About Arcadia Players
The Premier Period Music Group in the Pioneer Valley
Arcadia Players embraces historical performance practice to illuminate the rich musical heritage of vocal and instrumental music from the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. A professional ensemble of musicians in Western Massachusetts, Arcadia Players was founded in 1989 by Margaret Irwin-Brandon with the generous support of founding patron T. Marc Futter.
Our performances include well-known as well as hidden gems of chamber music, opera, orchestral and choral repertoire, and the ever-popular Handel's Messiah.
Arcadia Players is a 501(c)(03) organization, dependent largely on ticket sales and private donations.
Artistic Director Andrus Madsen
Andrus Madsen is an accomplished performer on the organ, harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano. He is the founding director of Newton Baroque and also performs with the Boston-based vocal ensemble Exsultemus. Madsen is known for his eloquent Baroque-style improvisation and for his inventive programming, striving to bridge the barriers between audience and performers.
Madsen holds degrees from Brigham Young University and the Eastman School of Music, where he earned a doctorate in harpsichord performance and literature. His teachers include Arthur Haas, Ton Koopman, Peter Sykes and William Porter, and he has taught and led masterclasses at the Eastman School, Boston University, the University of Texas and many other institutions. He is an active private teacher who also serves as music director at several churches and synagogues in the greater Boston area. His recordings include a reconstruction of the Vespers from 1701 by Johann C. F. Fischer, on Toccata Classics, and keyboard music of Johann Pachelbel on Raven CD Recordings.
Guest Artists
British-American soprano Agnes Coakley Cox is co-founder and co-director of In Stile Moderno, the New England-based ensemble for 17th-century music. She has collaborated with such early music ensembles as Seven Times Salt, La Fiocco, Long and Away, Les Canards Chantants, MIRYAM, and Les Enfants d’Orphée. Recent choral appearances include the Handel & Haydn Society, Ensemble Altera, Zenith Ensemble, and The Thirteen. A graduate of Yale and the MusikAkademie Basel, she teaches voice in the Pioneer Valley and online.
Nathaniel Cox enjoys a varied musical career both as one of North America’s leading cornetto players, and as an accomplished continuo player on lute and theorbo. In addition to co-directing the New England-based ensemble for 17th-century music In Stile Moderno, he performs with ensembles such as Apollo’s Fire, Piffaro, Dark Horse Consort, Bach Collegium San Diego, The Toronto Consort, TENET Vocal Artists, and Blue Heron. Nathaniel holds bachelor’s degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory in both Russian literature and trumpet performance, as well as Master’s degrees from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in cornetto and historical performance practice. Nathaniel loves to share his passion with students, and has taught at the Amherst Early Music Festival and the San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque Workshop.
The New York Times has described the performances of bassist Jay Elfenbein as “magnificently played” and “played with virtuosity and style.” After 30 years in New York, Washington and Boston playing classical, Baroque and jazz on bass and viola da gamba, Jay spent two years as a gamba and bass soloist with Cirque du Soleil in Macau and four years in France. Returning to the U.S. in 2014, Jay has continued his involvement in all styles of music, with a renewed focus on composition and improvisation.
Daniel Fridley, bass, has performed with the Boston Early Music Festival and with Teatro Nuovo, pursuing a historically informed approach to bel canto repertoire. He has also appeared in the operas of Verdi, Mozart, Handel, and Rameau, among others. In addition to operatic works, he has sung the bass solos for many of the works of Bach, Handel, Delalande, Rautavaara, and more. He regularly performs with Boston Baroque, Blue Heron, The Newberry Consort, The Thirteen, and Apollo’s Fire. He is a professor of voice at Middlesex Community College, and a graduate of the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Case Western Reserve University Historical Performance Practice program.
Boston native Julia Glenn performs internationally on modern and baroque violins. She recently joined the Naumburg-winning Lydian String Quartet and the faculty of Brandeis University after teaching for three years at the Tianjin Juilliard School, where she served as violin and music theory faculty and was a member of the Tianjin Juilliard Ensemble. She is a 2018 graduate of Juilliard’s C.V. Starr doctoral program, where she worked with Joseph Lin, Sylvia Rosenberg, and Cynthia Roberts. In 2013 she obtained her master’s from New England Conservatory with James Buswell, and in 2012 her bachelor’s in linguistics magna cum laude from Harvard University.
Noah Horn, tenor, is Music Director of Boston’s Cantata Singers, and Artistic Director of Audivi, a Detroit-based vocal ensemble. He also co-founded and performs with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble and is currently the music director at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst. He has taught at several colleges and universities, most recently at Harvard as conductor of the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and has sung with professional choirs and orchestras around the world. He holds degrees in choral conducting and organ performance from Yale University.
Douglas Kelley has performed on viola da gamba throughout Europe from Amsterdam to Zagreb and has made numerous tours in Asia including award-winning performances at the Osaka International Chamber Music Competition (Japan). He has taught summer courses in Italy and for the German, Austrian and Swiss viola da gamba societies (Viola da gamba-Gesellschaft) and was teaching assistant at the Vienna Musikhochschule. In 2000, he was awarded a career grant by Early Music America. He is a graduate of Oberlin Conservatory of Music and returns to his alma mater as a member of the Oberlin Consort of Viols. He joined Arcadia Viols in 2014.
French mezzo-soprano Sophie Michaux has become one of North-America’s most versatile and compelling vocalists. Born in London and raised in the French Alps, Sophie’s unique background informs her artistic identity, making her feel at home in an eclectic span of repertoire ranging from grand opera to French cabaret songs. Sophie is a member of Blue Heron and the Lorelei Ensemble, with whom she has toured extensively. She has collaborated with many ensembles and orchestras around the US including Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Haymarket Opera Company, Roomful of Teeth, Les Délices, Bach Collegium San Diego, Dartmouth College Handel Society, Palaver Strings, Ruckus, Upper Valley Baroque, Musicians of the Old Post Road, Lowell Chamber Orchestra, Aston Magna, and others. Sophie and her husband, Adam, recently moved to western Massachusetts where their eclectic groups Tiny Glass Tavern and Columba are enriching the local music scene.
Boston-based mezzo-soprano Shiba Nemat-Nasser has a wide range of performance experience, from Baroque and bel canto repertoire to contemporary chamber works and experimental theatre. She has performed with Newton Baroque, the Society for Historically Informed Performance (SoHIP), A Joyful Noyse, Longwood Opera, Orpheus Singers, Masterworks Chorale, and a variety of other groups. She has served as Haas Visiting Artist at Wheaton College and holds degrees from the University of California at San Diego and New England Conservatory.
With a “perfect early music voice” (Cleveland Classical) of “extraordinary suppleness and beauty” (The New York Times), soprano Teresa Wakim has performed and toured with many of the world’s best period instrument ensembles, including Apollo’s Fire, The Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, New York Baroque Inc, and Blue Heron. A graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and Boston University’s College of Fine Arts, she maintains a busy career as a concert soloist spanning medieval to new music, and on the baroque opera stage.
Our Board of Directors
Robert Eisenstein
President
Bob Eisenstein, bass viol, recently retired as director of the Five College Early Music Program, for which he coached and directed student ensembles including the Five College Early Music Collegium and Euridice Ensembles. Bob is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Folger Consort, the early music ensemble in residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. He has performed with many ensembles including the Washington Bach Consort, the Newberry Consort, the National Symphony and Western Wind, and has appeared at Tanglewood, Amherst Early Music, and other summer festivals.
Sally Sutherland
Vice President
Sally joined the Board in 2020. She is retired from a long academic career, mostly at Mount Holyoke College, in English and in several administrative positions. Her work in the drama and poetry of Shakespeare’s time brought her to early music, and from there to Arcadia Players.
Walter Denny
Clerk
Walter is Distinguished University Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, where he taught for fifty-three years. He has been involved with many different musical organizations since the early 'sixties and performed with Arcadia Players for sixteen years before retiring from singing in 2007.
Douglas Taylor
Treasurer
Doug Taylor, Treasurer – Doug is a retired actuary who has put his experience to work for Arcadia Players and other local nonprofit organizations. Doug is also a guitar player who recently expanded his music interests into classical music. The combination of the two roles led Doug to Arcadia Players in 2025.
Gregory Farmer
Greg recently returned to the Pioneer Valley after a career in land conservation and historic preservation. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of early Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque music, and enjoys the richness of the tradition as an audience member and amateur musician.
Jeff Goodhind
Jeff is the Librarian at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies. He holds a BA in History from Bard College and an MA in Library Science (Archives and Records Management) from Simmons College. He serves as an Ex-Officio member of the board.
Gregory Hayes
Greg has taught piano and harpsichord since 1991 at Dartmouth College, where he is a Senior Lecturer. He is a busy collaborative musician and has performed on keyboard instruments of various kinds with Arcadia Players and also with the Springfield, Vermont, and Albany Symphony Orchestras. He has participated often in the New England Bach Festival and Marlboro Music Festival, and on the Mohawk Trail Concerts series in western Massachusetts.
Julie Hayes
Julie Candler Hayes recently retired from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where she served as department chair and then as Dean of the College of Humanities and Fine arts from 2010 to 2020. Although her scholarly work focuses on early modern French literature, she is a lifelong amateur violinist and musical omnivore with a special affection for the repertory of the Arcadia Players.
James Mead
Jim has been singing classical music since childhood, beginning with church and boy choirs in the 1960s. Since 2002, he has been a member of the self-directed early music group Cantabile and is a regular chorus member of Arcadia Players. He is president of ProSensing Inc., a local engineering firm creating unique instruments for monitoring the environment. Jim lives on Astarte Farm in Hadley where he and the crew grow no-till organic fruits and vegetables.
Alice Robbins
Alice performs widely on baroque cello and viola da gamba with period instrument ensembles and has served as Arcadia Players' principal cellist since its founding with Meg Irwin-Brandon. She retired from teaching at Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges in the Five College Early Music Program and now serves on the boards of the Viola da Gamba Society of America and its New England chapter.
Mark Wojcik
Mark Wojcik has a degree in Music Performance on Saxophone and Clarinet from the University of New Hampshire. He recently retired from a long career in Information Systems and is returning to the music world, his first love. He currently teaches clarinet, flute and recorder at the Hope Center for the Arts in Springfield, Mass. When not teaching he loves playing Bach and Scarlatti on the Harpsichord and Mozart and Beethoven on the piano and singing tenor in the church choir.