Judy Kadar, the Hungarian born harpist and pioneer in the field of historical harp began her harp studies at the famous High School of Music and Art in New York City. Later she attended New York University, Mannes College of Music and Sarah Lawrence College where she earned a Masters Degree in the performance of medieval and renaissance music. Harp instruction with Lucile Lawrence was an inspiration both during and after her formal education.
In 1984, she conceived, initiated and for seven years directed the Annual Historical Harp Conference at the Amherst Early Music Festival. This travelling event is now under the auspices of the American Historical Harp Society.
She performed on stage in productions of reknown German theatre director Peter Zakek and dance theatre director Rheinhild Hoffman. She was music director and performed in various productions of the 14th century Roman de Fauvel under the direction of Andrea von Ramm, Ilse Scheer and Ellen Esser. This year there will be another performance for the 700th anniversary of the work.
Twenty six years ago, together with historical wind instrument specialist Klaus Sonnemann, she founded and has been co-directing the ensemble Collage-forum for early music berlin (www.collagefruehemusik.). The group performs music of the 13th through 17th centuries with singers and historical instruments in various combinations ranging from two to ten performers. They have a concert series in the 14th Century Gothic Hall of the Spandau Citadel. Last year, Historical music in a historical space celebrated its eleventh anniversary.
On January 12, 2011, on the 100th Anniversary of the death of the Berliner Harfenjule (Harp Julie: Luise Nordman, a famous street musician who sang and accompanied herself on the German hook harp), JK organized harp festivities with 15 harp players in the cemetery at her memorial monument (www.harfenjule.org). Later that year there was an academic conference and a harp concert in her memory.
Some of the festivals where she has performed and or taught are: Amherst Early Music Festival, Madison Early Music Festival, Gotisches Haus Festival, Kultursommer Rheinland-Pfalz, Straße der Musik, Juedische Kulturtage, 12th World Harp Congress Sydney. She has also taught masterclasses at: BUTI (Boston University), Tangelwood, and Longy School of Music. She is featured in many radio and CD recordings.
Nancy Thym is well-known for her programs which combine harp music, songs, dance and stories. In her native California she studied theater, dance and archaeology and holds a master’s degree in folklore from UCLA with a main emphasis on ethnomusicology and traditional music. Her particular specialty is the accompaniment of song on the harp.
Her Archive and Museum for Harp History houses a collection of over 30 historical harps and harp reproductions as well as iconographical material, music and manuscripts from all over the world on the history of the harp. She is a former president of the International Historical Harp Society and has written many articles on various aspects of harp history and music archaeology. Her exhibit “With our harps upon our backs” about the 19th century wandering harp ladies of Germany and Bohemia has toured various European museums.
Her extensive research forms the basis for her programs which are both entertaining and educational – storytelling combined with songs and harp music or one-woman theater pieces in which she portrays harpists of the past, such as the wandering harp ladies of 19th century Germany or Louise Reichardt (1779-1826). From her large collection of harps she chooses the appropriate instrument. She has performed and taught at festivals for traditional and early music as well as storytelling festivals throughout Europe, Scandinavia and the United States and is the artistic director of the festival for early music and concert series at the Gotisches Haus Burgheßler in Germany.
Recently she has published a Christmas children’s book, “The Angel Juliane or Why Angels Play the Harp”, illustrated by her daughter Alliene Hochrein Gunn. When she is not playing the harp or singing, you will find her at the ice skating rink.
Christa Patton is an early harp specialist with a particular focus on the repertoire of the early 17th century. She studied the Italian Baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi.
A specialist in early opera Christa has performed 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, and Opera Atelier. She has also performed in Luigi Rossi’s Orfeo with the Toronto Consort, and Francesco Cavalli’s Il Giasone, with Opera Omnia. In addition, Christa has appeared as a guest with Apollo’s Fire, King’s Noyse, Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, La Nef, Blue Heron, Folger Consort, Parthenia, ARTEK, Pegasus, New York State Baroque Orchestra among many others.
Christa received her Doctorate of Musical Arts and Master of Music degrees from Stony Brook University, and her Bachelor of Music from the Eastman School of Music. She is presently an Adjunct Lecturer at the Graduate Center at the City University of New York and a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University in New Brunswick where she lectures and directs early music ensembles and opera projects in seventeenth century repertoire.
As Musical Director and Co-Director of the Baroque Opera Workshop at Queens College, Christa leads a specialized course utilizing period sources to realize works of early seventeenth century composers in performance. Since the workshop’s beginning in 2010, she has collaborated with vocalists Julianne Baird, Ellen Hargis, countertenor and stage director, Drew, Minter, and Commedia dell’Arte master, Antonio Fava to create artful performances based in sources of the 16th and 17th centuries.
Also a multi-instrumentalist, Christa has toured the Americas, Europe and Japan with Piffaro the Renaissance Band, Early Music New York directed by Fredrick Renz, Lipsodes, and Ex Umbris. Her recordings include “Istampitta” on the Lyrachord label, “Chacona” also on the Dorian label, “Trionfo d’Amore e della Morte” on the Dorian label, “Los Ministriles in the New World”on Navona Records, Nobile Donna on ATMA among others. Soon to be released will be a recording with Julianne Baird of mid-seventeenth century music composed by the Roman castrato, Marc’Antonio Pasqualini and will include many works by him not yet published or recorded.
Paul Knoke began his work with historic musical instruments while a student at Brighton High School. He spent two years working with the collection of instruments at the Rochester Museum and Science Center as an Independent Studies course. His Junior year whilst earning a degree in history at the University of Rochester included a semester abroad as an intern with the musical instrument collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. While there, he organized and catalogued the museum’s files of reference photographs of instruments, and designed and implemented new display techniques for the instrument gallery. In addition to piano, organ, and harpsichord, Paul studied harp with Marie Goossens and Nan Gullo. While studying with Dr. Gullo he spent several years working through all available 18th century French harp method books, studying the technique of the period. He has been the principal harpist of the Brighton Symphony Orchestra for 24 years. Mr. Knoke is a charter member and past president of the Historical Harp Society, and has lectured and performed at several of their conferences. In 2007 he was invited to act as guest curator for the Mildred Dilling Harp Collection, now on permanent display at Indiana University. In 2012 he performed in concert at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at the 40th Conference of the American Harp Society on an 18th century harp from his collection.
Nancy Hurrell is a well-known harpist who has mastered a diverse range of musical styles. She is a member of the harp faculty at the Boston Conservatory, where she teaches early harp repertoire.
One of America’s leading harp historians, Nancy is a harp consultant at the Museum of Fine Arts, presenting gallery talks and recording soundfiles on harps in the collection. Nancy promotes her passion through lectures and articles published in the American Harp Journal, History Ireland magazine, and the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. She is a frequent lecturer on the Irish harp and maker, John Egan, with presentations at the Royal Irish Academy (Dublin, Ireland), the ‘First International Conference on Irish Music’ (Durham, England) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York). She was guest curator for a major harp exhibition, “The Harp – A Global Story of Man, Music and Medicine” at the Museum of Making Music in California (2013).
Nancy leads harp workshops at conferences in the US, Canada and Britain, and her books of harp arrangements are popular with players around the world. Through her performances, lectures and recordings, Nancy continues to be a pioneering force in promoting the versatile harp and its music.
Instrument builder and musician Thilo Viehrig studied violin and organ building as well as instrument restoration in East Germany. For over 20 years he has concentrated on the performance practice and reconstruction of historical instruments. He established the musical instrument museum at the Center for Performance Practice in Michaelstein, Germany and his copies of historical instruments (harps, bowed instruments, clavichords, harpsichords and organettos) can be viewed in various museums. As a musician he has specialized in historical bowed instruments – vielle, rebec baroque violin. The reconstructions of historical instruments heard in Cantefable’s concerts were all built in Thilo Viehrig’s workshop.
Chiara Granata is an Italian harpist specializing in Baroque performance. She studied with Mara Galassi completing her advanced diploma in music with a dual specialization in triple harp and single action harp at the International Academy of Music of Milan and triple harp at the Conservatorio Dall’Abaco in Verona.
She works regularly with many leading baroque and classical music groups including La Cappella della Pietà de’ Turchini in Naples, La Venexiana in Milan, Akademie fur Alte Musik in Berlin and many more.
Chiara has also competed a degree in philosophy cum laude at the University of Milan with a thesis on Baroque aesthetics in the philosophy of Rene Descartes. She received the academy prize Dal Pra’1998 for the best research in modern philosophy. Among her recent publications are “Le ombre, il chiaro e il distinto: l’esperienza musicale nelle pagine di Descartes,” (Materiali di Estetica, 2001), “La musica e l’esperienza del tempo” (Nuova Umanità, 2006), “La musica e l’angelo. Risonanze nella musica di Monteverdi, Bach, Messiaen” (with T. Handerson, Nuova Umanità, 2010), and the book Sapere è un verbo all’infinito (with A. Granata and E. Granata, Il Margine, 2013).
Julia H. Schroeder is a musicologist based in Berlin, Germany where she has been working at Free University Berlin’s Collaborative Research Center 626 “Aesthetic Experience and the Dissolution of Artistic Limits.” Her doctoral dissertation on the relationship of music and dance is published as Cage & Cunningham Collaboration. In- und Interdependenz von Musik und Tanz (Hofheim 2011)
Her publications include “Großstadtklang: Hinterhofmusik als Teil urbaner Klanglandschaft,” (Big City Sounds: Backyard music as part of the urban soundscape), Die Harfenjule in Berlin um 1900”, (The Wandering Harp Ladies of Berlin in the 1900’s) in: Archiv für Musikwissenschaft, 69 (4/2012); pp. 349–362, and: “Die Verwendung der Harfe in Edgar Varèses Kompositionen,” (The use of the Harp in Elgar Varèse compositions) in: Harpa Magazine No. 17 (15 March 2004), as well as lectures, e.g., “Looking through strings on the stage: The harp in opera history from 1600 to 2000” (26 January 2016 at Nagoya University, Japan).