Arcadia Players - New England's Period Instrument Ensemble

Arcadia Players embraces 
historical performance 
practice to illuminate 
and invigorate the 
great Western heritage 
of vocal and 
instrumental music.

Bios
    Ian Watson is one of today’s most extraordinarily versatile and accomplished musicians. Described by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a conductor of fomidable ability”, and by The Times in London as a keyboard performer with “virtuosic panache and brilliantly articulated playing” and “a world-class soloist.”, his versatility is revealed in the equal ease with which he performs the roles of orchestral conductor, choral director, organist, harpsichordist, pianist, teacher and public speaker.
    Ian has appeared as soloist or conductor with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras,  BBC and London Concert Orchestras,  City of London Sinfonia, Scottish Chamber, English Chamber, Polish Chamber, Irish Chamber and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, Bremen Philharmonic, Rhein-Main Symphony Orchestra, Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Handel and Haydn Society, Bach Society, Houston, English Baroque Soloists, and The Sixteen amongst many others. He has also been featured on more than 200 recordings and film soundtracks including Amadeus, Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, Restoration, Cry the Beloved Country, Voices from a Locked Room, and BBC‘s David Copperfield.  In 2011/12 he directed concerts with the Handel and Haydn Society in Boston as well as the Bach Society Houston and appeared with Chicago’s Baroque Band . He has been invited back to direct all three in the 2012/13 season.
    Ian has a distinguished career as both a solo and collaborative pianist.  He has appeared in recital with Nigel Kennedy, Iona Brown, Julian Lloyd Webber, QX Boston and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields Chamber Ensemble amongst many others. He is featured as a pianist on a number of films and recordings including an award-winning CD with Renee Fleming.   As soloist, he has played and directed piano concerti with, notably,  the English Chamber Orchestra, City of London Sinfonia  and London Mozart Players as well as orchestras in Europe, Scandinavia and the USA.
    Ian's many prestigious conducting engagements include 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 and tours with Nigel Kennedy and the English Chamber Orchestra of Bruch and Mozart concerti. He was invited to be the assistant conductor, organ and harpsichord soloist and continuo player for Sir John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing all Bach’s Cantatas on the correct liturgical day in places where Bach lived and worked.
    A significant area of Ian’s work is devoted to Arcadia Players period-instrument ensemble, of which he is Artistic Director. Arcadia have a wide-ranging repertoire from viol consort to their recent exploration of all nine Beethoven Symphonies and concerti for fortepiano.  Recent projects have included fully-staged performances of Handel’s Serse featured in the New York Times and compared very favorably with the legendary production by New York City Opera in the 90’s. Ian has had a career-long passion for opera, working first as a vocal coach and conductor at Glyndebourne, and subsequently conducting countless performances of over fifty operas throughout England, and internationally at Sadler’s Wells, The Royal Festival Hall, Bremen Opera, Giessen Opera, the Komische Opera, Berlin, houses in France and Scandinavia, and as a Principal Conductor with the Darmstadt State Opera in Germany in repertoire ranging from Monteverdi and Handel to Richard Strauss's Elektra and Janacek’s Macropoulos Case.
    Born in England in the Buckinghamshire village of Wooburn Common, Ian won a scholarship to the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music in London, at the age of 14. He later won all the prizes for organ performance and others for piano accompaniment including the coveted Recital Diploma, the highest award for performance excellence. He completed his studies with Flor Peeters in Belgium. 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 and he is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Organists. Ian’s first major appointment was as Organist at St. Margaret's, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for ten years. He has also held a number of important positions in London including Organist of St. Marylebone Parish Church, and Music Director of the historic Christopher Wren Church, St. James's Piccadilly.  Alongside the position of  Artistic Director with Arcadia Players, Ian is Principal Guest Conductor of Karlstad Baroque, Sweden, Music Director of The Shakespeare Concerts, Choral Director and faculty member of Anna Maria College, Paxton and Chapel Organist of Assumption College Worcester.

Carolyn Holstein, President, brings a variety of skills to the Arcadia Players Board of Directors.  She has been a supporter of Arcadia Players since its inception, but never served on the Board until 2013.  Ms. Holstein recently retired after 35 years as organist for the Unitarian Universalist Society of Amherst.  She studied piano and organ as a child, and harpsichord as an adult with Margaret Irwin-Brandon, the founder and Artistic Director Emeritus of Arcadia Players.  For many years she performed frequently as an accompanist for numerous soloists and ensembles, including the UMass Amherst Women's Choir, which she also directed for two years.  Ms. Holstein earned an M.S. degree in social psychology and worked for many years at UMass in the psychology department. She has served on many Town committees, and worked for the Town of Amherst as Recycling Coordinator, then as staff to the Zoning Board of Appeals.  She's now retired from all employment, and enjoys this new phase of her life with Arcadia Players.  Working hard to serve a good cause is something she loves to do.
 
Walter B. Denny, Clerk, Board of Directors – Walter B. Denny is Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, specializing in the art and architecture of the Islamic world.  He began performing as tenor chorister and soloist with Arcadia Players in its early days, and joined the Board of Directors in the 1990s.  He currently serves as Clerk (Secretary) on the Board. See also his page at the UMass Art History Department's website.

Margaret Irwin-Brandon, Arcadia Players Artistic Director Emerita, is a specialist in early keyboard instruments and a concert recitalist in theAmericas 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.

Arthur F. Kinney, Vice President, 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.

Sally Lemaire, Past President, Board of Directors - 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.

J. Mark Peterman, MD recently retired from the practice of medicine in 2012, having served in the Pioneer Valley for 37 years.  After his initial seven years of practice in Internal Medicine, he returned to formal training where he served Fellowships in Cardiology and Interventional Cardiology.   He then spent the remaining 23 years of his career practicing Interventional Cardiology at Baystate Medical Center, where his passion became the development and implementation of the Baystate Regional Heart Attack Program, the formal system for the emergent treatment of all heart attack patients in the four-county region of western Massachusetts.  Dr. Peterman was born into a classical music-loving family, and further developed his love of music by joining a Renaissance choir while in medical school.  After family and professional responsibilities settled down, he joined the choir at Grace Episcopal Church under the direction of Beth Hart Damon.  He has found further joy in fostering music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras with his involvement on the Arcadia Players’ Board of Directors, and looks forward to their continued support of historically informed performances in the Pioneer Valley and throughout the region.

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. 

Ian Watson

Royal Philharmonic Orchestra

Handel & Haydn Society

St. James Palace

Wooburn Common. England

Royal Academy of Music, London

Carolyn Holstein

J. Mark Peterman

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