Our Instructors
Julie Andrijeski
Julie Andrijeski is among the leading baroque violinists in the U.S. She is a full-time member of the early-music trio, Chatham Baroque, an award-winning ensemble that performs throughout the Americas. In addition, Ms. Andrijeski regularly appears with several other baroque groups including, among others, Apollo’s Fire, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Cecilia’s Circle, Spiritus Collective, and the King’s Noyse. Her unique performance style is greatly influenced by her knowledge and skilled performance of Baroque dance, and she often teaches both violin and dance at workshops. She has been on the faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute at the Oberlin Conservatory for over a decade and has taught at the Madison Early Music Workshop. Ms. Andrijeski received her Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in Early Music from Case Western Reserve University in May 2006. Previous degrees include a B.M. in Violin Performance from the University of Denver (1985) and an M.M. in Violin Performance from Northwestern University (1986). She has recorded extensively and awaits the release of Chatham Baroque’s most recent recording project, sonatas from Prothimia suavissima, on Dorian Recordings.
Elizabeth Blumenstock
Elizabeth Blumenstock is widely admired as a performer of interpretive eloquence and technical sparkle. A frequent soloist, concertmaster, and leader with American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and the Italian ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, she is also a member of several of California's finest period instrument ensembles, including Musica Pacifica, Ensemble Mirable, the Arcadian Academy, and Trio Galanterie. She has appeared with period orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States and abroad and has performed for the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, Germany's Goettingen Handelfestspiel, Los Angeles Opera, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Oulunsalo Soi festival in Finland, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, among many others. Ms. Blumenstock has recorded for Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon, Virgin Classics, Dorian, BMG, Reference Recordings, Koch International, and Sono Luminus. She is instructor of baroque violin at the University of Southern California, teaches regularly at the International Baroque Institute at Longy, has taught at the Austrian Baroque Academy, and has coached university Baroque ensembles at USC, Roosevelt University, the University of Virginia, and California Institute of the Arts.
Phebe Craig
Harpsichordist Phebe Craig spent her student years in Berlin, Brussels, and San Francisco. She has earned a reputation as a versatile chamber musician and recitalist and has performed and recorded with many early music ensembles and soloists. She has appeared at the Carmel Bach Festival, the Regensburg Tage Alter Musik, and early music festivals and events throughout the United States. She has performed with the New York State Baroque, American Bach Soloists, Arcangeli Baroque Strings, and Concerto Amabile. Phebe has produced a series of early music play-along CDs and is co-author of a guide to Baroque dance for musicians (Dance at a Glance). She is on the faculty at the University of California at Davis where she teaches harpsichord and co-directs the UCD Baroque Ensemble, in addition to keyboard proficiency, theory, and ear-training. She has also been director of the Baroque Music and Dance Workshop that is sponsored by the San Francisco Early Music Society.
Christopher Fritzsche
Christopher Fritzsche is a performing artist, an educator, a frequent soloist with Bay Area vocal and instrumental ensembles, currently serves as Music Director for the Center for Spiritual Living in Santa Rosa and is a member of the vocal ensemble, Clerestory. Internationally recognized for his effortless countertenor voice, he can be heard on well over a dozen recordings on Warner Classics’ Teldec label.
From 1992 until 2003, he performed with the world-renowned a cappella vocal ensemble, Chanticleer. In those 11 years he sang over 1,000 concerts world-wide, appearing with the New York Philharmonic (Emil de Cou), San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, (Christopher Hogwood and Hugh Wolff), and more recently the Santa Rosa Symphony, (Jeffrey Kahane and Robert Worth) and has sung concerts in some of the world's most renown venues: The Kennedy Center (Washington D.C.), New York's Lincoln Center, as well as national concert halls across Asia and Europe, including London's Wigmore Hall.
He has also appeared with the Grant Park Music Festival Orchestra in Chicago as soloist in Leonard Bernstein’s Chichester Psalms and, as a member of Chanticleer, earned two Grammy awards for the CDs Colors of Love and Lamentations and Praises by the celebrated British composer Sir John Tavener. His singing has been described as “crystalline artistry”, Cleveland Plain Dealer, “crystalline rich soprano”, Los Alamos Moniter, and as having “extraordinary range and purity”, New York Times.
As an educator Christopher was on the voice faculty of his alma mater, Sonoma State University, (B.A. in Music, 1998) from 2004-2009, and continues to lead vocal workshops for choral and solo singers of all levels.
Susan Harvey
Susan Harvey holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University, as well as a degree in philosophy from the University of Victoria (British Columbia) and diplomas in piano performance and pedagogy from the Victoria Conservatory of Music. An active freelance harpsichordist in the Bay Area, she has performed and recorded with such groups as Magnificat, Philharmonia Baroque, and the Bay Area Women's Philharmonic. Her research interests center on opera parody in eighteenth-century France and music and technology.
Shirley Hunt
Shirley Hunt makes herself known in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond as a rising star in the field of historical performance. Ms. Hunt performs on baroque cello and viola da gamba with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the American Bach Soloists, Archetti, Musica Angelica, Bach Collegium San Diego, and Live Oak Baroque Orchestra. Other recent engagements include performances with Portland Baroque Orchestra, Musica Pacifica, San Francisco Renaissance Voices, Berkeley Opera, and Faire Violls. In 2010 Ms. Hunt was selected as a Voices of Music Young Artist through a competitive audition process. She co-directs the award-winning young ensemble, Agave Baroqe, which specializes in 17th-Century music for violin, gamba, and continuo band. Ms. Hunt received her undergraduate degree in 2006 from Northwestern University, where she fell in love with the viola da gamba under the tutelage of Mary Springfels. In 2008, Ms. Hunt received a master's degree from the University of Southern California, where she studied cello with Ron Leonard and viola da gamba with William Skeen.
Ben Johns
BEN JOHNS, Director of Education for Chanticleer, finished his master's degree in Choral Conducting in 2009 at the University of California, Irvine and holds undergraduate degrees in Dance, Vocal Performance, and Chemistry. Mr. Johns earned merit-based graduate fellowships, teaching assistantships and scholarships from the Tom and Elizabeth Tierney, Ann and Gordon Getty, Mary and Philip Lyons, and Sunny Brown Scholarship Foundations. He also earned the Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research for his honor's thesis topic, "Exploring the Neurobiological Basis for the Effect of Movement on the Voice," a topic he presented at the American Association of Physics Teachers conference at California State University, Sacramento in 2004. Ben sang in the Chanticleer ensemble for three years before moving to his current position as Chanticleer's Director of Education. His education duties include, but are not limited to, directing Chanticleer's LAB Choir and giving master classes to Bay Area high school and middle school choirs. In the Fall Mr. Johns will begin duties as Artistic Director for Musae, an elite women's ensemble. Ben also teaches voice privately and continues to sing professionally as a soloist and choral artist around the country.
Shira Kammen
Shira Kammen received her degree in music from UC Berkeley and studied vielle with Margriet Tindemans.
A member for many years of Ensembles Alcatraz and Project Ars Nova, and Medieval Strings, she has also worked with Sequentia, Hesperion XX, the Boston Camerata, and the King's Noyse, and is the founder of Class V Music, an ensemble dedicated to performance on river rafting trips.
She has performed and taught in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Israel, Morocco and Japan, and on the Colorado and Rogue rivers.
Shira happily collaborated with singer/storyteller John Fleagle for fifteen years, and performs now with several new groups: a medieval ensemble, Fortune's Wheel; a new music group, Ephemeros; an eclectic ethnic band, Panacea; and Trouz Bras, a band devoted to the dance music of Celtic Brittany.
Shira can also be heard on the Magnatune recording by John Fleagle and with Pam Swan.
Justin Montigne
Justin Montigne is a singer, voice teacher, choir director, and yoga instructor in the Bay Area. He is a master voice teacher for the San Francisco Girls Chorus, maintains a private voice studio, and teaches yoga classes at several studios and health clubs in San Francisco. Justin has performed with many orchestras and ensembles including the Minnesota Opera, Minnesota Orchestra, Oregon Bach Festival, Philharmonia Baroque, Seraphic Fire, Conspirare, Chanticleer, and Clerestory. He found yoga nine years ago in his constant search for refinement and ease in singing, and has been healthier and happier for it.
Cheryl Moore
Cheryl Moore is a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. After earning her BA in Music from Sonoma State University, she pursued an MM in Vocal Performance at the University of New Mexico. During that time she had the opportunity to spend two summers Rome, singing the roles of “Cherubino” in Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro and "Meg" in Verdi's Falstaff. After finishing her Master’s degree, she spent several years teaching voice, drama, and ballet at the high school level. While teaching she continued to perform, appearing as a soloist in both concert and stage works as well as singing in the choruses of Opera San José, Opera Cleveland, Apollo's Fire, Quire Cleveland, and now Circa 1600. Cheryl completed her DMA in Early Music Performance Practices at Case Western Reserve University in 2010. Her primary area of study included solo vocal music and dance for the stage and, for her final project, she reconstructed a Jacobean house masque. While pursuing her DMA, she also served as Assistant to the Producer for the early music concert series Chapel, Court, & Countryside and as Chorus Manager for Apollo's Fire. After living in various parts of California, New Mexico, British Columbia, Virginia, and Ohio, as well as traveling extensively, Cheryl has decided that Petaluma is the best place in the world and she is happy to have found a home at Sonoma Bach.
Stanley Ritchie
Stanley Ritchie, a pioneer in the Early Music field in America, was born and educated in Australia, graduating from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 1956. He left Australia in 1958 to pursue his studies in Paris with Jean Fournier, continuing in 1959 to the United States, where he studied with Joseph Fuchs, Oscar Shumsky and Samuel Kissel. In 1963 he was appointed concertmaster of the New York City Opera, and then served as associate concertmaster of the Metropolitan Opera from 1965 to 1970. From 1970 to 1973 he performed as a member of the New York Chamber Soloists, and from 1973 played as Assistant Concertmaster of the Vancouver Symphony until 1975, when he joined the Philadelphia String Quartet (in residence in the University of Washington in Seattle) as first violinist. In 1982 he accepted his current appointment as professor of violin at Indiana University School of Music. His interest in Baroque and Classsical violin dates from 1970 when he embarked on a collaboration with harpsichordist Albert Fuller which led to the founding in 1973 of the Aston Magna summer workshop and festival. In 1974 he joined harpsichordist Elisabeth Wright in forming Duo Geminiani – their 1983 recording of the Bach Sonatas for Violin and Obbligato Harpsichord earned immediate critical acclaim. He has performed with many prominent musicians in the Early Music field, including Hogwood, Gardiner, Bruegghen, Norrington, Bilson and Bylsma, and was for twenty years a member of The Mozartean Players with fortepianist Steven Lubin and cellist Myron Lutzke. He has appeared as soloist or conductor with a number of major Early Music orchestras, among them the Academy of Ancient Music, Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and the Handel and Haydn Society Orchestra. Recognized as a leading exponent of Baroque and Classical violin playing, he performs, teaches and lectures worldwide, most recently in Australia, Germany, Italy, Colombia, China and Greece. Ritchie serves on the jury at the Leipzig International Bach Competition and is a frequent guest at Kloster Michaelstein, in Blankenburg, Germany, where he gives masterclasses in Baroque and Classical technique and interpretation. He has been a faculty member of the Accademia di Musica Antica in Bruneck (Südtirol) since 2000, and served for ten years as Artistic Director of the Bloomington Early Music Festival. His ex-students are prominent members of the Early Music profession, some of them also occupying important teaching positions in the United States. In June 2009 he received Early Music America’s highest award, the Howard Mayer Brown Award for Lifetime Achievement in Early Music. His recordings include Vivaldi's Op.11 Violin Concertos with Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music (Oiseau Lyre); the Mozart piano quartets and the complete piano trios of Mozart and Schubert as a member of The Mozartean Players, and a CD of 17th Century music for three violins and continuo entitled Three Parts upon a Ground, with John Holloway, Andrew Manze, Nigel North and John Toll, all for Harmonia Mundi USA; and selected Concerti and Serenate of Francesco Antonio Bonporti, with Bloomington Baroque (Dorian Discovery). His teaching career has led to pedagogical research, and his book entitled Before the Chinrest – a Violinist’s Guide to the Mysteries of Pre-Chinrest Technique and Style, published by Indiana University Press, is due for release in July 2011, and a recording of the Bach Solo Sonatas and Partitas and a reissue on CD of the Bach Sonatas for violin and obbligato harpsichord, in the summer.
Mary Springfels
Mary Springfels is former Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library where she founded and directed the Newberry Consort. A veteran of the early music movement, she has performed and recorded with such ensembles as the NY Pro Musica, the Waverly Consort, Concert Royal, Sequentia, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Music of the Baroque, Musica Sacra, the Marlborough Festival, the NYC Opera, and Chicago Opera Theater where she also serves as an artistic advisor. She served as a Senior Lecturer at both the University of Chicago and Northwestern University and is much in demand as a teacher and player in summer festivals throughout the US, among them the San Francisco, Madison, and Amherst Early Music Festivals, and the Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. In 2004 she delivered the keynote address to the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition for Early Music America. She can be heard on over two dozen recordings, ten of which are critically acclaimed Newberry Consort projects.
Aaron Westman
Aaron Westman has become one of the most sought after period instrumentalists on the west coast. Since returning to his native California in 2005, he has performed as a soloist with the American Bach Soloists and Seicento String Band, as a principal player with Bach Collegium San Diego, Jubilate Orchestra, Sonoma and San Francisco Bach Choirs, and as a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Ensemble Mirable, and El Mundo. His chamber ensemble Agave Baroque won the 2009 Early Music America/APAP competition to perform in NYC and was recently commissioned by the Museum of Jurassic Technology to collaborate on a forthcoming album/art film of 17th Century English music, entitled Cold Genius. Aaron has performed and toured throughout the US, Mexico, Canada, and Europe. He has recorded live and in the studio for Hollywood, Magnatune, ORF, National Public Radio’s “Performance Today,” and on the NCA and Dorian/Sono Luminus labels. He holds a Master of Music from the Indiana University School of Music, where he studied with Stanley Ritchie. Aaron taught at California Institute of the Arts for three years, and, for Fall 2010, he is Director of the Young People's Chamber Orchestra, a conductorless youth ensemble in Santa Rosa. In his spare time, he enjoys cooking, making beer, wine-tasting, camping, hiking, and gardening.
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