About The Catacoustic Consort
The Catacoustic Consort is a 501c 3 nonprofit chamber music group,
specializing in music of the Renaissance and Baroque with period instruments.
Catacoustic is in its 17th season and is dedicated to the early
music community in the greater Cincinnati area. In addition to our
subscription concerts, Catacoustic provides a rental program of early music
instruments; offers an annual scholarship for instruments, training, or early
music education; offers pre-professional mentorship and training; and offers
frequent workshops and masterclasses. Catacoustic is also committed to outreach
to senior citizens.
The
Catacoustic Consort, lead by Artistic Director Annalisa Pappano, was the Grand
Prize Winner of the national Early Music America / Naxos Recording Label
Recording Competition in 2003. Their CD recording of an Italian laments program
on the Naxos label was released to international critical acclaim.
Catacoustic’s latest CD was released in 2014 on its own label and features rare
French Baroque music for the pardessus de viole.
Three times invited to perform for the San Francisco Early Music
Series, their concert touring includes Colombia (South America), Madison Early
Music Festival, Columbus Early Music, Eugene Oregon, Indiana State University,
and the University of Dayton. Catacoustic was also a featured ensemble at 2014
& 2017 Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclaves. Catacoustic has
also worked frequently in collaboration with University of Cincinnati
College-Conservatory of Music for concerts, coachings, masterclasses, and
lectures. They have given collaborative performances for specially-curated art
exhibits at the St. Louis and Cincinnati Art Museums. And their most recent
collaboration, with Cincinnati Opera, resulted in the successful staging of
Cavalli’s La
Calisto. Opera
News praised the ensemble as “a constant source of delight,” noting their
“rich” sound and “evident rapport” within the company. Catacoustic has two new CD
recordings: one of 17th-century Italian vocal music with continuo (with Melissa
Harvey - in this production of Poppea - and Virginia Warnken of music from the
time of Monteverdi) and another of 18th-century French arrangements of opera
airs for soprano (Melissa Harvey) and pardessus de viole (hybrid combination of
viola da gamba and violin).
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About the Catacoustic Consort Instrumentalists in Poppea
Annalisa Pappano is the founder and artistic director of the Catacoustic
Consort. She
studied at Indiana University’s Early Music Institute and at Oberlin Conservatory
of Music. Her playing has been described by critics as “mercurial and
enchanting” and “with a sound that is lighter than air with the airy luster of
gilding on the mirrors of a rococo drawing room.” She has performed throughout
Belgium, England, Ireland, Colombia, Canada, and the U.S. and has appeared on
nationally syndicated radio and has played at the Boston, Berkeley, and
Vancouver Early Music Festivals and the Ojai Music Festival. Pappano is a
member of Wildcat Viols and Atalante (England), and the recording she performed
on with Atalante won a Diapason d’Or and Gramaphone Award. She has performed
with numerous other ensembles including the Houston Grand Opera, Cincinnati
Opera, the Cleveland Opera, the Portland Opera, the Portland Baroque Orchestra,
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra (San Francisco), Les Voix Baroques, Opera
Atelier, the Toronto Consort, the Concord Ensemble, Cappella Artemisia
(Bologna), Parthenia Viol Consort, and Consortium Carissimi. She has taught at
Viola da Gamba Society of America national conclaves, the Viola da Gamba
Society Pacific Northwest and Northeast chapters, the San Diego Early Music
Workshop, ViolsWest, the Madison Early Music Workshop, and has been a guest
lecturer at numerous universities. Pappano led the Catacoustic Consort to win
the grand prize in the Naxos / Early Music America Live Recording Competition
and recorded a program of Italian laments on the Naxos label. Pappano teaches
viola da gamba at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music.
Lutenist and guitarist David Walker has performed extensively
throughout the US, earning praise for his “surety of technique and expressive
elegance,” (Columbus Dispatch) as well as his “tremendous dexterity
and careful control” (Bloomington Herald Times). David is a
regular performer with the Catacoustic Consort and has appeared with Boston
Baroque, Chatham Baroque, Clarion Music Society, the Smithsonian Chamber
Players, Tempesta di Mare, and is a member of the chamber ensemble Ostraka. He
has performed in numerous baroque opera productions, including engagements with
Glimmerglass Opera and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. Festival highlights include
the Savannah Music Festival, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, and solo
recitals for the Bloomington Early Music Festival and the University of
Louisville Guitar Festival. Recording credits include Ostraka’s critically
acclaimed debut, Division, and recordings for Sono Luminus and
Linn Records. David studied with Nigel North at Indiana University.
Andrew Maginley is an internationally renowned lutenist
and is at home on the concert, opera, and chamber stage. A native New
Yorker, after gaining a Bachelor's Degree in Fine Arts, he completed his
studies on the lute at Mannes College of Music in New York. As a Fulbright
Scholar, Andrew had further studies at the Hochschule für Künste in Bremen
Germany. His second solo recording, Andrew Maginley: The Baroque Lute -
J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss & Adam Falckenhagen, on Avie Records has been
highly praised by Gramophone and Fanfare magazines. He has given solo
performances at the Bachhaus in Eisenach, the Bloomington Early Music Festival,
Handel-Festival Göttingen, Berlin Tage für Alte Musik, Aspen Festival, Telemann
Festspiele Magdeburg, the Hong Kong Performing Arts Academy, and the
Händel Festspiele Halle. Andrew has performed with Sempreoper Dresden,
Collegium 1704, and Oper Frankfurt, Edinburgh Festival 2013, Opera North, BBC
Proms Royal Albert Hall with Glyndebourne Opera, Oper Stuttgart 1998-2006, Oper
Klagenfurt, Oper Graz, Nederlandse Opera, New York City Opera, Los Angeles
Opera, Liceo Opera Barcelona, The English Concert, The Ulster Orchestra, and
Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, King’s Place with Steven Wallace, the
Ulster Orchestra featuring Andreas Scholl and with soprano Danielle de Niese
live on TV for the BBC Breakfast Show.
Jody Miller has a diverse musical career, mostly built around
playing and teaching recorder. Originally from Mississippi, Miller
has actively spent the past 26 years helping promote early music and recorder
in the Atlanta area. He has served as president of the Atlanta
chapter of the American Recorder Society, music director for the same
organization, board member of the Atlanta Early Music Alliance, and education
editor and music reviewer for the American Recorder Society. Most of
his current advocacy efforts are through a community collegium he directs,
Lauda Musicam of Atlanta. This 35-member ensemble performs several
times per year and organizes educational opportunities for both musicians and
non-musicians. In addition to maintaining a recorder studio of
students from throughout the Southeast, Miller serves as director of the
Mountain Collegium Early Music and Folk Music Workshop. He is a
regular faculty member at the Atlanta Mid-Winter Early Music Workshop, Bloom
(PA) Early Music Workshop, and Mountain Collegium Early Music and Folk Music
Workshop. Miller is also part of the Traveling Teacher program
offered by the American Recorder Society.
Miller is an avid supporter of contemporary music for historical
instruments. Eighty-Eight & Eight, his duo with
pianist Lisle Kulbach, performs new music for recorder and recently performed
the premier of Timothy Broege’s composition Way. Other premier
performances include Dark Moods and Breakaway by Martha Bishop
(recorder and percussion) and five other compositions by Broege. Miller
also performs with Ritornello Baroque Ensemble, based in Atlanta.
Miller has performed on recorder with the Atlanta Symphony
Orchestra, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and New Trinity Baroque Orchestra. He can
be heard with New Trinity Baroque on the Edition Lilac compact disc Charpentier: Messe de Minuit. Miller
will also be a soloist at the 2018 Victoria (TX) Bach Festival.
Elizabeth Motter's career as a modern
harpist has taken her around the globe. Highlights include concerts with
Singapore Symphony, Spoleto Festival, Aspen Music Festival, Des
Moines Metro Opera, Lancaster Festival, New World Symphony, Peninsula
Music Festival, a residency in Japan, and performing
as a substitute in the Cincinnati, Indianapolis, and
Columbus Symphony Orchestras. She has played in the
orchestras of Marvin Hamlisch, Sarah Vaughan,
Aretha Franklin, Manhattan Transfer, Al Jarreau, The King's Singers,
and Frank Sinatra, and participated in recordings made by Nashville
Chamber Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestras, Indianapolis
Symphony, and two Christmas CD’s with Cincinnati’s Vocal Arts
Ensemble. Her journey into historical performance practice with the
baroque triple-strung harp has led her to attend the Amherst Early Music
Festival, Accademia D'Amore (Seattle), Oberlin's Baroque
Performance Institute, and Tafelmusik's Baroque Summer
Institute (Toronto), and Festival “le Arpe in Villa" (Italy). In addition
to performing regularly with Catacoustic, Elizabeth has participated in
CCM's Monteverdi Project and was a member of the continuo
team for Cincinnati Opera's production of La Calisto. She
can be heard in Catacoustic's recently released CD of Italian music, as well as
a recent recording with Consortium Carrissimi. Elizabeth teaches at
CCM's Preparatory Department and freelances throughout the region.
She is a founding member of Three 2 Tango, a trio that specializes
in improvisatory Argentine tango music.
Lauded for her “unusually probing intellect” and “passionate drive
to make music come to life in the here and now,” Laura Osterlund is an avid member
of the movement to promote early music performance, pedagogy, research, and
appreciation throughout North America. Her focus is on polyphonic music from
the 12th-16th centuries, period composition, and improvisational practices.
Laura worked as Assistant Program Manager and Recorder Specialist
Teacher to Keiskamma Music Academy, a nonprofit youth development program in
South Africa’s Eastern Cape. She also worked as a research assistant for McGill
University’s Distributed Digital Music Archives and Libraries Lab, helping to
develop projects such as Optical Music Recognition for Plainchant and Single
Interface for Music Score Searching and Analysis. Laura taught summer courses
at the Whitewater and Madison Early Music Festivals. Laura was also Director of
the West Suburban Early Music Society for their 2016 season. She sang as a
cantor and choral scholar for Ss. Peter and Paul Catholic Church in Naperville,
Illinois and held solo vocalist positions at Trinity Memorial and St. Columba’s
Anglican churches in Montreal. Laura maintained an early music concert series
for inpatients at Montreal’s Villa Medical Rehabilitation Hospital and
recorded renaissance solo repertoire for Ubisoft’s video game Assassin’s Creed
Brotherhood.
Based in Chicago, Laura served on the Youth Advisory Board for
Early Music America and was a longstanding writer for the radio program
Harmonia Early Music, the author of dozens of original scripts. She is a
founding member of Chicago Recorder Quartet, Ensemble Musica Humana, and the
now annual Pioneer Valley Early Music Day festival. Laura has enjoyed a varied
performing career as a guest artist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
Rockford Symphony Orchestra, Bach and Beethoven Ensemble, Music of the Baroque,
VOX 3 Collective, Ensemble Scholastica, New Comma Baroque, The Marion Consort,
Ensemble Musical Offering, Opera Theater of St. Louis in their production of
Handel’s Riccardo Primo, and Cleveland Opera Theater in their
production of Handel’s Serse. In 2011 Laura was awarded Early
Music America’s prestigious Barbara Thornton Memorial Award. Laura’s study of
medieval repertoire with Sequentia during the 2008 Vancouver Early Music
Festival proved a turning point in her career and a catalyst for the pursuit of
her life’s passion.
Originally from Toronto, Michael Unger is a multiple
award-winning harpsichordist and organist who appears as a soloist and chamber
musician in North America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Since 2013, he is
the Assistant Professor of Organ and Harpsichord at the University of
Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He is a First Prize and Audience
Prize winner of the National Young Artists’ Competition of the American Guild
of Organists (NYACOP), First Prize winner of the International Organ Competition
Musashino-Tokyo, and a Second Prize and Audience Award winner of the
International Schnitger Organ Competition on the historic organs in Alkmaar,
the Netherlands. Recent solo recitals include national conferences of the
Historical Keyboard Society of North America and the American Guild of
Organists, Internationale Orgelwoche Nürnberg, ‘Five Continents – Five
Organists’ at Seoul’s Sejong Center, and numerous international and regional
recital series. Recent harpsichord collaborations include Catacoustic Consort,
Collegium Cincinnati, Publick Musick, Cincinnati Opera and Cincinnati Symphony
Orchestra. He received favorable international reviews for his debut solo organ
recordings under the Naxos and Pro Organo labels, and his performances have
been broadcast on North American and European radio, including syndicated
programs Pipedreams and With Heart and Voice. He
was a guest faculty at the 2015 and 2016 Smarano International Keyboard
Academies in Trentino, Italy.
Michael Unger holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts with Performer’s
Certificate from the Eastman School of Music, where he was a student and
teaching assistant of David Higgs and William Porter, and was also a recipient
of the Jerald C. Graue Fellowship. He also a Gold Medal graduate of the
University of Western Ontario, where he studied with Larry Cortner, and has
pursued post-graduate coaching in Cincinnati with Roberta Gary. Formerly the
Director of Music of Rochester’s Lutheran Church of the Incarnate Word and
South Presbyterian Church, he currently serves as organist of Cincinnati’s
historic Isaac M. Wise (Plum Street) Temple.