Folger Consort with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble: Virtual Concert

Arianne Abela is Director of the Choral Program at Amherst College. Abela recently served on conducting faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit, MI, and is founder and director of the Detroit Women’s Chorus and Detroit Justice Choir, ensembles dedicated to social-justice and community empowerment. She directed Detroit’s historic Fort Street Chorale, conducted choirs at University of Michigan, and the UMS Choral Union. Focusing her efforts on community building through song, Abela founded The House of Clouds and has worked closely with Musicians Take a Stand to organize over a dozen benefit concerts for charities and various causes across the country.

In the realm of opera, has guest conducted opera productions with various Michigan-based opera companies including Detroit’s OperaMODO, and serves as music director for Vancouver-based opera company, Re:Naissance. Prior to her time in Detroit, Abela lived in Connecticut where she served on faculty at Wesleyan University, Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, The Westover School and Notre Dame High School in West Haven. In 2012, Abela was featured conducting on NBC’s Today Show and was a semi-finalist in Season 8 of America’s Got Talent as director of Connecticut-based 3 Penny Chorus and Orchestra. The ensemble later recorded for the soundtrack of Hollywood film Walk of Shame starring Elizabeth Banks.

Abela received her doctorate in conducting from the University of Michigan with Jerry Blackstone and Eugene Rogers, holds a master’s degree in choral conducting from Yale University with Marguerite Brooks, Jeffrey Douma, and Simon Carrington, and bachelor of arts from Smith College. Abela sings professionally in ensembles across the United States and Canada such as Yale Choral Artists, sounding light, Etherea Vocal Ensemble, Arkora, and Audivi. Originally from the San Francisco bay area, she sang with the San Francisco Girls Chorus for many years.

Nathaniel Cox (theorbo) enjoys a varied musical career both as one of North America’s leading cornetto players, and as an accomplished continuo player on lute and theorbo. In addition to co-directing the New England-based ensemble for 17th-century music In Stile Moderno, he performs with ensembles such as Apollo’s Fire, Piffaro, Dark Horse Consort, Bach Collegium San Diego, The Toronto Consort, TENET Vocal Artists, and Blue Heron. Nathaniel holds bachelor’s degrees from Oberlin College and Conservatory in both Russian literature and trumpet performance, as well as Master’s degrees from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in cornetto and historical performance practice. He has dedicated himself to the study of historical ornamentation, and has sought to find a performance style that is both authentic to the early Baroque era and unique to his musical voice.Nathaniel loves to share his passion with students, and has taught at the Amherst Early Music Festival and the San Francisco Early Music Society Baroque Workshop. Besides his performance career, Nathaniel works as a software engineer for the data-privacy company Cloaked, and loves spending time with his two-year-old son Simon.

Wade Davis (Cello) is in high demand as a solo performer and chamber music collaborator. He regularly performs with the Washington Bach Consort, the Folger Consort, as a guest with the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society, and his own baroque ensemble, S’amusant, co-founded with Patrick Merrill, harpsichordist in 2013. Other appearances include Piccolo Spoleto Early Music Festival, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, The MOJA Festival, The Spire Series, and Bach Ascending. Known for wide variety of styles, he’s also featured on popular indie music concert series such as So Far Sounds Baltimore and has guested with New York-based band Reserved for Rondee and Baltimore-based band Outcalls in addition to the “Swans for Relief” project video curated by Misty Copeland to raise funds for dancers whose companies had been affected by the 2020 pandemic shutdowns. Wade maintains a private studio of cello students in both Baltimore and Washington, D.C. He holds both a master’s degree in Baroque Cello Performance and a Graduate Performance Degree in Historical Cello from Peabody Conservatory as a student of John Moran.

Robert Eisenstein (Artistic Director, viol, violin,recorder) has led over 200 productions and performances with Folger Consort over the past 40 years include Measure + Dido at the Kennedy Center and Napa Valley Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice at Strathmore, The Fairy Queen, and Hildegard Von Bingen’s Ordo Virtutum at the Washington National Cathedral.  Director of the Five College Early Music Program; Music Director for the Five College Opera Project production of Francesca Caccini’s La Liberazione di Ruggiero. Faculty member of Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches music history and performs the viola de gamba, violin, and medieval fiddle.  He is an active participant in the Five College Medieval Studies. Recipient of Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship by the director of a college early music ensemble. 

Haitham Haidar (Tenor) is a Lebanese-Palestinian Canadian tenor based in Montreal. A proud graduate of Yale’s Institute of Sacred Music, McGill University, and the University of British Columbia, Haitham is praised for his ‘musical and linguistic versatility’ and his ‘bright’ and ‘innately lyrical voice’ and enjoys performing oratorio, opera, and chamber music across North America, Europe, and Asia. Haitham is also a proud member of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble (KVE), whose mission aims to present vocal music with the highest artistic excellence, while celebrating racial, ethnic, and gender diversity.

Haitham has been seen as a tenor soloist on a US and European tour with Apollo’s Fire and as the Evangelist in Bach’s St. John Passion at the Winnipeg Baroque Festival. He has also been a recent soloist and ensemble member TENET Vocal Artists, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra and Conspirare.

Upcoming highlights include Pilatus in Pärt’s Passio under the direction of James Blachly and the tenor soloist in Bach’s Easter Oratorio with Apollo’s Fire.

Haitham’s approach to performance has always been humanity first. Being an Arab immigrant in North America comes with its unique set of oppressive challenges and it is because of that and what he sees around him in the field, that he aims to touch people’s hearts with music and compassion and make change in the world the best way he knows how.

As a conductor whose work has been praised as “superb” (The New York Times), “well-prepared and joyful” (Detroit Free Press), and “excellent“ and “fluent and fresh” (Opera News), Dr. Noah Horn presently serves as Director of Choral Activities at Williams College, chorus master for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and artistic director and founder of the professional vocal ensemble Audivi. With Audivi he has conducted historically-informed landmark performances of Bach’s Mass in B minor and Monteverdi’s Vespers, as well as premiering dozens of new compositions and touring several times around the US. He has worked with ensembles in Austria, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Turkey, Greece, Canada, and the Philippines.

For several years, Dr. Horn served as director of choral activities at Wayne State University, where he directed the choirs and led the graduate program in choral conducting. Also a passionate orchestral conductor, he has served as interim director of orchestral activities at Wesleyan University and worked with orchestras around the country. Other teaching assignments have included posts at Oberlin Conservatory, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Western Michigan University, and University of Michigan. His former graduate students hold choral artistic director positions across the country.

As a tenor specializing in oratorio, Dr. Horn has sung solo roles in much of the standard repertoire from the Baroque, Classical, and Romantic eras. As a choral tenor, he regularly sings with professional ensembles across the country, such as Conspirare and Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble. As an organist, Dr. Horn has given recitals in several countries, and has served as music director at a number of churches; recently he won several competitive national prizes from the American Guild of Organists. Dr. Horn also works freelance as a pianist, harpsichordist, trumpet player, composer, and audio and video engineer. He appears in numerous commercial recordings, including five albums released on Naxos Records.

Dr. Horn holds the D.M.A., M.M.A., and M.M. degrees from Yale University in choral conducting, and the M.M. and B.Mus. degrees from Yale and Oberlin College in organ performance. He lives in western Massachusetts.

Christopher Kendall (Artistic Director) is founder of the Folger Consort. He has recently become dean emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance after serving the two-term limit of 10 years as the school’s dean, where he was responsible for establishing the University of Michigan Gershwin Initiative, for re-instituting international touring, for the funding and design of a $30M expansion/renovation of the music building, and for launching the interdisciplinary enterprise ArtsEngine and its national initiative a2ru (Alliance for the Arts at Research Universities). In Washington, in addition to his work with Folger Consort, since 1975 he has been Artistic Director and conductor of the 21st Century Consort, the new music ensemble-in-residence at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Mr. Kendall served as Director of the University of Maryland School of Music from 1996 to 2005 during a period of rapid development at the School and its move to the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center. Associate Conductor of the Seattle Symphony from 1987 to 1992 and Director of the Music Division and Tanglewood Institute of the Boston University School for the Arts from 1993 to 1996, Mr. Kendall has guest conducted many orchestras and ensembles in repertoire from the 18th to the 21st centuries. His recordings can be heard on the Bard, Delos, Nonesuch, Centaur, ASV, Arabesque, Innova, and Smithsonian Collection labels.

Praised as “an excellent and impassioned” soprano possessing “a graceful tonal clarity that is a wonder to hear” (San Francisco Chronicle), Michele Kennedy is a versatile specialist in early and contemporary music. Her recent concert venues include Carnegie Hall, Davies Symphony Hall, The Getty Museum, Lincoln Center, and Washington National Cathedral.

Michele has been a featured soloist in Bach’s St. John Passion with Voices of Music and The San Francisco Symphony Chorus, Handel’s Messiah with Trinity Wall Street Choir, Poulenc’s Gloria and Messiah with The Bach Society of Saint Louis, Undine Smith Moore’s MLK Oratorio at U.C. Berkeley, and selected Bach Cantatas with American Classical Orchestra. In demand across the country, Michele recently debuted with Portland Baroque Orchestra in the ‘Summer Fireworks’ of Handel and Purcell, with San Francisco Ballet in Mendelssohn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, and in her Carnegie Hall mainstage debut with The Hollywood Film Orchestra. Her singing is highlighted on two upcoming new albums: Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 with The Thirteen and Dark Horse Consort, and In Her Hands with AGAVE Baroque, featuring pieces by trailblazing female composers from over the ages.

A lifelong advocate of new works, Michele has sung premieres with Experiments in Opera, Harlem Stage Opera, Mimesis Ensemble, Five Boroughs Music Festival, and The New York Philharmonic.  This season, she is traveling with Lorelei Ensemble in a world premiere tour of Julia Wolfe’s Her Story – an outspoken celebration of women’s civil rights – in concert with the Nashville, Chicago, Boston, and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras. She is also a member of Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble: a group of early and contemporary music specialists that champions the voices of women and artists of color on the stage, and in the field at large.

Michele completed her musical studies at Yale University, Yale School of Music, and New York University. A lover of redwood groves and bay vistas, she lives in Oakland with her husband, visual artist Benjamin Thorpe, and their daughter, Audra May. Please find more at www.michele-kennedy.com

Paula Maust is a performer, scholar, and educator dedicated to fusing research and creative practice to amplify underrepresented voices and advocate for social change. She is the creator of Expanding the Music Theory Canon, an open-source collection of music theory examples by women and composers of color. A print anthology based on the project will be released with SUNY Press in December 2023. Paula also researches the pejorative language used to describe early modern women on stage and harmony books by nineteenth-century women. She has published articles in Women and Music and the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music, and she is an Early Modern Area Editor for Grove Music Online’s gender and sexuality revision project.

Praised for his “powerful baritone and impressive vocal range” (Boston Music Intelligencer) and as a “musicianly, smooth vocalist, capable in divisions” (Opera News Online), bass-baritone Andrew Padgett is an accomplished interpreter of early music from medieval to baroque repertoire. He has worked with several early music luminaries including Masaaki Suzuki, Benjamin Bagby, and Paul O’Dette, and has been featured as a soloist in concert venues worldwide, such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, NYC, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Esplanade Concert Hall in his hometown, Singapore. He is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as TENET, Bach Collegium San Diego, Pegasus Early Music, and Piffaro, both as an ensemble artist and a soloist.

Andrew has been a featured soloist on a number of recently-released recordings, including Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra and Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera with Concordian Dawn, and The Music of Gerre Hancock with The Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys.

Andrew holds a B.S. in physics, an M.M. in voice from UC Santa Barbara, and an M.M. in Early Music, Oratorio, and Chamber Ensemble from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. After several years in New York City, as a member of the internationally-acclaimed Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, he now lives in Boston with his wife and son, where he frequently sings with Emmanuel Music on their long-running Bach Cantata Series, under the direction of Ryan Turner. In his free time, Andrew enjoys miniature painting and homebrewing.

Soprano Sherezade Panthaki‘s international success has been fueled by superbly honed musicianship; “shimmering sensitivity” (Cleveland Plain Dealer); a “radiant” voice (The Washington Post); and vividly passionate interpretations, “mining deep emotion from the subtle shaping of the lines” (The New York Times). She has been described as “a phenomenon” and praised for the “multifold splendor of her singing” by The San Francisco Chronicle. An acknowledged star in the early-music field, Ms. Panthaki has developed ongoing collaborations with many of the world’s leading interpreters including Nicholas McGegan, Mark Morris, Simon Carrington, Matthew Halls, and Masaaki Suzuki, with whom she made her New York Philharmonic debut in a program of Bach and Mendelssohn.

Ms. Panthaki’s 2019/20 season included returns to Minnesota Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York, The Choir and Orchestra of Trinity Wall Street on tour in Montreal, as well as debuts with Voices of Music, and the NDR Hannover Radiophilharmonie, Germany. She rejoined the Boston Early Music Festival

(BEMF) in Bremen, Germany performing and recording Graupner’s opera Antiochus und Stratonica. Following a triumphant Handelian performance in the title role of Atalanta with Philharmonia Baroque, Ms. Panthaki was featured at the Caramoor Music Festival in an operatic recital, “Love and Revenge: The Baroque Diva” with the Helicon Ensemble. She tours frequently as a guest artist with the New York City based Parthenia Viol Consort, including a special performance for the closing ceremonies of the 2019 Venice Biennale. Recent album releases include Handel’s oratorio Joseph and his Brethren with Nicholas McGegan and Philharmonia Baroque, Graupner’s Antiochus und Stratonica with BEMF, and the chamber duets of Agostino Steffani with director Jory Vinikour.

Ms. Panthaki is a founding member of and artistic advisor to the newly-debuted Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, a one-voice-per-part octet celebrating racial and ethnic diversity in performances and educational programs of early and new music. Since 2018, she has been the Vocal Music Coordinator and featured soprano soloist at the Bach Virtuosi Festival held every summer in Portland, Maine. She has maintained a steady schedule of online performances during the pandemic – making virtual recordings for Cleveland based Les Delices, New York based Salon Sanctuary Concerts, the Bach Virtuosi Festival in Portland, self-accompanied recitals of 17th century English and Italian songs for Public Radio and various arts series, teaching a month-long online Baroque opera workshop for Grand Valley State University in Michigan, as well as numerous guest lectures on Vocal Health, Vocal Technique, and Baroque Performance Practice for various universities across the United States.

Past performances of note include Vivaldi with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and St. Louis and Detroit Symphonies; Mozart and Bach with the Milwaukee Symphony, countless performances of works of Bach, Handel and Purcell with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and Music of the Baroque; Handel’s Saul with Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra in Toronto; the title role in Handel’s Almira in concert at BEMF; the role of Belinda in Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, Handel’s L’Allegro and the title role of Galatea in the premiere performances of Acis and Galatea with the Mark Morris Dance Group; Handel’s Solomon with the Radio Kamer Filharmonie (Holland); Handel at Carnegie Hall with William Christie and the Yale Philharmonia; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s; and Bach’s St. Matthew and St. John Passions with St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys. She has also appeared as soloist at the Oregon Bach Festival and Berkeley Early Music Festival. Handel’s Messiah is a signature piece, which she has performed with Bach Collegium Japan, the National Symphony Orchestra, Boston Baroque, the Colorado Symphony, the Kansas City Symphony, National Arts Centre Orchestra, Calgary Philharmonic, Nashville and San Antonio Symphonies, among others. Ms. Panthaki has also been featured in multiple concerts at Trinity Wall Street’s “Bach at One Cantatas” series in New York City.

With her “fresh, youthful sound … with a welcome hint of steel” (St. Louis Post-Dispatch), Ms. Panthaki’s repertoire extends well beyond the music of the Renaissance and Baroque. Recent engagements have included Orff’s Carmina Burana with the Houston Symphony and the Orlando Ballet; Mozart’s Coronation Mass, Haydn’s L’isola disabitata, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the American Classical Orchestra; Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 with the Orlando Philharmonic; Brahms’ Requiem with the Calgary Philharmonic and the Winter Park Bach Festival, John Tavener’s The Last Discourse with Orchestra of St. Luke’s and St. Thomas Choir of Men and Boys; Mozart’s Requiem with Music of the Baroque; Mozart’s Exsultate jubilate and Requiem with the Washington Bach Consort; Rachmaninoff’s Vocalise and Strauss lieder at the Bari International Music Festival, as well as performances of Stravinsky’s Les Noces, Britten’s War Requiem, and Poulenc’s Stabat Mater and Gloria.

Ms. Panthaki has championed works by women composers of the Baroque on recording and in live performance with La Donna Musicale at the Utrecht Early Music Festival (Holland), the Murten Classics Festival (Switzerland), and the Banco de La Republica series (Colombia). She is a founding member of the early music vocal quartet Gravitación, with which she has recorded medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque works.

Born and raised in India, Ms. Panthaki began her musical education at an early age. Following intensive study and earning top distinction as a young pianist, she turned to singing and found a more personal and expressive means to connect with audiences. She holds a Masters degree in Voice Performance from the University of Illinois, and an Artist Diploma from the Yale School of Music and the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. She is the winner of multiple awards at Yale University, including the prestigious Phyllis Curtin Career Entry Prize. Ms. Panthaki has served as Vocal Coach for the Yale Baroque Opera Project, and currently teaches voice lessons to graduate choral conductors and scholarship winners at Yale University.

Praised for his “luminous tone, weighted with pathos” (Upstage), countertenor Michael Walker has performed oratorios and recitals throughout the United States and abroad. He frequently performs in historically informed performances ranging from the Early Renaissance to the Late Baroque eras. As an interpreter of early music, Michael has been a featured soloist with Alchymy Viols, Mon Choeur, Echoing Air, Concentus and the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project. Additionally, Michael has been the featured alto soloist in G. F. Handel’s Messiah with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra and the Kokomo Symphony Orchestra, in J. S. Bach’s Magnificat with the Marquette Choral Society, and in Giovanni Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater at the AIMS International Music School in the United Kingdom.

Michael is passionate about expanding the definitions of the western musical canon and historical performance practices. Particularly comfortable in the realm of interpreting art songs and contemporary works, as a recitalist, Michael has presented various art songs programs such as Alchymy Viols’ Deep River: American Spirituals My Mother Taught Me (Second Presbyterian Church, IN), Across the Pond: British Art Songs (Christ Church Cathedral, IN), Duet Recital: Romantic Era Joint-Lieder with fortepiano (Indiana University, IN), and An Evening of Organ and Voice: Sacred Baroque Works (Church of the Nativity Episcopal, AL).

As an advocate for early music and the classical performing arts, Michael serves as the vice president of Indianapolis Baroque Orchestras and as a board member on the boards of directors of Early Music America. Currently, he holds the position of Annual Giving Manager at Central City Opera and as a staff singer at St. John’s Cathedral in Denver, Colorado. Michael holds a Master of Music in Early Music Performance Practices from the Historical Performance Institute at Indiana University and Bachelor of Science in Business Management from the University of Alabama in Huntsville.