances from Europe and America. The company has performed with Piffaro, Parthenia — A Consort of Viols, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, and the New Dance Group. Dr. Olsson has given numerous workshops in historical dance and has choreographed for the Folger Consort, Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, Mannes Camerata (Mannes College of Music), Wake Forest University and Princeton University. Dorothy has choreographed for and/or directed several historical theatrical productions at the Amherst Early Music Festival and at the Country Dance and Song Society Early Music Week. Dr. Olsson has co-authored (with Kaspar D. Mainz) four books on historical dance.

Christa Patton originally trained as an oboist and has since developed an interest in early wind instruments, as well as stringed instruments. She has performed medieval and Renaissance music throughout the U.S., Europe and Japan with Early Music New York, Piffaro, Clarion Music Society and Ex Umbris. As a baroque harpist, Christa has performed with Artek, Wolf Trap Opera Company and the New York City Opera. Having received a Fulbright grant, Christa presently studies baroque harp in Milan, Italy, with harpist Mara Galassi. She has recorded for the Lyrichord, Helicon, Dorian and Ex cathedra labels.

Frederick Renz, founder and director of the Early Music Foundation (EMF), is a unique figure in the early music movement. Equally adept in all forms of music and music-drama from the 11th to the 18th centuries, he has reaped international acclaim for his work as conductor, producer, director and performer while leading New York’s Ensemble for Early Music and New York’s Grande Bande to preeminence in the field.Frederick Renz studied harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt in Holland as a Fulbright Scholar. He was keyboard soloist with the legendary New York Pro Musica for six seasons and founded the Early Music Foundation when the Pro Musica disbanded in 1974.

Mr. Renz directs New York’s Ensemble for Early Music and Grande Bande in an annual New York season and on regular tours throughout the United States and abroad. For his pioneering work in the genre of medieval music-drama, Renz has received numerous accolades, including commissions from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Play of Mary Magdalene, The Resurrection Play of Tours and The Raising of Lazarus/Conversion of St. Paul; Sponsus: The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins), Spoleto Festival USA (Herod and the Innocents), and the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (The Play of St. Nicholas and Daniel and the Lions). Frederick Renz has also received two Producers Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts’ Opera/Musical Theater Program and a grant from the Ingram Merrill Foundation. A noted harpsichordist, Frederick Renz has given numerous solo recitals, appeared with orchestras and chamber groups in New York, and has recorded for Lyrichord, Foné, Decca, Vanguard, Musical Heritage Society, Musicmasters and Nonesuch. As an educator, Renz has served as Visiting Professor and Artistic Consultant for the Fundacion del Estado para la Orquesta Nacional Juvenil (Venezuela), the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Oklahoma, the Athens Festival and the Tokyo Summer Festival. In 2002, Frederick Renz was awarded an honorary Doctor of Music degree conferred by the State University of New York (SUNY).

Paul Shipper (bass) performs worldwide as a singer, actor, opera director and instrumentalist. This season’s highlights included the modern premiere of Lully’s “Carnaval Mascarade” with Paul O’Dette and tours as a soloist with Andrew Lawrence-King and Piffaro. Also, he is set to tour in the U.S. and Europe as a soloist and with Ex Umbris and Visceral Reaction. His CDs are out on Harmonia Mundi, BMG, Dorian, RCA, Windham Hill, Zefiro and other labels. He was faculty member at the New School and Mannes College of Music, and currently teaches at Amherst Early Music and The New York Continuo Collective. Paul has performed with Early Music New York since 1981.