Valley Conservatory Early Music Festival
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Sunday, September 29, 2019 - 4:00 pm
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St. Mary of the Visitation Catholic Church
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The Valley Conservatory Early Music Festival (VCEMF) was started in 2013 as a way to expose the community to early music and period instruments by providing lectures, master classes and concerts. It is the only early music festival in the southeast region of the country and is an annual event that is held in September.
The Valley Conservatory Early Music Festival Concert will consist of performances by the VCEMF Artists, the Mockingbird Ensemble, Rocket City Viols and the Early Music City of Nashville. Works to be performed will include:
The Valley Conservatory Early Music Festival Concert will consist of performances by the VCEMF Artists, the Mockingbird Ensemble, Rocket City Viols and the Early Music City of Nashville. Works to be performed will include:
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George Phillipp Telemann
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Wilherm Friedrich Ernst Bach
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Henry Purcell
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William Byrd
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The program is a potpourri of vocal and instrumental works. The artists performing on this concert are from various cities in the southeast region including Nashville, TN, Oxford, MS, Birmingham, AL Florence, AL and Huntsville, AL. Please visit https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/event/early-music-city-nashville-tn/ for additional information on Early Music City of Nashville.
It's free admission, so be sure to bring a friend!
Mockingbird Early Music Ensemble
The Mockingbird Early Music Ensemble was formed in 2003 by enthusiastic proponents of the historically informed presentation of music created before 1750. Based in Oxford, Mississippi, they perform on recreations of period instruments. These instruments include recorders, viole da gamba, harp, baroque guitar, psaltery, crumhorn, and harpsichord. www.mockingbirdensemble.org/about_us Irene Kaufmann Susan Marchant, Warren Steel, and Ronald Vernon. |
Rocket City Viols
June 23rd, 2017 Rocket City Viols blasted off with a workshop in Huntsville, Alabama – home of Marshall Space Center, the US Space and Rocket Center and Space Camp. Ron Vernon and Susan Marchant came to teach the workshop which included 7 players of various levels. Kevin Lay got to know Ron and Susan at “Viols on the Mountain” in Sewanee, TN and playing consort music at their house in Oxford, Mississippi along with Wendy Gillespie and friends. For years Kevin was the only viol player in the Huntsville are, but recently helped to develop local musicians (and a couple that moved here) to form a full viol consort. Ron and Susan created our logo and put together very organized folders for all the workshop attendees. The format of the workshop included proper sitting and posture, breathing, right and left hand technique, warmup exercises and much more. |
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Dr. Beatrice Renee Collins-Williams, Director
Beatrice Renee Collins-Williams, is the founding director of the Valley Conservatory. Her experiences cross several disciplines which include conducting, teaching and performing. As a conductor she has directed several orchestra across the country including the Colorado Symphony, Women’s Philharmonic (San Francisco), Denver Young Artist Orchestra, Alabama All-State Reading Orchestra, West Tennessee All-State Orchestra, the Junior Orchestra of the Alabama String Teacher’s Association Honor Strings Festival, the Huntsville Youth Orchestra, Oakwood College Symphony Orchestra, Michigan State University Orchestra and Chamber Orchestra and members of the Aspen School of Music Festival Orchestra where she was a conducting scholarship recipient. In addition to her conducting experiences, Dr. Collins has taught music education on all levels; applied piano and violin on the college level and has performed with several orchestra where she was a member of the violin/and or viola section. She holds dual bachelor degrees in Music Education and Piano Performance form the University of Northern Colorado, and a Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Michigan State University. Her biography is listed in the International Who’s Who in Music. |
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Susan Roessel Dura
Sue maintains a lively interest in early music with frequent trips to the Amherst Early Music Festival and other local workshops. She plays recorders, bassoons and capped double reeds in several local groups. She played modern bassoon for the Shoals Symphony and has played baroque bassoon for the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and the Belle Mead Baroque. Sue has been personnel manager for the Shoals Symphony, served on the board for the American Recorder Society and helps organize these concerts for Valley Conservatory. |
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Kevin Lay
Kevin Lay, viola da gamba, has a masters degree in historical performance from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University 2002. While at IU, he was a graduate assistant, won the Jason Paras Scholarship, won the annual concerto competition, and co-founded the award-winning group Liaison. Since graduating, Kevin has lived in his home town of Huntsville Alabama and has worked as a professional photographer for his “day job.” During the last 6 years, he has performed with many groups in the south, including Vox Angelica, the Zephiro series, and Ars Nova here in Hutsville, the Knoxville Early Music Project in Knoxville, TN, the Shoals Symphony in Florence, AL, and Belle Meade Baroque in Nashville, TN. Kevin has also been a guest artist at Union University in Jacksonville, TN, LSU in New Orleans, FSU in Tallahassee, FL, and the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, AL. |
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Lara Lay
Lara Wilmot Lay, oboe and recorder, earned her B.A. in music performance at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She continued her modern oboe studies as a graduate assistant at Florida State University, earning her M.M and an Early Music Certificate. While there, she began studying baroque oboe. She plays professionally with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra and Nashville’s Belle Mead Baroque. She has also played with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Orchestra of the 17th Century in Washington D.C., and the Chicago Baroque Orchestra at St. Clements. Throughout, she has also maintained a professional free-lance modern oboe career, playing with numerous orchestras and chamber groups. In addition to her baroque gigs in Nashville and Atlanta, Lara has played modern oboe with the Huntsville Symphony, Shoals Symphony, Gadsden Symphony, Valley Conservatory, Huntsville Chamber Winds, Grace Notes, and many local theater, opera and church productions. |
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Patrick Dailey
Patrick Dailey has been described as possessing “a powerful and elegant countertenor voice” and a “VOCAL STANDOUT”. International credits include the UK and Brazilian premieres of Hasse’s Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra with the Woodhouse Opera Festival and Il Festival de Ópera Barroca as all as the international premiere of Soosan Lolavar’s I.D. Please in the Tete a Tete New Opera Festival in London. He made his NYC cabaret debut in 2017 at the invitation of Tony Award winning composer Jason Robert Brown at Subculture NYC. On April 4th, Mr. Dailey served as featured artist, conductor, and music curator for the official MLK50 commemoration at the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, TN. Later that fall, he premiered the role of Mini-B/Boris the Boar in Dan Visconti and Cerise Jacobs’s Permadeath: A Video Game Opera with White Snakes Projects in Boston, MA to great acclaim. This spring, Mr. Dailey became the first countertenor to perform with Shreveport Opera singing Kyle in Robert Paterson’s Three Way: Masquerade. The reminder of the 2019 season included engagements with the IRIS Orchestra, ALIAS Chamber Ensemble, Music By Women Festival, and Boston Early Music Festival. As a scholar, he presented a performative presentation entitled "The Anatomy of the Black Voice: Peculiarities, Challenges, and Regional Differences" at the Center for Black Music Research's 2013 Black Vocality Symposium. Mr. Dailey is a graduate of both Morgan State University and Boston University and serves on the voice faculty at Tennessee State University (TSU). At TSU, he established the Big Blue Opera Initiatives and the annual Harry T. Burleigh Spiritual Festival. Visit www.PatrickDaileyCT.com for more information. |
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Dorothy Maguire Dorothy Maguire earned a bachelor’s degree in Music Education with Choral Emphasis from the Metropolitan State College of Denver in 2010. There she studied voice with Gene Roberts. At Metro, Dorothy was an active and versatile member of the Early Music Ensemble where she played violin, recorders, lute and viola da gamba. Currently, she studies viola da gamba with Kevin Lay. |
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Jared Hauser
Oboist Jared Hauser has been described as a “sensitive, elegant soloist” with a “subtle refined style” by Gramaphone Magazine, and as a “meditative and thoughtful” player by the American Record Guide. Appointed to the faculty of the Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University in 2008 where he performs with the Blair Woodwind Quintet, Hauser also teaches at the Interlochen Center for the Arts and the National Music Festival each summer. An avid performer of period oboes, Jared has performed with Music City Baroque since his arrival in Nashville. Performance credits on modern oboes include a wide array of national and international appearances as soloist, chamber and orchestral musician, as well as numerous critically acclaimed commercial solo recordings, and radio broadcasts for NPR’s Performance Today, CBC/Radio Canada and BBC Radio 3. Jared holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory, Rice University and University of Michigan. |
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Claire Rottembourg
Born in Paris, Claire Rottembourg studied Early Music at the Conservatoire Supérieur de Musique de Paris, CNR, and Musicology at the Sorbonne University. She holds degrees in Baroque and Renaissance woodwind instruments performance and Music History. Claire Rottembourg is active as a free lance musician and has appeared with many ensembles in France and Germany and in New York where she was a clinician for the New York Recorder Guild. In Southern California where she was first flute of the Bach Collegium of San Diego. She is on the faculty of Canto Antigo Early Music Festival in Los Angeles, San Diego Early Music Society and more recently the Atlanta Early Music Alliance. Claire Rottembourg was the Music Director of the San Diego Junior Recorder Festival which gathers every year more than 200 children of the San Diego School District. Ms. Rottembourg recorded for the music labels Arion and Steel Flower Music. She is a writer and a translator for classical CD labels such as Naxos, Palatine and HLM. |
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Francis Perry
As a classical guitarist, and specialist on the Renaissance and Baroque lutes, Francis Perry has appeared at colleges and music festivals in the United States, Italy, and Spain. Along with his duo partner, Timothy Broege, Mr. Perry was a featured performer at the American Recorder Society's concert series at The Boston Early Music Festival. He holds a Bachelor's degree from the North Carolina School of the Arts and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Rutgers University. Mr. Perry teaches classical guitar and lute at Belmont University. He is founder and artistic director of Early Music City, an ensemble based in Nashville which takes a unique, eclectic approach to music before 1850. |
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Aurora Russell
Aurora Russell is a Senior and she is majoring in Vocal Performance. She made her UNA opera theatre debut in the ensembles for Gounod’s Romeo and Juliette and Puccini’s La Boheme. She performed in HCCA's production of Into the Woods as Jack's mother/Cinderella's Mother, the role of Meg in UNA opera’s production of the broadway musical Little Women, and Gretel in the Opera, Hansel and Gretel, and the role of Addie Mills from The House Without a Christmas tree. Next fall at UNA she will be performing as the Governess in UNA’s Opera production Turn of the Screw and in the Spring she will be performing the role of Margaret in The Light in the Piazza. In addition to her theater participation, she has also been a member of UNA chamber choir, Vocal Jazz and UNAPOD where she has played baritone and trumpet. She serves as a section leader in the Chamber Choir. Aurora won the Solo Artist Competition in 2017 and she sang Quel Guardo il Cavaliere from Don Pasquale by Donizetti with the Shoals Symphony. |
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Lisa Wiggins
Lisa Wiggins studied violin with her grandfather for 12 years before graduating from the New England Conservatory of Music with a degree in music performance. The next stop was playing in the New World Symphony, America's only training orchestra lead by Micheal Tilson Thomas. An opportunity to play for a traveling musical in Europe took Lisa abroad where she remained for the majority of 10 years, playing music, teaching and working for a variety of organic farmers. A short hiatus from music lead to a cooking degree before returning to the US. Now living in Fackler Alabama, Lisa plays in the Huntsville, Chattanooga and Mobile symphonies as well as teaches violin. In 2003 Lisa started Harmonic Strings, a retail business selling string instruments and bows. |
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Rodena Tharpe
Mrs. Rodena L. Tharpe is a dedicated violist and pedagogue. For 30 years, she has been studying and developing her skill, and is a staple musician in the Tennessee Valley area. She began her studies at the Memphis State University Suzuki Children’s Program at Memphis State University at the young age of 6. She moved to Huntsville, AL and continued studies with Art Cotruvo, Melanie Richardson, Barbara Poularikas, Lee Coker(Julliard grad), Dan Nedelcu and Charles Hogue(principal violist of HSO) in whom she studied with at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. She has attended masterclasses with Itzhak Perlman(violinist), and performed for a masterclass given by Marcus Thompson(violist). She has performed in a small ensembles with Smokie Robinson and the Black Jacket Symphony. As a chamber musician, she performs regularly with the Blue Sky Quartet/Quintet, and Felicity String Quartet. She has also performed with various chamber groups such as the: Valley Conservatory Chamber Orcherstra, Gateways Music Festival(Eastman School of Music)Chamber Orchestra and Quartet, Mimosa String Quartet, the Interlochen Music Camp Quartet, and many others. As an orchestra musician she has performed with various organizational and church orchestras, Huntsville Symphony Orchestra, Shoals Symphony Orchestra, Valley Conservatory Lyceum Orchestra, Gateways Music Festival Orchestra, UAH Collegium Orchestra, the former Huntsville Opera Theater Orchestra, Interlochen National Music Camp Orchestra, Huntsville Youth Symphony, and Metro Youth Orchestra. As a soloist she has received outstanding and performance awards from the Alabama Orchestra Association. She has made guest appearances in the Virgin Islands, and local and regional churches. Currently Mrs. Tharpe teaches with Valley Conservatory, Adjunct University Instructor, and also gives private lessons in viola, violin, and piano. |
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Suzanne Beaudry
After receiving an undergraduate degree in music performance, Suzanne Beaudry has pursued a varied and diverse career as a professional musician, including performing and teaching both ‘classical music’ on various instruments all over the southeast. In addition, she has been president/manager of the Red Mountain Chamber Orchestra for about 25 years, and was also on the national board and scholarship coordinator for the annual conclaves of the Viola da Gamba Society for almost 20 years. She is currently performing with various ensembles: Birmingham Baroque (harpsichord), Huntsville’s Rocket City Viols, Samford University Orchestra (viola), and is accompanying dance classes at the Alabama School of Fine Arts (piano). |
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Dr. Rolf Goebel
Dr. Rolf J. Goebel is Distinguished Prof. of German at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. His current scholarly interests address intersections of music and other sounds with literature, philosophy, and media technologies. As an organist and harpsichordist, he is especially interested in the repertoire of the late Renaissance and the Baroque, as well as later composers influenced by music of those periods. In addition to serving as an occasional organist for weddings, he has given numerous recitals and workshops in the Huntsville area. He was also the Dean and Sub-Dean of the Greater Huntsville, AL Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. |
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Daniel George
Having been a vocalist and cellist most of his life, Daniel George grew up in Panama where he was exposed to music at a tender age. As a true connoisseur of the arts, in the last few years he has added recorders and the tenor viola da gamba to his array of musical interest.
Having been a vocalist and cellist most of his life, Daniel George grew up in Panama where he was exposed to music at a tender age. As a true connoisseur of the arts, in the last few years he has added recorders and the tenor viola da gamba to his array of musical interest.