Violins
CONCERT MASTERPraised by his “…finger-‐knotting virtuosity…” (Yorkshire Post, England), his “expressive performance” (New York Times) and his “spontaneity, polish and sweet tone” (The Boston Musical Intelligencer), baroque violinist Joan Plana is the founding member of baroque ensemble CONCITATO. Based in New York, he is building an active career as a soloist, recitalist and concertmaster. This season he will continue his job as a leader of the American Baroque Orchestra and L’Academie Baroque Orchestra in Boston, as well as taking the position of concertmaster with Baroque Band in Chicago and The New York Society of Ancient Music.
With CONCITATO he has appeared in venues in New York, Chicago, Montreal, Cleveland and Spain. The ensemble was the only American group on the finals of the 2009 York International Young Artists Competition (England).
Joan Plana plays and records regularly with several baroque groups around the country, including Handel and Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire, Trinity Wall Street Baroque Orchestra, Concert Royal, New York Baroque Incorporated, American Virtuosi, The American Classical Orchestra, and he has recently collaborated recording with the Italian group Il Pomo d’Oro. In 2011, he appeared around Europe as a member of the European Union Baroque Orchestra. He has worked with conductors such as William Christie, Jordi Savall, Harry Cristophers, Nicholas McGegan, Richard Egarr, Cristopher Hogwood, Enrico Onofri, Riccardo Minasi and Masaaki Suzuki, among others.
Joan became interested in Historical Performance Practice following his arrival to Cleveland in 2005. He joined the Case-‐CIM Baroque Orchestra at Case Western Reserve University, where he studied with Julie Andrijeski, Cynthia Roberts and Miho Hashizume. He became concertmaster, soloist and guest conductor of the ensemble. In 2008, he received an Early Music Certificate from Case Western Reserve University and The Cleveland Institute of Music.
While attending the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute in Toronto, he received the Jeanne Lamon Scholarship Award. He also participated in the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin and the International Baroque Institute at Longy (Cambridge), studying with Jeanne Lamon, Marilyn McDonald and Elizabeth Blumnestock. Further lessons and masterclasses include Fabio Biondi, Manfred Kramer, Jordi Savall, and over the last few years he has studied closely with Enrico Onofri and Riccardo Minasi. Joan has taught baroque violin masterclasses and workshops at Baldwin-‐Wallace College (Ohio) and Sarah Lawrence College (New York).
He was an inaugural member of the Historical Performance Program at the Juilliard School, where he studied with Monica Huggett and Cynthia Roberts. While at Juilliard, he played with “Juilliard415” and “Juilliard Baroque” in concerts in New York, Madrid, Milan, Florence and Rome.
He is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Musical Arts in baroque violin at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, studying with Robert Mealy and Cynthia Roberts.
Lori Ashikawa hails from California, where she received her undergraduate and graduate training at the University of Southern California and University of California, Santa Barbara. On Baroque Violin, Lori has performed with the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Basically Bach Orchestra, Newberry Consort, and the Haymarket Opera Company. She also has a diverse career on modern violin and has appeared with the San Diego Symphony, Chicago Symphony, and Grant Park Orchestra, as well as the Joffrey Ballet, Goodman Theatre, Chicago Opera Theater, Music of the Baroque, and Fulcrum Point New Music Project. .
MUSICIAN MOMENT
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
When I was in Los Angeles, I first encountered baroque performance practice through master classes with Stanley Ritchie. I remember my first performance on Baroque Violin as a chilly nighttime concert under the stars in the courtyard of the original J. Paul Getty residence, an Italianate villa on a cliff above the Pacific Ocean. The orchestra was surrounded by fountains and sticky ocean breezes, so of course the gut strings kept going out of tune and the borrowed violin wouldn’t speak, yet there was something so enrapturing about the quality of the sound and the feeling of being transported back in time and place, that I was hooked. In subsequent years I spent my summers working under Christopher Hogwood and Elizabeth Blumenstock at the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, and with Libby Wallfisch at the Carmel Bach Festival.
What music are you listening to right now?
Music from the 18th century, but it isn’t Handel or Telemann! I’ve been studying shamisen (the three-stringed Japanese “lute”) with Chicago jazz icon, Tatsu Aoki. Tatsu was born into a traditional geisha artisan household in Tokyo. Much of the music he has been teaching me originated in the 17th and 18th centuries and passed down through the generations by oral tradition.
What is on your nightstand/iPad, Kindle etc.?
A baby blue wax mold Triceratops from the Field Museum and a pile of cooking magazines.
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
The Hideout, the Empty Bottle, and anywhere my husband, Michael (a member of the Chicago Symphony bass section) is playing with his (extracurricular) progressive free improvisational band, Gunnelpumpers.
Wendy Harton Benner’s “sweet-toned violin work [is] a consistent delight” (The Washington Post). As a chamber musician, she has performed with the critically acclaimed Washington Arts Trio and as an orchestral musician, she performed with many Washington-area orchestras.
She served as the violin instructor and director of chamber music at Georgetown University and as the Baroque strings coach at the University of Delaware. Wendy currently lives in Chicago with her family and in addition to performing with Baroque Band, spends time as a photographer specializing in family and musician portraiture.
As a period instrumentalist, Matthew Cataldi’s performances have been reviewed as “sweet and well-judged” (Cross Palms) and met with “clarity and strength” (Chicago Classical Music). His period performances can be heard on WFMT’s Live Music Mondays and he has recorded on Cedille & Naxos Records labels.
Matt has served as Baroque Band Concertmaster for the past two years. Performing with other period ensembles like the Callipygian Players, Rockford Bach Ensemble, and Chicago Opera Theatre, he has also participated in the U.S. premiere of La Buona Figola (The Good Servant Girl), and is a founding member of New Comma Baroque. As a guest lecturer, he has brought aspects of period performance practice to the classrooms at Columbia and Lake Forest Colleges and has even brought this expertise to modern groups such as the Renovo String Orchestra, a group for which he serves as Music Director.
The recipient of numerous grants, fellowships, and scholarships at the local, state, and national levels, Matt received his Master’s degree from Northwestern University and Bachelor’s degree from Indiana University Bloomington.
Find Matt online at http://www.matthewcataldi.com
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
I never really thought of my career in music, it just happened that I was able to make a living at it. For me, music is a way to meet and perform with new and interesting people while simultaneously playing really awesome music. I’ve always loved the social aspect that music offers, with musicians and audience members alike. It’s always great to hear how music has impacted people’s lives in a significant way.
How did you choose your instrument?
There was a point where I almost chose the cello instead of violin to pursue my musical ventures. However, I thought about carrying it around all the time and thought eventually that “lighter is better” (at least to a 10-year-old it was). Cello playing also came much more naturally to me than violin and I remember at one point being better at cello than I was at violin. People usually get confused and ask me why I didn’t pick the cello if it came so naturally. I love a challenge. The only reason I get up in the morning is to see what the dawn has in store for me. I’m glad I chose the violin. It has and continues to provide not only many opportunities for me, but challenges that will last me a lifetime.
What could you tell music lovers about your instrument?
I currently perform on two instruments. The first one is a violin made in 1703 that Baroque Band has generously loaned me. This violin is rich in its texture and offers real insights into period instruments of that time. This violin was also loaned to me to help me as I searched for a new violin.
I have looked long and far and, ironically, the best violin I have found is my second violin which dates from around 1840 and is by an unknown maker. This instrument is much more dramatic and has a core sound that is very easy to play. There are a lot of difficulties with period performance, mostly the gut strings, shorter bow etc. but this instrument takes all that away and is simply marvelous.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
I have always been interested in period performance, ever since I first heard it on the radio station in Columbus, Ohio where I grew up. I was raised on a very traditional violin curriculum and it was not until my later years in college that I got exposure to period performance. I met up with Stanley Ritchie at Indiana University where I did my undergraduate work, taking his Intro to Unaccompanied Bach class and was hooked from the first seminar. I took some private lessons from him while I was there and then later with Mary Springfels at Northwestern where I did my graduate work.
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
I love to frequent Gigio’s Pizzeria in Evanston and Trattoria Demi, a simply must-visit Italian Bistro. Along with Kansaku Sushi in Evanston that has the best green tea I’ve had to date, I have also found a new place in Wicker Park called Pizza Metro that is simply to die for. Traditional Italian-style square pizza, delicious!
Where else can music lovers hear you besides Baroque Band?
I perform all over the place! I perform a lot of chamber music around the city (Logan Square Chamber Players, Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra, Wicker Park Summer Chamber Series, etc.).
Anything we haven’t asked about but you would like music lovers to know?
I have really enjoyed directing. I love the challenge of taking a group of musicians and working together to create a great experience not only for the audience, but for themselves as well. I’m currently music director for the Renovo String Orchestra and in the Chicago Folks Operetta orchestra.
CONTACT
Janelle Davis is a violinist who performs throughout the United States, and is co-director of the early music chamber ensemble Generation Harmonique. She is currently a candidate for the Doctor of Music degree from Indiana University, specializing in historical violins and music from the 17th and 18th centuries
Janelle is a devoted educator having served in various capacities as a studio teacher, classroom orchestra director, and youth music festival clinician. She also volunteers with Early Music In Motion—a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting schools and communities underserved by the arts. Additionally, Janelle works as a writer, podcast co-host, and production assistant for the syndicated early music radio program, Harmonia.
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
I’ve always had varied interests-science, writing, history, teaching-but performing and communicating through music is my first love. I am so privileged to get to do this for a career.
How did you choose your instrument?
As a kid, I wanted to play several other instruments like the flute and piano. But the violin is where I really found my passion. Besides the violin, I also play viola and have recently taken up the viola da gamba.
What could you tell music lovers about your instrument?
My baroque violin doesn’t have a label so its maker is unknown, but it was probably made in a workshop in Klingenthal, Germany in the 18th century. Violin construction changed quite substantially over the next hundred or so years, but my instrument was never altered to modern specifications.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
I am a 21st-century person. I love my ipod just as much as the next person and can’t imagine how I ever functioned without the internet! But with ensembles like Baroque Band, I get to perform on period instruments in a way that lets old music speak as vibrantly as it did to the people who first heard it. Despite all of our technology, in some very basic ways, humanity hasn’t changed all that much, and this music still speaks to the core of the human experience.
What music are you listening to right now?
Right now it’s 17th-century German music. But check back tomorrow … it’ll be different!
What is on your nightstand/iPad, Kindle etc.?
Short stories—most recently ones by Lysley Tenorio and Maile Meloy.
Besides your instrument, what is your most treasured possession?
My mother’s art.
Where did you perform before coming to Chicago?
I lived in Texas, where I performed with lots of different ensembles around the Dallas-Ft. Worth area.
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
I love coffee! So depending on what part of town I’m in, I like to take a break at either Metropolis or Intelligentsia!
Where else can music lovers hear you besides Baroque Band?
Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Bourbon Baroque, ¡Sacabuche!, Exordium, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, Generation Harmonique.
CONTACT
Isabelle Rozendaal, a Chicago native, recently graduated from Oberlin College where she studied both Music and Comparative American Studies. Her baroque violin playing has taken her to the San Francisco Early Music Festival, WFMT live broadcasts and recordings with Cedille records with groups such as Baroque Band, Callipygian Players, and the Bach and Beethoven Ensemble. Isabelle also plays viola da gamba and freelances on modern violin, most recently touring the south pacific with a string quartet, Innocenti Strings.
A certified Suzuki violin and yoga teacher, Isabelle loves teaching and has been active as a teacher around Chicago. Isabelle’s musicianship was formed by early violin studies and also through singing for 10 years in the Royal School of Church Music program at St. Luke’s in Evanston, where her choir sang Sundays, at the Bach Week Festival, and on European tours.
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
I have known I wanted to be a musician my whole life. I grew up with two musician parents, so I was around music all the time. I feel so grateful to now have the opportunity to perform music I love with my mother, who plays viola in Baroque Band.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
Both my parents specialize in Baroque performance practice, so I grew up with the music of Bach and Handel in my ears. I am delighted to now get to perform with my former teachers and mentors.
CONTACT
Jeri-Lou Zike is a versatile, energetic musician who enjoys a variety of artistic activities in symphonic, baroque, and chamber music. As a period instrument performer, Jeri-Lou is Baroque Band’s principal violinist, performing regularly at Symphony Center and WFMT classical radio. She has also appeared as soloist with the Chicago Baroque Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, His Majestie’s Clerkes, Kansas City Music Consort and the James Chorale. She is concertmaster of the Haymarket Opera Company which she started in 2011 with Craig Trompeter, with whom she leads the orchestra.
Jeri-Lou is also principal and founding member of the Metropolis Symphony Orchestra and principal second violin of the Chicago Opera Theater. Additionally, she is a member of the Chicago Philharmonic and the Ravinia Festival Orchestra, and has performed with the Grant Park Symphony and Music of the Baroque (including their first performance on period instruments). Jeri-Lou studied baroque performance practice with Monica Huggett and was a member of The City Musik and Basically Bach. About her August, 2012 performance with Haymarket Opera, the Chicago Tribune said she “fiddled up a storm in the virtuosic violin accompaniment to Clori’s aria ‘Barbaro!,’ her florid ornamentation mimicking the fickle shepherdess’s mock indignation.” She performs regularly as concertmaster of the University of Chicago Rockefeller Chapel Concerts. Being a savvy businesswoman, Jeri-Lou is known as a contractor of musicians, providing orchestras for many of Chicagoland’s finest choirs such as Apollo Chorus, Chicago Chorale, the Cathedral Singers, and St. Clement Church. Many churches and country clubs also rely on her expertise to provide exciting programming and excellent musicians. She is a founding member and leader of Trio Elan as well as a frequent performer with the Chicago Classical String Quartet. She is heard frequently on WFMT and has recorded with GIA, Centaur, and Cedille Records. Her secret passion is competitive racing in triathlon; swim, bike, run whenever possible! Jeri-Lou lives in downtown Chicago on the lakefront with her husband and business partner, Jim Friedkin. Together, they partner in real estate development and rental property.
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
Had to make a living somehow! Music sounded totally possible, and it worked out great.
How did you choose your instrument?
I started piano at age 3. My mother was my piano teacher. I hated it. Changed to violin when I was 11 after seeing a beautiful woman violin soloist playing with a symphony orchestra and told my mom I wanted to be her.
What could you tell music lovers about your instrument?
I love my baroque violin. It is an original old 1700′s instrument that was never modernized.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
I always knew Bach sounded wrong when I held the bow at the frog, so in college I started creeping up high on the bow and it just felt right. Then I fell in love with recordings from the great early music orchestras … Amsterdam, Harnoncort, Age of Enlightenment.
What music are you listening to right now?
Christian rock/pop. I like to run to music of worship.
What is on your nightstand/iPad, Kindle etc.?
Every kind of sports magazine possible based on running, biking or swimming.
Besides your instrument, what is your most treasured possession?
My instrument is not my most treasured possession.
My family and the Word of God (the Bible). And then my bike
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
The Lake front. North Avenue beach.
Where else can music lovers hear you besides Baroque Band?
Haymarket Opera Company!
Anything we haven’t asked about but you would like music lovers to know?
I am a perfectionist in everything I do. I must complete my list of things to do before I sleep. I love to serve people. I love the business side of music. I love having a large business with my husband in real estate. I never run out of energy. Musicians are warriors. They are the most hard-working souls I know.
Violas
Elizabeth Holzman Hagen, viola, enjoys an active performance career on both Baroque and modern violas. In addition to her position as principal violist of Baroque Band and the Haymarket Opera Company, she is acting principal violist for Music of the Baroque. She has performed with Chicago Opera Theater, Callipygian Players and The Metropolis Symphony. Other appearances have been with Lyric Opera Chicago, the Newberry Consort, and Chicago Philharmonic. From 1995-2006, she was a member of the Cleveland Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire. Elizabeth is an active participant in Chicago’s freelance music scene.
Significant teachers in Susan’s life were her father, and Almita and Roland Vamos. Susan’s Early Music career includes playing with Chicago-based groups Baroque Band, Basically Bach, Chicago Baroque Ensemble, Chicago Opera Theater, Harwood Ensemble, Orpheus Band, and The City Musick. Nationally she has appeared with Ars Musica, Ensemble Musical Offering, Genesee Baroque Players, Kansas City Early Music Ensemble, New York Early Music Ensemble, and Pittsburgh Early Music Players. She has recorded with groups on the Cedille and Centaur labels. Susan enjoys freelancing in greater Chicago and teaching violin and viola. She plays on an 18th-century viola by Nathaniel Cross of London.
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
It evolved from my family life with a professional violinist father who had a great career, and great love of music.
How did you choose your instrument?
Violin is my primary instrument but I loved my first and following encounters with the viola.
What could you tell music lovers about your instrument?
It is an 18th-century English instrument.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
It is the best way to hear music of those centuries.
What music are you listening to right now?
Most recently–Yo-Yo Ma and the film score from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” !
What is on your nightstand/iPad, Kindle etc.?
Currently–Moberg’s Trilogy about the Swedes’ immigration from Sweden c 1850.
Besides your instrument, what is your most treasured possession?
My son’s artworks.
Where did you perform before coming to Chicago?
In Cleveland and Minneapolis.
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
No one place……there are so many.
Where else can music lovers hear you besides Baroque Band?
Chicago Opera Theater if it’s an 18th-century piece, and in oratorio performances in greater Chicago.
CONTACT
Cellos
Anna Steinhoff is a cellist whose “soulful cello” has been described by critics as “the rhythmic heart of the ensemble.” Originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan, Anna completed degrees in cello performance from the Oberlin Conservatory and Northwestern University before making her home in Chicago. She specializes in early instruments such as the baroque cello and viola da gamba, in addition to the playing the modern cello. She is a regular member of Baroque Band, and has performed with ensembles such as the Haymarket Opera Company, Newberry Consort, Callipygian Players, Bach and Beethoven Ensemble, Music of the Baroque, Chicago Opera Theater, and Madison Bach Musicians. She is also a founding member of Wayward Sisters, who won the 2011 EMA/Naxos competition.
Find Anna online at http://annasteinhoff.blogspot.com
Bass
Jerry Fuller began studying the double bass at age 16 and was invited to join the Lyric Opera of Chicago orchestra three years later. Within two years he was promoted to first desk of the double bass section in addition to performing with the Santa Fe Opera. Jerry has also served as solo double bass of The Musikkollegium Winterthur Switzerland
While in Europe, he became interested in historically-informed performance practice and has achieved international recognition for his work with period instruments. A Chicago Artists Abroad grant recipient, his performances in London, Rome, Geneva, and Edinburgh have been broadcast worldwide. In addition, he has performed at the Ravinia and the Aspen Music Festivals and both the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals.
His recordings on the Musical Arts Society, Cedille and Centaur labels have been hailed by both critics and colleagues. Jerry also writes on period instruments and performance practice for The Strad, Double Bassist, and Bass World magazines, has served on the editorial board of the Online Journal of Bass Research, and is webmaster for the Double Bass and Violone Internet Archive.
He served as an officer of the Board of Directors of the International Society of Bassists 1990-1996 and has appeared as a guest artist with the American Bach Soloists of San Francisco, the Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, and the Newberry Consort of Chicago.
He is principal double bass for Baroque Band and the Haymarket Opera Company, and has played in the orchestra for Chicago Opera Theater’s early operas. In addition he is Director of both ArsAntiguaPresents.com and the Midwest Young Artists Early Music Program for which he was awarded the Early Music America Outreach Award for Excellence in Early Music Education.
MUSICIAN MOMENT
What convinced you that you wanted a career in music?
After six months of lessons, I was fortunate to go to the first ever International Society of Bassists conference featuring Gary Karr who encouraged me to pursue the bass professionally.
How did you choose your instrument?
During my junior year in high school I asked my parents if I could go to a symphony orchestra and they said yes. By chance, I sat in front of the double bass section and they were having a wonderful time, so I spoke to the principal bassist at intermission and asked when I could start taking lessons. Three years later I joined the Lyric Opera Orchestra in Chicago.
What could you tell music lovers about your instrument?
I play a Viennese instrument made by Johann Joseph Stadelmann in 1754. It is an excellent, lightly constructed instrument that serves baroque and early classical repertoire very well.
How did you become interested in period instrument performance?
When I was principal bassist of Musikkollegium Winterthur in Switzerland, the conductor asked me to come to Basel to rehearse Mozart’s Per Questa Bella Mano, a concert aria for bass voice and double bass obbligato, with him prior to the first orchestral rehearsal. We met at the Schola Cantorum and after our rehearsal I heard someone practicing next door. It turned out to be Jordi Savall who convinced me to take up period instrument performance on the spot!
What music are you listening to right now?
Jennifer Higdon’s concerto for sextet and orchestra, On a Wire, recorded by eighth blackbird. I’m always curious about what music being composed today will be performed 200 years from now.
What is on your nightstand, iPad, Kindle etc.?
I’m reading Blake Masters’ summary of Peter Thiel’s CS-183 class on Startups at Stanford.
Besides your instrument, what is your most treasured possession?
I don’t think about possessions much, I’m far more interested in relationships and experiences.
What’s your favorite Chicago hangout?
Being at home with my family.
Where else can music lovers hear you besides Baroque Band?
On the web at ArsAntiguaPresents.com and live almost anywhere period instruments are being performed in the Chicago area.
Contact
Harpsichord
Equally at home in front of a harpsichord, organ, piano, or fortepiano, David Schrader is “truly an extraordinary musician…(who) brings not only the unfailing right technical approach to each of these different instrument, but always an imaginative, fascinating musicality to all of then.” (Norman Pelligrini, WFMT).
Currently, David is on the faculty of Roosevelt University and has served as the organist of the Church of the Ascension for over twenty years. As well as Baroque Band, David also leads an active musical life by performing with Music of the Baroque, the Newberry Consort, Bach Week in Evanston, and is a frequent guest on WFMT. Find David online at http://www.davidschrader.com. [/toggle]
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