Recorder – Mountain Collegium

Valerie Austin

Valerie Austin is a professor of history and of music at Saint Andrews University in Laurinburg, NC, where she teaches courses in European history and the World Wars. As a musicologist and music educator her research areas include early instrumental music and 20th century American music, specifically the crossover between popular and ‘classical’ forms. With musical origins as a symphonic trumpet player, Austin specializes on the cornett and recorder. You may have seen her name on the board of the American Recorder Society, and she notes her favorite professional group is the International Guild of Town Bands and Pipers, to whose international gatherings she regularly travels to perform.

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Phil Hollar

Hurdy gurdy, Recorder, Renaissance winds

Phil Hollar teaches recorder in Hickory, North Carolina. He is a frequent faculty member at workshops including Mountain Collegium Early Music and Folk Music Workshop, the Atlanta Early Music Alliance Mid-Winter Workshop, and the Triangle Recorder Society Spring Early Music Workshop. Phil has extensive experience leading American Recorder Society chapter playing sessions and has been invited to lead sessions nationwide. He currently serves as a board member for the American Recorder Society where he chairs the Play the Recorder Day Task Force. Phil holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

Phil Hollar’s website

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Joan Kimball

Recorder, Renaissance reeds

Joan Kimball is the former artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The
Renaissance Band. She has concertized with the ensemble throughout the U.S., Europe, and
South America and has performed with many of the leading early music artists and
ensembles in this country. With Piffaro she has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche
Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Recordings and PARMA/Navona, and in
addition can be heard on the Vanguard, Eudora and Vox Amadeus labels.

Widely known in the early music community as a teacher of recorder, early double reeds and
bagpipes, she has been on faculty at early music festivals and workshops across the country,
including The Madison Early Music Festival, The Early Double Reed & Sackbut Workshop,
Amherst Early Music, The San Francisco Early Music Recorder and Med/Ren workshops,
The Texas Toot, and Hidden Valley Early Music Workshop.

Joan has intimate knowledge and experience with early double reeds, playing both shawm
and dulcian, as well as capped reeds and bagpipes. She has far too many of the latter in
various sizes, pitches and volumes in her studio, and is committed to keeping them all in
good working order! She makes her own reeds for all her instruments and supplies them as
well for reed players across the country. One of her specialties is refurbishing whole sets of
krumhorns, replacing the old plastic reeds with more authentic cane ones. In addition, she
collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson on the construction of Medieval and
Renaissance bagpipes.

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Jody Miller, Director

Capped reeds, Recorder, Renaissance winds

Jody is director of Lauda Musicam of Atlanta and teaches private recorder lessons in the Atlanta area. Previously, he has served on the faculty of the Atlanta Early Music Alliance Mid-Winter Workshop and has taught recorder workshops throughout the country. Miller performs most frequently with Amethyst Baroque Ensemble, but he is also a member of contemporary music duo Eighty-Eight & Eight with Lisle Kulbach and Ritornello Baroque Ensemble. Miller often collaborates with modern instrumentalists when performing his favorite works—contemporary chamber music for recorder. He works closely with composer Timothy Broege and has premiered several of his compositions. More recently, Miller performed the premier of Martha Bishop’s Dark Moods–Breakaway for recorder and percussion and Gregory Hamilton’s Ave Maria Variations for unaccompanied recorder. Jody has performed with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, New Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Cincinnati Opera, and the Victoria Bach Festival. Jody has served as Director of Mountain Collegium since 2011.

Jody Miller’s website

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Emily O’Brien

Recorder

Emily O’Brien is a native of Washington, DC where she played recorder from a young age. She studied recorder and french horn at Boston University, and recorder and Baroque flute at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe, Germany. She performs in recorder ensembles and historical chamber music, as well as English Country Dance bands. As a teacher, she works with private students and ensembles in the Boston area as well as teaching at various summer workshop such as CDSS’s Early Music Week at Pinewoods and Amherst Early Music Festival. Emily’s solo album, “Fantasies for a Modern Recorder” explores the variety and possibilities over four centuries of repertoire offered by the Helder Harmonic Tenor recorder. In her spare time, she enjoys long distance cycling.

Emily O’Brien’s website

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Pat Petersen

Recorder, Renaissance winds

Pat holds an MFA in Early Music Performance from Sarah Lawrence College. A Director Emerita of Amherst Early Music, she is a regular faculty member at that and many other weekend and week-long workshops. Her vocal group Fortuna recorded on the Titanic label; she also conducted the Amherst Festival Choir on a recording of the music of Heinrich Isaac. She performs on recorder and other early winds, and has appeared with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra. She has coached early music ensembles at Wake Forest University and the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. An ARS certified teacher, she teaches recorder, early music, and English country dance in North Carolina and at workshops around the country, and has a passion for playing from facsimiles of early 15th-century music. In her other musical life, she loves to harmonize on traditional tunes, and plays a mean banjo-uke. Pat is currently working with a group of musicians and dancers to develop a retirement community for dancers, musicians, artists, and other like-minded people.

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Gwyn Roberts

Flute, Recorder

Gwyn Roberts is one of America’s foremost performers on recorder and baroque flute, praised by Gramophone for her “sparkling technique, compelling musicianship, and all-around excellence.” She is also co-founder and -director of Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra Tempesta di Mare, hailed by the Miami Herald as “the model of a top-notch period orchestra.” Now in the 15th season of its Philadelphia Concert Series, Tempesta di Mare tours from Oregon to Prague, recently released its 10th CD on the British label Chandos, and reaches audiences in 56 countries around the world with broadcasts of live performances.

Roberts’ soloist engagements include Portland Baroque Orchestra, Recitar Cantando of Tokyo, Washington Bach Consort and the Kennedy Center. In addition to Chandos, she has recorded for Deutsche Grammophon, Dorian, Sony Classics, Vox, PolyGram, PGM, and Radio France. Her latest solo recordings include the Fasch Recorder Concerto in F, Bach’s Concerto in G after BWV 530, and Sonatas by Francesco Mancini. She enjoys collaborating with living composers, recently recording James Primosch’s Sacred Songs and Meditations with the 21st Century Consort for Albany Records.

Roberts studied recorder and baroque flute at Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands with Marion Verbruggen, Leo Meilink and Marten Root. She loves teaching, with recent masterclasses at the Curtis Institute of Music, Hartt School of Music, and Oregon Bach Festival. She is Professor of Recorder and Baroque Flute at the Peabody Conservatory, Director of Early Music Ensembles at the University of Pennsylvania, and directs the Virtuoso Recorder Program at the Amherst Early Music Festival.

Gwyn Roberts’s website

Tempesta di Mare’s website

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Anne Timberlake

Recorder

Anne Timberlake has appeared across the United States performing repertoire from Bach to twenty-first-century premieres. She holds degrees in recorder performance from Oberlin Conservatory and Indiana University, Critics have described her playing as “dazzling” (Chicago Classical Review) and “preternaturally persuasive” (The Ann Arbor Observer). A Fulbright grantee, Anne won Early Music America’s 2011 Naxos Recording Competition with her ensemble Wayward Sisters. Anne enjoys teaching as well as playing, and is a regular instructor at workshops coast to coast.

Anne Timberlake’s website

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Barbara Weiss

Harpsichord, Recorder

A versatile and engaging musician, Barbara Weiss’ diverse musical experiences range from recording and performing ancient classical Cambodian music to directing a baroque opera company to chairing a university’s early music program. She started out as a clarinet and piano player and learned recorder in high school. She studied recorder and shawm at Indiana University, where she had opportunities to perform Brandenburg concertos and the Telemann suite – what fun! In addition to being the director of Recorder Society chapters in Michigan and Minneapolis, she has been on the faculty of both the Oberlin Conservatory and the Peabody Institute. She has taught at summer workshops such as the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, the Madison Early Music Festival, Mountain Collegium, and Indiana University’s Recorder Academy. She currently lives in Asheville, NC, where she performs with Muses Delight, Pan Harmonia, and the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra. Her collaborations include Belladonna, the Newberry Consort, Quicksilver, Chatham Baroque, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the King’s Noyse, Apollo’s Fire, the Chicago Opera Theater, Ensemble Vermillion and Piffaro. Shes has recorded with the Dorian, Flying Fish and Harmonia Mundi labels. She is currently selling recordings of her accompaniments to Baroque solo pieces for treble instruments. Luckily for her, she is the director of western North Carolina’s first melodica band, Next Road Over, and, sometimes, cursing technology, is teaching harpsichord long distance at Swarthmore College.

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