Magnificat Baroque Ensemble

Magnificat Musicians

2011-07-15T18:56:43Z

First Row
Christopher LeCluyse
Laura Heimes
Daniel Hutchings
Catherine Webster
Roberto Balconi

Second Row
Paul Elliott
José Lemos
Jennifer Paulino
Peter Becker
Jennifer Ellis Kampani

Third Row
Nigel North
Louise Carslake
David Wilson
Annette Bauer
Matthias Maute

Fourth Row
Elisabeth Reed
Rob Diggins
Jillon Stoppels Dupree
John Dornenburg
Jolianne von Einem

Roberto Balconi

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Countertenor Roberto Balconi’s repertory ranges from the Middle Ages to contemporary music, but he has focused particularly on the style and technique of Baroque music. He has established an international reputation through his work with the English Baroque Soloists, Il Giardino Armonico, Il Complesso Barocco, The Consort of Musicke, Ensemble Baroque de Limoges, Ensemble Pian & Forte, Venice Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Aurora, Il Concerto Italiano, La cappella della Pietà dei Turchini, Europa Galante, and the Capella Savaria. Roberto has appeared at the Holland Festival Oude Muziek, Festival van Vlaanderen, York Early Music Festival, Festival International de Musique Baroque Beaune, Brugge Festival, Opéra de Lyon, Musica e Poesia a San Maurizio Milano, Berliner Tage für Alte Musik, London Queen Elizabeth Hall, Wiener Konzerthaus, Teatro Tivoli di Copenhagen, and the Berkeley Festival.

Roberto made his opera debut in 1993 at La Fenice in Venice in Tommasso Traetta’s Buovo D’Antona conducted by Alan Curtis and directed by Pierluigi Pizzi. He has appeared ontage in Handel’s Semele in a production at Vlamse Opera, conducted by Marc Minkowski and directed by Robert Carsen; Handel’s Siroe for the Teatro La Fenice and the BAM Theatre di New York, conducted by Andrea Marcon and directed by Jorge Lavelli; Monteverdi’s trilogy under the direction of Ottavio Dantone; and L’Incoronazione di Poppea with Rinaldo Alessandrini and Graham Vick at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, under the direction of Sir John Eliot Gardiner at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London, and with Alessandro Demarchi at the Hamburger Staatsoper; Vivaldi’s La Fida Ninfa with Alan Curtis and Pier’Alli at the Teatro Filarmonico of Verona.

Roberto has also been active as a conductor, particularly with the instrumental and vocal ensemble Fantazyas, which he founded together with instrumentalists and singers specializing in Baroque music in 2000. With Fantazyas he has appeared both as a conductor and a soloist at the Felicia Blumenthal Festival in Tel Aviv, the festival Musica e Poesia at San Maurizio, Milan and at the Incontri Musicali Farnesiani di Parma.

Visit the Fantazyas Website

Annette Bauer

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Annette Bauer, a native of Germany, holds a diploma in Medieval and Renaissance performance practice from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland, where she specialized in recorder techniques with Conrad Steinmann (2001). Supported by a scholarship from the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service), she pursued an MA in music from UC Santa Cruz in conjunction with her studies at the Ali Akbar College of Music, where she studied sarode under Maestro Ali Akbar Khan. As a recorder player, Annette regularly performs with medieval ensemble Cançonier, the Baroque group Les grâces, and the Farallon Recorder Quartet. She has appeared at the Santa Cruz Baroque and Carmel Bach Festivals, as well as with early music ensembles across the US, such as the California Bach Society, Catacoustic Consort, Chamber Music San Francisco, Istanpitta, Magnificat, and the Texas Early Music Project. Annette has served on the recorder and early notation faculty for several of the San Francisco Early Music Society summer workshops and the Amherst Early Music Festival. Certified in Orff Schulwerk, she teaches recorder pedagogy to music teachers at the San Francisco Orff Certification Course. Annette was selected for the 2009 recorder residency at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon.

Annette’s musical passions include original notation sources in early music, and improvisation in modal music traditions, from the highly intricate and complex Indian ragas, to medieval modes, to the modal repertoire of European, Middle Eastern, and North African music traditions. She is the co-founder of Magic Carpet, a duo dedicated to the art of improvisation. Annette also plays Brazilian percussion with Maracatu Luta, and has studied Maracatu and other rhythms from the Brazilian Northeast with groups in Recife, Brazil, and at the annual California Brazil Camp.

Visit Annette Bauer’s Website

Peter Becker

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Peter Becker is an avid performer of repertoire ranging from troubadour to torch song, plainsong to art song, with arias, broadsides, ballads, new compositions and popular standards interspersed throughout. His concert credits include appearances with the New York Philharmonic, San Francisco Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, the Linz Philharmoniker, ARTEK, and the Twenty First Century Consort. Peter is a long time performer with Magnificat and a founding member of the male vocal sextet Hudson Shad.

Visit the Hudson Shad Website

Stephen Buescher

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Stephen Buescher has performed nationally and internationally, in numerous productions, with Dell’Arte International, where he has been a company member for over a decade. He is the Head of Movement and Physical Theater, in the MFA Graduate program, at the American Conservatory Theater. Stephen has taught physical theater in various Masters Programs including; Brown University/Trinity Rep. Consortium, Yale School of Drama, New York University (La Pietra), University of Connecticut, and the University of Missouri Kansas City. Stephen has choreographed/designed movement for various theaters including Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Trinity Repertory Company, Long Wharf Theatre, and the Providence Black Repertory Company. He is the Artistic Director of Workhorse; an ensemble based physical theater company. He directed the company’s original productions of Sawbones: the Cabinet of Dr. Jekyll, With Claws and Beak and Wild Porcelain (nominated for best new play in Motif magazine, RI, 2008). He is a first round recipient of TCG’s New Generations grant, a Board member of the Network of Ensemble Theaters, and a graduate of the Dell’ Arte International School of Physical Theater and California Institute of the Arts.

Louise Carslake

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Louise Carslake is well known to Bay Area audiences as a performer on the baroque flute and the recorder. She is a member of the baroque ensemble Music’s Re-creation, the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Magnificat, and the Jubilate Orchestra. She has performed widely in her native Britain, as well as in New Zealand, Poland, Ireland, China and the Netherlands. As a recording artist, Louise has made has made CDs for the Meridian, Centaur, Magnatune, Intrada, and Musical Heritage labels, and has appeared on radio and television internationally. In addition to her performing activities, Louise teaches early music performance on the faculty at Mills College, and coaches baroque flute at U.C. Berkeley. She is a popular workshop leader for the American Recorder Society, and is a co-founder of the Bay Area’s Junior Recorder Society.

Louise holds the graduate diploma in flute from Trinity College of Music, London, and the diploma for baroque flute performance from the Arnhem Conservatory in the Netherlands, where her teacher was Wilbert Hazelzet. She also studied baroque music performance practice with Nikolaus Harnoncourt at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria.

Daria D’Andrea

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Daria D’Andrea lives in San Francisco where she is a respected member of the early music community. Much of her period instrument training was in Europe where she worked with outstanding leaders of the early music movement including Roy Goodman, Ton Koopman, Andrew Manze and Jaap Ter Linden. While living in Oxford, England, Daria toured Europe extensively playing viola with the European Community Baroque Orchestra. Since 1996, she has specialized in solo viola recitals with fortepiano, exploring solo and chamber literature of the late 18th century. Along with her Magnificat appearances, Daria has
performed with American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque, Jubilate, San Francisco Bach Choir, City Concert Opera, California Bach Society, Ensemble Mirable, and Arcangeli Baroque. Daria studied in Oxford, England with noted pedagogue Kato Havas. She is an alumnus of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Reed College. Daria teaches violin and viola at the University of San Francisco and at the San Francisco Waldorf Schools. Some career highlights for her have been performing Monteverdi’s Orfeo with Alan Curtis at UC Berkeley, being onstage with Luciano Pavarotti, and playing for the Dalai Lama
in St Ignatius Church, San Francisco.

Hugh Davies

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Hugh Davies was born and educated in England, and started his singing career as a boy chorister at St. Albans Abbey under the direction of Peter Hurford and Simon Preston. While a student at Cambridge University, he was a Choral Scholar at King’s College, where the director of music was David Willcocks. As a professional singer based in London, he appeared with Glyndebourne Opera and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and performed as a soloist with leading choirs and orchestras throughout Europe. He was a member of the Monteverdi Choir, the Schütz Choir and the John Alldis Choir, and made many recordings and broadcasts on television and radio. After teaching music in Australia for two years, Hugh moved to California in 1986. He now sings, mostly in the San Francisco area, both as a soloist and as a member of several professional ensembles, and has appeared with groups such as Theatre of Voices, American Bach Soloists, California Bach Society, Magnificat, Albany Consort, San Francisco Bach Choir, Santa Rosa Symphony, Sonoma County Bach Choir and Symphony Silicon Valley. He has also appeared with Boston-based Cut Circle and, in Southern California, with Pacific Chorale and Musica Angelica. He is also President of ACFEA Tour Consultants, an organization that arranges international tours for amateur performing arts ensembles, and serves on the board of Chorus America and as President of American Bach Soloists.

Joe Dieffenbacher

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Joe Dieffenbacher is a former circus clown and elephant jumper, physical comedian and master teacher in the art of Clown, Mask Performance & Design, and Slapstick. He has taught at the Dell’Arte School in California, Teater Studion in Stockholm, the Belfast Community Circus, and universities in North America and Europe. He is the co-founder of theater company Nakupelle, based in Oxford, England, touring Europe with their original circus and mask-based theater shows.

Rob Diggins

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Rob Diggins is a versatile musician who is equally at home on the concert stage performing a violin concerto, a small club improvising and trading phrases with fellow jazz musicians or sitting beneath an Oak or Fir tree along the banks of a creek playing mountain music, fiddling and dancing in the fire-light of a full moon havan or kirtan puja. In addition to Magnificat, Rob performs with Omnia Musica, Les Conversations Galante, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Music from Green Mountain, and his gypsy-jazz band, The Dizzy Vipers. Rob studies South Indian Classical Music with Shree Vidya Chandramouli and yoga with Swami Veda Bharati and other senior students of H. H. Swami Rama and teaches yoga and meditation in the Himalayan Yoga Tradition. He enjoys teaching his many talented string students in the Eastern European Classical tradition and attending to various sustainable gardening and community projects in Northern California. Rob is currently piecing together a brand new ensemble, Omnia Musica, which will debut with a South Asian tour in 2011. Highlights of the tour will include performances for the King and Queens of Bhutan, the Monk body and other select locations in Nepal, Thailand and the Indian sub-continent.