Voice Faculty

 Julianne Baird, soprano, with over 130 solo CD’s to her credit, has been described as one of the world’s most recorded sopranos. She maintains a busy concert and recording schedule of solo recitals, baroque opera and oratorio. In addition to her major roles in a series of acclaimed recordings of Handel and Gluck operatic premieres, recent additions to her discography include six Telemann secular cantatas with Steven Zohn, the complete Biblical Cantatas of Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre with Brandywine Baroque and “Aux Plaisirs, aux Delices Bergeres - French Court Airs and Dances” with the London-based group Zephyrus.

Her scholarship includes a Ph.D. from Stanford University and intensive studies with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Austria. Her book, Introduction to the Art of Singing, Cambridge University Press, now in its third printing, is used by singers and professional schools internationally. Dr. Baird has served as Professor-at Large at the University of Western Australia and is currently a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University. In popular demand as a visiting artist she conducts Master Classes at Yale, Oberlin Conservatory, Juilliard, and Stony Brook. Recently she was awarded an Endowed Chair position at the University of Alabama.

Baird has performed with Christopher Hogwood, John Eliot Gardiner and Joshua Rifkin throughout Europe, and has also sung as soloist with the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras and the New York Philharmonic.

The New York Times hailed her as a “national artistic treasure” “well-nigh peerless performer in the repertory of the baroque” and praised her musicianship that “engenders singing of extreme expressive beauty.” The London Times has called her performances of Handel “exquisitely stylish.”

Regarded for over four decades as one of the world’s finest countertenors, Drew Minter grew up as a boy treble in the Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys.  He continued his education at Indiana University and the Musik Hochschule of Vienna.  Drew appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others.  A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland.  As a countertenor he sang with many of the world’s leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM’s Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Drew was a founding member of the Newberry Consort, TREFOIL, and My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort; he has performed often with ARTEK, the Folger Consort and Severall Friends.  Mr. Minter has made over 70 recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Decca/London, Hungaroton as well as the BBC and CBC.  He appears in two films: as Tolomeo in Peter Sellars’s “Giulio Cesare,” and as the Devil in “In the Symphony of the World; a Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.”  He was a frequent writer for Opera News.

Drew Minter is also a lauded stage director. He began as director of the operas at the Göttingen Händel Festival, directing period baroque productions.  He was also founding artistic director of Boston Midsummer Opera.  Since then he has directed productions in many styles for the Opéra de Marseilles, the Cloisters, Caramoor, the Boston Early Music Festival, Lake George Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Handel and Haydn, Amherst Early Music Festival, Boston’s Opera Aperta, and for numerous colleges and universities.  In addition to giving workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Mr. Minter is Senior Lecturer in Music at Vassar College, where he teaches voice and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers.

Soprano Christina Kay (Co-Director and Program Administrator) enjoys a multi-faceted career as a singer, teacher, and arts administrator, with a special emphasis on chamber music and Renaissance/Baroque-era ornamentation. Over the past decade, she has worked with students of all ages in both the private studio and classroom, most recently as a workshop instructor for adult choral workshops presented by the Western Wind, and as a voice instructor at Highbridge Voices, a choral and academic after school program in the Bronx. Before moving to New York City in 2016, Christina was Adjunct Professor of Voice at Beloit College, and simultaneously managed a studio of thirty private voice and piano students in Madison, WI. 

Christina enjoys writing and performing her own arrangements of popular 16th century madrigals, and has a vested interest in helping singers explore and popularize ornamentation practice amongst American early music ensembles and audiences. This passion led her and mezzo-soprano Kim Leeds to found Filigree Ensemble in 2022, a duo that focuses on improvisation in early music alongside topical new works. Christina made her Carnegie Hall debut in 2019 as soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah with Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra, and has performed as both a soloist and chorister with The Western Wind, The American Classical Orchestra, ARTEK, Bard Festival Opera Chorus, the Cathedral Choir of St. John the Divine, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, and True Concord. On the opera stage, she has appeared as Mormon actress Daphne Blueberry in the premiere performance of David Chesky’s satirical opera, La Farranucci (her first opera sharing the stage with drones!), and as the leading role in Petr Kotik's chamber opera, Master-Pieces at the Ostrava in Prague Festival. When not singing or teaching, Christina enjoys her part-time role as Music Associate for Advancement at St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City, and thinks fondly of the three years she previously served as Music Administrator at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. christinakaysoprano.com 

Instrumental Faculty

Christa Patton (Artistic Director) is a multi-instrumentalist and early harp specialist with a particular focus on the repertoire of the early seventeenth century. Her individual vocabulary of style in this genre emerged from her years of study in Northern Italy where the essence of this music speaks through its native environs. Her particular love of early opera has led her to participate in productions of Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, L’Incoronatione di Poppea, and L’Orfeo with the New York City Opera, Opera Vivente, Wolf Trap Opera, Tafelmusik, Opera Atelier and the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis. She has also performed in Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo with the Toronto Consort, and Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone and Il ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria with Opera Omnia.

Also an early wind specialist, Christa has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with Early Music New York directed by Fredrick Renz, Ex Umbris, and Piffaro the Renaissance Band. In addition, Christa has appeared with premier early music ensembles including Apollo’s Fire, King’s Noyse, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, Blue Heron, Folger Consort, Newberry Consort, Parthenia, ARTEK, Pegasus, and the New York State Baroque Orchestra among many others.

Christa received her Doctor of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from SUNY Stony Brook, and her Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music. She is presently Adjunct Lecturer at The Graduate Center CUNY where she teaches historical harp at the doctoral level. She is also a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick where she lectures and directs early music ensembles and opera projects in repertoire spanning the Middle Ages into the eighteenth century.

As a Fulbright Scholar Christa studied the Italian Baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi. While there she performed with the Laboratorio permanente sulla Musica vocale del XVII secolo at the Palazzo Reale in Milan, the Palazzo Barberini in Rome and at the Tempio dell'Incoronata in Lodi under the direction of Monteverdi specialist and director of Ensemble Concerto, Roberto Gini.

Christa created the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College with friend and colleague, David Ronis in 2010. In addition, Christa has directed vocal style and led the continuo section in productions of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo at Stony Brook University, Queens College, and was involved in the first performances of Yale’s Baroque Opera Project (YBOP). As a clinician Christa has participated in workshops for the Madison Early Music Festival, Amherst Early Music Festival, Texas Toot, and the Medieval Institute at Longy School of Music.

Christa’s recordings can be heard on the Lyrachord, Dorian, Navona and ATMA labels.

Early string specialist Dongmyung Ahn Phd (Baroque String Director) is a performer, educator, and scholar whose interests span from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. She studied baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie at Indiana University where she received her Bachelor’s of Music with high distinction and her Master’s of Early Music. Dongmyung is co-founder of Guido’s Ear and regularly performs with the Sebastians, TENET Vocal Artists, Green Mountain Vespers, Raritan Players, and Pegasus. She has played rebec in the critically acclaimed production of The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters. A dedicated educator, Dongmyung is the director of the Queens College Baroque Ensemble and has taught music history at Queens College, Rutgers University, and Vassar College. She received her PhD in musicology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and has published an article on medieval liturgy in the Rodopi series Faux Titre. For younger audiences, Dongmyung recently wrote a children’s book Eggy Goes to Venice about her niece’s trip to Venice to hear Monteverdi’s Vespers (www.tenetnyc.com).

Harpsichordist Ben Katz  (Accompanist) has appeared in venues including Fenton House (London), ISSUE Project Room (NYC), BRIC (NYC), and the Gardner Museum (Boston). He has performed as a soloist, and with the ensembles Night Music (Philadelphia), Variant 6 (Philadelphia), Kollective366 (NYC), The Knights (NYC), A Far Cry (Boston), Boise Baroque (Boise) and Palaver Strings (Portland). A recipient of a grant from the Frank Huntington Beebe Fund, he spent 2013-14 in London as a fellow of the Institute for Musical Research studying partimenti (17th/18th c. improvisation-based music) in the British Library.

In the realm of early keyboard, basso continuo, improvisation, and collaboration are at the heart of Katz’s practice. He takes a creative and imaginative approach to the harpsichord and early keyboard, inspired by the vibrant traces of the past inscribed in ancient scores and musical sources, and the magical present-day exchange of ideas and energy between fellow musicians.

He has since presented his research on partimenti at the Stile Galante International Porpora Conference, and the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, and in lecture-demonstrations for Phoebe Carrai's cello bootcamp masterclass, the Harvard Organ Society, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and the New School. As a music antiquarian, Katz has uncovered new sources for major baroque composersi; in 2019 he presented new keyboard music attributed to Frescobaldi at Duke University on the Rare Music Series and his manuscript of Purcell lifetime keyboard transcriptions is forthcoming for publication by Stainer and Bell (London) for the Purcell Society Edition (Vol. 6). 

Lisa Terry is an avid chamber music performer and soloist on viola da gamba and violoncello. She has spent her career as a long-term member of many of the best known chamber ensembles in the early music scene of the Northeast. From her home base in New York City, where she is a member of the viol quartet, Parthenia, Lisa works regularly with the Lyra Consort (NYC) and Pegasus Early Music (Rochester). She is a long-time member of Princeton’s Dryden Ensemble, and is principal cellist and viol soloist with Tempesta di Mare, Philadelphia’s baroque orchestra. Lisa was a founding member of ARTEK, and has performed with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera, Juilliard Opera Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, Orchestra of St. Luke’s and Concert Royal. She is often heard playing for English Country Dance in New York City and at Pinewoods Camp in Massachusetts.

Lisa earned her degree in cello performance from Memphis State University and continued her studies in New York with Richard Taruskin, viol, and Harry Wimmer, cello. She has appeared to great acclaim as soloist in the Passions of J.S. Bach, notably under the batons of Robert Shaw, Richard Westenburg, Kent Tritle and Lyndon Woodside in Carnegie Hall, in the Jonathan Miller staged performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music conducted by Paul Goodwin, and at the Winter Park Bach Festival, conducted by John Sinclair. With Sinclair, she has also performed the viola da gamba solo in Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light.”

With Parthenia, she records for MSR Classics. With Tempesta di Mare, she records for Chandos. Lisa serves the Viola da Gamba Society of America as Past-President.

Stage Direction and Historical Movement

Operas directed by Guillaume Bernardi for Oper Frankfurt in the Bockenheimer Depot were Haydn's L’isola disabitata, Marc Neikrug's Through Roses and the first ever staged production of Francisco Antonio de Almeida's oratorio La Giuditta. In recent seasons he has concentrated almost entirely on early Italian operas, with a particular emphasis on works by Francesco Cavalli and Allessandro Stradella. In 2019 he directed The Harlequin Salon in Toronto. His passion for opera and dance was born while working closely with the American choreographer Trisha Brown, whose celebrated joint productions have included L’Orfeo heraus. Canadian, who teaches at York University in Toronto, studied French and Italian literature at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Historical Dance

Dorothy J. Olsson has given numerous workshops in historical dance and has choreographed for and/or performed with Piffaro, the Folger Consort, Musica Nuova, Western Wind Vocal Ensemble, SUNY Stony Brook, Mannes Camerata, Wake Forest University and Princeton University. Dorothy directs and teaches at the Historical Dance Program at the Amherst Early Music Festival where she has also directed several historical theatrical productions. She also choreographed for more than fifty theatre projects or operas for the Amherst Early Music Festival, including Telemann’s Der Geduldige Socrates, Handel’s Almira, Campra’s L’Europe Galante, Monteverdi’s Ballo delle Ingrate, Conradi’s Ariadne, Torrejón y Velasco’s La Púrpura de la Rosa, Keiser's Pomona, and Purcell’s Dioclesian and Dido and Aeneas.

Dorothy received her B. M. in Music Education, major in Bassoon, from the Crane School of Music (State University College at Potsdam, NY), and received 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. She was an Assistant Professor of Dance Education at New York University for ten years. Dr. Olsson has co-authored seven books on historical dance, including Terrstepery, A Primer for Historical Dance. Her article on “Seventeenth-Century Dance” appears in A Performer’s Guide to Seventeenth-Century Music (ed. Stewart Carter, Schirmer Books, 1997; 2nd edition, Indiana Univ. Press, 2012).

She is the Founder and Director of the New York Historical Dance Company (www.newyorkhistoricaldance.com). The company performed in October 2010 in Philadelphia for Piffaro’s 25th Anniversary Gala Celebration, The Royals’ Baptism & Ballet, along with Parthenia & The Blue Heron Renaissance Choir. In March 2010, Dorothy presented a lecture demonstration at The Metropolitan Museum of Art entitled The Jigge Is Up: Dance in Shakespeare’s Time; the musical ensemble Flying Forms provided musical accompaniment. This presentation was part of the day long series “Early Music Exposed” sponsored by the Early Music Foundation. She has taught Baroque dance at the "Rethinking Bach: A Performer's Workshop" at Tokai University, Japan in 2014, 2015, and 2016. At the Queen's College Baroque Opera Workshop, she also choreographed dances for a production of Lully's Le Carnaval mascarade