Sally J. Lemaire Elected President of
Arcadia Players Board - Nov. 6, 2008
The Board of Directors of Arcadia Players is
pleased to announce
the appointment of Ms. Sally J. Lemaire of South
Hadley
as president. Sally Lemaire has been a supporter of Arcadia Players for
over a
decade; her longstanding interest in Baroque and earlier music
stretches back
to her years of piano study.
Lemaire has led
several organizations in her professional career and in her
volunteer commitments. From 1991 to 2003 she was executive director of
the over 30,000-member Alumnae
Association of Mount
Holyoke College. During eleven of those years she also served as a
member, and
then President, of The Corporation for Independent Living, an
organization
committed to building accessible housing for people with
disabilities.Prior to coming to the Pioneer Valley,
Lemaire worked in both non-profit and for-profit businesses,
specializing in
management and career development. Concurrent with her professional
responsibilities, she supported arts organizations, especially those
providing
music, in her communities. In a world where violence and wars are
frequent and are
part of the structure of our society, she believes that music, other
art forms,
authentic movement and community building are urgently needed as an
antidote.
In addition to her community work, Lemaire writes poetry and
draws with pastels. Her other primary interests are in the spiritual
and sports
realms: she is a supporter and volunteer at Haydenville Congregational
Church
and a member of The Orchards Golf Club in South Hadley. Sally
Lemaire looks forward to working with Ian
Watson, Arcadia’s
Artistic Director, and with the Arcadia Board, whose diverse talents
and
backgrounds bear on the performance, funding and promotion of early
music in
historically-informed performance.
E.
Wayne Abercrombie, Advisory Board -- Retired Professor of Music
and Choral
Director, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. BM & MM
Westminster Choir
College, Princeton, NJ. D. Mus. Indiana University. Other
professional affiliations: President of the American Choral Directors
Association, Eastern Division; Massachusetts Music Educators
Association and Music Educators National Conference; National
Collegiate Choral Organization; Conductors Guild - Past Member of the
National Board.
Jeanne Ammon, Board of Directors, is
a retired
physical therapist. She received B.S. and M.S. degrees from Boston
University and taught and practiced physical therapy in the Boston area
and in Albany. She settled in the Pioneer Valley fifteen years ago and
now lives in Hadley, where she runs a bed and breakfast. Jeanne has
participated in numerous early music workshops playing recorder and
viola da gamba. She is presently a member of the Board of Directors of
the Viola da Gamba Society of America. She serves on the Personnel and
Administrative Committees of the Arcadia Players Board.
Anna Polesny Bartoli, Advisory Board – B.A.
Art History; M.S. Psychology; M.F.A.Weaving and Textile Design;
consultant, artist and teacher; Director of Anava Designs, Santa Cruz,
CA & Northampton, MA; former board president of the Santa Cruz
Chamber Players; former Executive Director of Mohawk Trails Concerts,
Inc., Shelburne Falls, MA; grant writer and consultant to other area
non-profit organizations; President of Arcadia Players Board of
Directors for nearly five years.
Robert Creed, Advisory Board,
is Emeritus Professor of English and Comparative
Literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has
published widely on Beowulf and comparative oral traditions.
He served as President of Arcadia Players for several years.
Walter B. Denny, Clerk, Board of
Directors –
Professor of Art History and Adjunct Professor of Near Eastern
Studies, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Consulting
Curator for Islamic Art, Smith College Museum of Art; currently
member of Board of Governors, Institute of Turkish Studies; Chair
of the International Conference on Oriental Carpets; Exhibitions
Planning Committee, Asia Society; Collections Committee; Harvard
University Art Museums, Advisory Board, Center for Anatolian
Ethnography and Textiles. Former Trustee of The Textile Museum;
former member, Visiting Committees of the Museum of Fine Arts,
Boston, Fitchburg Art Museum, The Museum for Textiles; former
president, Historians of Islamic Art, singer with Arcadia Players
and other musical groups. See also his page at the
UMass Art
History Department's website.
Priscilla Drucker, Advisory Board,
recently
retired after twenty years of
producing and hosting classical music shows at public radio station
88.5/WFCR,
where she also took part in fundraising and promotion. Earlier she
worked in
programming and production at KUT-FM in Austin,
and produced a nationally-distributed concert series at the Eastman
School of
Music. She holds an A.B. in music from Brown and an M.A. in musicology
from Eastman.
Besides tending her writing/editing business and working with Arcadia
Players,
Priscilla sings alto with Da Camera Singers.
Alan Durfee –
Professor of Mathematics, Mount Holyoke
College; organist, harpsichordist and clavichordist; founding
member of the Boston Clavichord Society, serving as its first
president; singer with the Five College Early Music Collegium;
member of the American Guild of Organists and Early Music America;
substitute organist for many local churches. Treasurer of Arcadia
Players for several years. See also his page at Mount
Holyoke
College's website.
Bob Eisenstein, Advisory Board
–
Director of the Five College Early Music Program including the
Five College Early Music Collegium and the Euridice Ensemble;
teacher of music history and director of madrigal singers at Mt.
Holyoke College; visiting lecturer at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst, MA; plays viola da gamba as a founding
member and program director of the Folger Consort, Washington,
DC; also plays with the New York Renaissance Band, Cappella Nova,
the New York Consort of Viols, the Washington Bach Consort and
the National Symphony Orchestra. See
also his page at Mount Holyoke
College's website.
Matilda (Tilli) Friedrich, Treasurer,
Board of Diectors, is a new resident of the Valley, having
moved here from Madison,
Wisconsin in November of 2007 to be near her daughter. She has a long
history of choral singing including the Radcliffe Choral Society
(president), the Bach Society in Lafayette, Indiana, and the
Philharmonic Chorus in Madison, but now focusses her attention on the
alto recorder. In Wisconsin she worked as a social worker and as
a team leader for human services in the Governor’s budget office. In
addition to her daughter she is the mother of 3 sons.
Thomas Marc Futter, Founding
Patron, Advisory Board – Former president of Kellogg Brush
Manufacturing
Company, Easthampton, MA; board member of the Mass Cultural
Council, Springfield Symphony Orchestra, WGBY, Springfield,
Musicorda, Springfield Library and Museums Association; Art
Advisory Board, Mount Holyoke College, MIFA, Bay Path Hospital,
Easthampton Savings Bank, and the Solomon Schechter School,
Northampton.
Gregory Hayes, Advisory Board, has taught piano and
harpsichord at Dartmouth College since 1991. He is a busy chamber
musician and orchestral keyboard player, and has appeared as soloist
with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. He plays harpsichord, piano,
and celesta regularly for the Albany Symphony Orchestra, and has also
performed with the Vermont Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra of St.
Luke's (New York), and Arcadia Players. He has participated often in
the New England Bach Festival and Marlboro Music Festival, and on the
Mohawk Trail Concerts series. He is longtime music director for the
Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence (Massachusetts). Mr.
Hayes is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and the Manhattan
School of Music. He has also studied at the Hartt School of Music and,
for several summers, at the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin
College. His teachers have included Ming Tcherepnin, Kenneth Fearn,
Dora Zaslavsky, and Raymond Hanson. He has written frequently on music,
including liner notes for many recordings and articles and reviews for
magazines and newspapers. He lives in Goshen (Massachusetts) and has
taught for many summers at Greenwood Music Camp in nearby Cummington.
Jane Hershey, Advisory Board, studied with Wieland Kuijken at
The Hague
Conservatory, and at the Longy School of Music with Gian Silbiger. She
has toured and recorded with the Boston Camerata; as a member of the
trio Charivary, she has been a frequent guest at Boston’s Museum of
Fine Arts and in other early music series around the country. As a
violone player, she has played with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra,
Monadnock Music, and the Santa Fe Baroque Orchestra, and has performed
with the Arcadia Players since its beginning. As a specialist in
Renaissance music, she has toured as a guest artist with the ensemble
Hesperus and recorded with them on the Koch and Dorian labels. She can
be heard on a 2005 Centaur release of music of Jacquet de la Guerre
with Frances Fitch and friends. Jane teaches in the graduate program in
Early Music at the Longy School of Music, at Powers Music School. She
has directed the Tufts Early Music Ensemble since 1995.
Margaret
Irwin-Brandon, Arcadia Players Artistic Director Emerita and Advisory Board member, is a specialist in early keyboard instruments and a concert recitalist
in the Americas
and Europe. Her harpsichord performances of J.
S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in New York’s Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie
Hall were received with critical acclaim. She has been a soloist in many
European and American festivals and has performed in national and regional
conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical
Society. As founding artistic director of the Arcadia Players Baroque
Orchestra, Chorus, and Chamber Ensembles, she produced “Arcadia Players – A Baroque Celebration” presented by WGBY-TV in 1992. She also produced Arcadia Players’
first fully staged Baroque opera and premiered Richard Einhorn’s score, Voices of Light, for the classic film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc. As a
Fulbright Scholar in Germany,
she studied organ with Karl Richter and continued harpsichord studies with
Gustav Leonhardt. Irwin-Brandon serves as director of music at the Unitarian
Universalist Society of Greater Springfield, Massachusetts. She is an associate
fellow at Davenport College of Yale University and has served on the faculties of
the Oberlin College Conservatory, the University of Oregon,
Portland State University,
and Mount Holyoke College.
Monica Jakuc Leverett, Board of Directors –
Monica
Jakuc Leverett is the Elsie Erwin Sweeney Professor Emerita of Music at
Smith College,
where she has taught from 1969 until 2008. She has appeared as a solo
and chamber
music pianist on three continents, has commissioned a number of works
by living composers, and is a champion of women composers. She
graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. Ms.
Jakuc Leverett has performed on early pianos since 1986 and appears as
a
frequent guest soloist with Arcadia Players. She is a proud owner two
fortepianos made by Paul
McNulty: a
6 1/2 octave 1819 Conrad Graf fortepiano copy, and a 5 1/2 octave
fortepiano after designs of Anton Walter. See
also her page at Smith
College's website.
Arthur F. Kinney, Board of Directors, is Thomas W. Copeland
Professor of Literary History
and Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at the University
of Massachusetts, Amherst. Latest books are "Shakespeare's Webs," "Shakespeare and Cognition,"
"Shakespeare, Computers and The Mysteries of Authorship," and
"Elizabethan and Jacobean England: Sources and Documents." See his
page at the UMass Amherst English Department website.
Christopher Krueger, Advisory Board. A graduate of the New
England Conservatory
of Music, Christopher Krueger was a student of James Pappoutsakis. He
has performed as principal flutist with the Boston Symphony, the Boston
Pops, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, and the Opera Company of Boston,
among other organizations, and is a member of Collage New Music and
Emmanuel Music. As a Baroque flutist, he has been a soloist on the
Great Performers Series at Lincoln Center, the Philadelphia Bach
Festival, Tanglewood, Ravinia, the Berlin Bach Festival, and elsewhere
throughout North America and Europe. He is a member of the Bach
Ensemble and the Aulos Ensemble, and is principal flutist with the
Handel and Haydn Society and Boston Baroque. His recordings can be
heard on Sony, DG, Decca, EMI, Nonesuch, Pro Arte, CRI, Telarc, Koch,
and Centaur. Krueger is Assistant Professor of Music at the
University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is on the faculty of New
England Conservatory, Boston University, and Oberlin’s Baroque
Performance Institute.
Dana Maiben, Advisory Board. Violinist, composer and conductor Dana Maiben, hailed by the Boston
Globe for her “supremely joyous artistry,” played principal violin for
Arcadia Players for many years and was music director for the ensemble’s 10th
anniversary season, among other occasions. Maiben was a founder member of Concerto
Castello, a groundbreaking ensemble for 17th century music, and in 2002 she
launched a new ensemble for the period, Concerto Incognito. Colin Tilney,
writing in Continuo Magazine, called
her “high priestess of the Italian 17th century solo.” Maiben has served as
concertmaster of the New York Collegium under the direction of Christophe
Rousset, Martin Gester, Paul Goodwin, and Andrew Parrott. She has often
performed with her principal teacher, violinist Jaap Schroeder, and in duo with
fortepianist Monica Jakuc Leverett. Maiben is founding Music Director of
Foundling, a baroque orchestra based in Providence,
R.I. At the Longy School of Music
she teaches violin, chamber music, and a wide range of performance practice
styles, and occasionally directs opera. Her own opera, based on Gertrude Stein’s
play Look and Long, has been
presented in staged workshop at Smith
College. Maiben’s credits
include recordings on Centaur, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Dorian, EMI, fuga
libera and Hyperion.
Deena Maniscalchi,
Board of Directors,
received her B.A. in English Literature and an M.B.A. in Finance and
Marketing.
She combined her love of the arts with work as a promotion writer and
marketing
consultant for arts and entertainment clients.
A longtime writer for Springfield Symphony Orchestra and The Big E, she
also served as promotion manager and public relations director of
WWLP-TV. She is the author of Driving
Vision: The
Story of Peter Pan Bus Lines (2000), a 175-page history
commissioned by
Peter L. Picknelly to commemorate the 65th anniversary of the bus line.
Deena
earned her J.D. in 2005 from Western New England College.
She was a judicial law clerk for the Justices of the Massachusetts
Superior
Court for two years. She is presently an
associate at the law firm of Smith & Brink, P.C., in its
Springfield office.
Charles Page, Advisory Board –
Charles Page
holds a
Bachelor’s degree from Boston University
and a Master of Music degree from Yale University. He also spent
a year
in Amsterdam on a Fullbright Fellowship.
Professor Emeritus at Bay Path College in Longmeadow,
Massachusetts,
Mr. Page was director of music there for thirty-five years. He is
Minister of Music Emeritus at historic
“Old First
Church” in Springfield,
Massachusetts. In conjunction with
the Board of Music of the
Church, he inaugurated and was Artistic Director of the “Music at
First”
series. Mr. Page retired from his
position at Old First church at the end of August, 2005. He was
Chairman of music programs for Springfield’s
Bicentennial celebrations and has served on the Boards of Directors of
Project
Opera of Massachusetts and the Community Music School of Springfield,
The Musical
Advisory Board of the Springfield Symphony, and the Board of the
Association of
Yale Alumni. He is a founding member and
immediate Past President of the national United Church of Christ
Musicians
Association, Inc. A member of the
American Guild of Organists, he served as General Chairman of the
Regions I and
II Convention (New England, New York, and New
Jersey)
of the Guild. He is former Massachusetts
State Chairman and subsequently served as District Convener for the
Guild.
Alice Robbins, Player's Representative
to Board of Directors, is principal cellist and viol soloist with Arcadia Players.
Vitally active in the historic performance ensemble since its inception in
1989, she has served as interim artistic co-director. Robbins has performed
widely on baroque cello, viola da gamba, and vielle in numerous ensembles,
including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Concerto Vocale,
Smithsonian Chamber Players, Boston Early Music Festival, Boston Camerata, New
England Bach Festival, Violins of Lafayette, and the Oberlin and Boston
Consorts of Viols. She was a founding member of Concerto Castello, an
international quintet specializing in the music of the early 17th century, and
currently performs with Handel & Haydn Society, Opera Lafayette, and
Washington Bach Consort as well as Arcadia Players. She frequently appears as
viola da gamba soloist with orchestras including Washington Bach Consort. A
member of the Five College Early Music faculty at Smith and Mount Holyoke
Colleges, Robbins has also
taught in the Historic Performance department at Boston University.
She earned degrees at Indiana
University and the Schola
Cantorum Basiliensis, where she was a student of Hannelore Mueller. Robbins has
recorded for Telefunken, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, fuga libera, Smithsonian, and
Gasparo records, as well as for many radio productions.
Peter W. Shea, Board of Directors –
Peter W. Shea has sung professionally since 1972 throughout New
England and the Hudson Valley. He often appears as a featured
soloist with choral societies, orchestras and chamber music
ensembles, is a member of several area vocal ensembles, and gives
frequent solo recitals. In the 2003-2004 season he was interim
co-Artistic
Director of Arcadia Players, and as part of that season he sang
Schubert's Winterreise with fortepianist Monica
Jakuc in March 2004. He is also cataloger of music and foreign
languages at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst, and is
developing
a web-based
performer's guide to musical settings of the German-Jewish
poet Heinrich Heine. See also Peter's personal web-page
for upcoming performances.
Barbara Stroup, Board of Directors
- received her
B.A. in English and her
M.A. in Audiology, a field she practiced for 33 years in Vermont and in
western Massachusetts. She now works as an indexer of books and
academic journals, and has been an administrator for Springfield
Cultural Council and Springfield Arts
Festival. Barbara designs and produces fiber and mixed media art and
plays piano and concertina.
Meredith
Young, Advisory Board – B.S Johns Hopkins, honors in
biology: M.B.A., University of Chicago in Marketing; Chicago Sun-Times,
Marketing and Sales Department; Little, Brown Co; Over almost twenty
years at Channing Bete- positions in Advertising, Publishing, and
International Operations; former Vice President of Operations for
Publishing and Advertising. Now, Director of Survey Research.
Volunteers for varied organizations including youth mentoring programs;
former President, Music In Deerfield.
Ian Watson,
Arcadia Players’ Artistic Director, played an important role in the
British
Baroque revival which brought such renowned orchestras into prominence
as the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the English Chamber
Orchestra, the English Baroque Soloists, the Monteverdi Choir and The
Sixteen, with all of whom he has performed as organist, harpsichordist,
solo pianist and/or director. Ian’s versatility is revealed in the
equal ease with which he performs the roles of orchestral conductor,
choir director, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, teacher and public
speaker.
Among Ian’s many prestigious conducting engagements
are Monteverdi’s Vespers at St. James’s Palace in the presence of Her
Majesty the Queen; Bach’s B Minor Mass at the Rheingau Festival with
the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields Orchestra and Chorus; the
opening concerts of the newly renovated Châtelet Theater in Paris
with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra; Christmas Eve at the Royal Albert
Hall with the Mozart Festival Orchestra; a tour and video with Nigel
Kennedy and the English Chamber Orchestra; and assistant conductor to
Sir John Eliot Gardiner in the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage.
Ian has been the leading keyboard player with most
of the major English ensembles, with whom he toured and recorded
extensively, as well as being featured on numerous film soundtracks and
broadcasts including Amadeus, Mr. Holland’s Opus and Restoration. In
the field of opera, Ian has worked at Glyndebourne, and conducted
productions throughout England, and internationally at Bremen Opera,
Giessen Opera, the Komische Opera, Berlin, and as a Principal Conductor
with the Darmstadt State Opera in Germany.
Ian was born in England in the Buckinghamshire
village of Wooburn Common. He won a scholarship at the Royal Academy of
Music in London, at the age of 14, where he was awarded all the prizes
for organ performance and others for piano accompaniment. Ian
also received the coveted Recital Diploma, the highest award for
performance excellence. As a distinguished graduate, he was
honored in 1993, with an Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music,
in recognition of his services to music. Ian also has a Fellowship of
the Royal College of Organists. His first organ appointment was at St.
Margaret’s, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for
ten years. Ian also held a number of prestigious positions in London
including Organist of St. Marylebone Parish church, and Music Director
of the historic Christopher Wren Church, St. James’s Piccadilly.
Ian is now Director of Music at St. Paul’s Cathedral
in Worcester, Founder and Director of the St. Paul’s Music Festival,
Director of the Worcester Collegium and Artistic Director of Arcadia
Players.
Back to
Arcadia Players Home Page
