Baroque violinist Tekla Cunningham specializes in bringing the music of the baroque, classical and romantic eras to life with vivid and expressive historically informed performances. Praised as “a consummate musician whose flowing solos and musical gestures are a joy to watch”, her performances have been described as “ravishingly beautiful” and “stellar”. Tekla is a passionate force for thriving musical communities, serving as the founder and director of the Seattle Bach Festival (founded 2024), Artist-in-Residence and director of the Baroque Ensemble at the University of Washington, and founder and director of the Whidbey Island Music Festival (established in 2006). She enjoyed a long association with Pacific MusicWorks as violinist and co-artistic director with her colleagues Maxine Eilander, Stephen Stubbs and Henry Lebedinsky.
Seán Dagher is an active performer, arranger, and composer of music from various folk and classical music traditions: Celtic, Baroque, Medieval, Arabic, French-Canadian, and Maritime. He is a member of Skye Consort and is the co-artistic director of La Nef. Seán sings and plays Irish bouzouki, mandolin, oud, and banjo. Seán has also provided arrangements for numerous ensembles and artists, including Camerata Nova (Winnipeg), Chor Leoni (Vancouver), Arion, Palade Musica, Les Voix Humaines, La Mandragore, Pierre Lapointe (all Montreal), Shannon Mercer, I Furiosi (Toronto), Les Voix Baroques, Choeur Louisbourg (Moncton), Cantatica (Pennsylvania), and the Nashville Baroque Orchestra. Other groups he has played with include the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Caprices, Les Boréades, Le Petit Rien. Seán’s voice is widely known from his recordings for the Assassin’s Creed video game series, including Black Flag. His renditions of sea shanties and other songs from the games have been streamed some 70 million times. His own Shanty of the Week video series receives thousands of views a week and has a loyal following the world over. He also often tours in North America and Europe with renowned UK shanty singing group, The Longest Johns.
Soprano Hannah De Priest is fast emerging as a “breakout artist” (the Boston Globe) renowned for her fearless and “masterful” (Olyrix) performances. De Priest enjoys a fast-rising global career of concert and operatic engagements. In the 2026-2027 season, she makes return appearances with Haymarket Opera (Ninfa/Proserpina, L’Orfeo), Music of the Baroque (Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass and Charpentier’s Te Deum), Bach in the City (Bach’s Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen and Christmas Oratorio), the Bach Society of St. Louis, and The Newberry Consort. She will record and perform the title role in La Stellidaura Vendicante with the Boston Early Music Festival in Bremen, Germany for the CPO label and make debuts with the Grand Rapids Symphony (Handel’s Messiah) and Saint Joseph Symphony (Holiday Cheer). Hannah currently makes her home in Philadelphia, where she lives with her husband and rescue dog, Teddy. Her debut solo album Arcadian Dreams was released in spring 2026.
First prize winner in the Bruges International Harpsichord Competition, Canadian harpsichordist and organist Mark Edwards is recognized for his captivating performances, bringing the listener “to new and unpredictable regions, using all of the resources of his instrument, […] of his virtuosity, and of his imagination” (La Libre Belgique). He is Associate Professor of Harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory. He has given solo recitals and concerto performances at the Utrecht Early Music Festival, Bozar (Brussels), and the Montreal Baroque Festival, and with Il Gardellino (Belgium), and the Montreal Symphony Orchestra. His début solo CD, Orpheus Descending, was released in 2017 and was reviewed warmly. In 2021, Edwards received a PhD from Leiden University after successfully defending his dissertation titled “Moving Early Music: Improvisation and the Work-Concept in Seventeenth-Century French Keyboard Performance.” His former teachers include Robert Hill, William Porter, Hank Knox, and David Higgs.
Dominic Giardino is a New York City–based arts administrator, public historian, and historical clarinetist. He serves as Executive Director of Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc. and Instructor of Historical Clarinets at the University of North Texas, and performs with period-instrument ensembles throughout North America. His research examines the influence of European military cultures on music in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, which he brings to the stage with his ensemble, Music of the Regiment. Giardino studied at the Eastman School of Music and Royal Conservatory of The Hague as a Fulbright grantee.
K. Dawn Grapes is a musicologist and professor in the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at Colorado State University where she serves as Director of Graduate Studies and teaches music history and research. Her areas of research interest include the music of Early Modern England, music history pedagogy, and flute history. She is the author of numerous books and articles, including her recent Dowland biography, published by Oxford University Press in 2024.
Ellen T. Harris is Class of 1949 Professor Emeritus at MIT and Visiting Professor at The Juilliard School. Her work includes the award-winning books George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends (Norton, 2014) and Handel as Orpheus: Voice and Desire in the Chamber Cantatas (Harvard, 2001/2021). A revised edition of her book Henry Purcell: Dido and Aeneas (OUP) was published in 2017. Her research on Handel’s finances won the Westrup Prize in 2004. She has performed with John Williams and the Boston Pops and sung the National Anthem at Fenway Park. She is currently preparing a book on performing Handel’s operas.
David McGuinness divides his time between historical Scottish music and contemporary work. As director of early music ensemble Concerto Caledonia he made sixteen albums, mostly of newly-rediscovered repertoire, and collaborated with musicians in a variety of genres from traditional to punk cabaret. He is Professor of Practical Music at the University of Glasgow, where research projects have included basslines of historical Scottish fiddle music, and the songs of 18th-century poet Allan Ramsay. In 2022 with violinist David Greenberg he was artist-in-residence at the Vancouver Bach Festival, giving recitals, directing ensembles, and playing both concertos and pub gigs. David’s current projects include an improvising duo with the bassoonist Ursula Leveaux, and on organ, a forthcoming album with bagpipe and whistle virtuoso Ross Ainslie. He has also been a composer and music producer for television, and in 2007 he produced John Purser’s 50-part history of Scotland’s music for the BBC. www.davidmcguinness.com
“A baroque oboist of consummate taste and expressivity” (Cleveland Plain Dealer) with a musical approach that’s “distinctly sensual…pliant, warm, and sweet,” (New York Times), Debra Nagy, director, is one of North America’s leading performers on the baroque oboe. She plays principal oboe with the American Bach Soloists, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, and Apollo’s Fire, and is a regular guest with the Handel & Haydn Society, Boston Early Music Festival, and Portland Baroque Orchestra, among other ensembles. Following studies at the Oberlin Conservatory, Conservatory of Amsterdam, and Case Western Reserve University, Debra has received many awards for her creative and scholarly pursuits including first-prize in the American Bach Soloists Young Artists Competition, a 2009 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a 2010 Creative Workforce Fellowship from Cuyahoga Arts & Culture. She has recorded over 30 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800 on the Chandos, Avie, CPO, Capstone, Bright Angel, Naxos, and ATMA labels, and has had live performances featured on CBC Radio Canada, Klara (Belgium), NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR (New York City) and WGBH Boston.
Reginald L. Sanders earned his doctorate in musicology from Yale University with a dissertation on C. P. E. Bach and church music in Hamburg, which was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship. Since 2000, he has served as professor of music at Kenyon College, where he also coordinates the Taylor Early Music Concert Series. His scholarship has appeared in journals such as the Göttinger Händel-Beiträge, the Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft, and the Bach-Jahrbuch. He edited several volumes of vocal music for C. P. E. Bach: The Complete Works and contributed to and co-edited Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (2018). Most recently, he contributed a chapter to The Cambridge Companion to the Bach Cantatas (forthcoming), and he is the editor of Bach Perspectives 15 (forthcoming), which comprises various essays on J. S. Bach and the concept of authority.
Sarah Waltz is a musicologist with wide-ranging interests, often concerning how music communicates through style, how musicians navigated musical life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, or how musical and non-musical worlds collide. Having degrees in both music history and physics, she particularly enjoys working on musician-astronomer William Herschel and his sister Caroline, and is collaborating (with astronomer Woody Sullivan) on a biography of William. She has discussed Herschel with the American Astronomical Society, the Society for Music Theory, and the New York Times. She is also researching Beethoven’s interest in cosmology, having written on moonlight and Aeolian harps for Beethoven Forum; research on Felix Mendelssohn’s polymathic abilities and northern travel appeared in Rethinking Mendelssohn and is ongoing. Currently Professor of Music History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, Dr. Waltz helps undergraduates develop research and bring music into all aspects of study.
Violinist Shelby Yamin brings signature vivacity to performances across the globe, from the historic state rooms of George Washington’s Mount Vernon to the storied chapel at Versailles. Shelby has appeared as a soloist with Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players, Voices of Music, New York Baroque Incorporated and The Oregon Bach Festival orchestra. Dedicated to diversifying the canon, Shelby regularly researches, performs, and records lesser known works, including 18th-century repertoire from the music library of Nelly Custis and, more recently, the violin duets of Maddalena Lombardini Sirmen (1745-1818). Shelby’s discography includes the first ever recording of Sirmen’s entire opus of violin duets on period instruments (Orpheus Classical Label, 2021). Shelby has earned degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and The Juilliard School, where she won the Historical Performance Concerto Competition. In addition to performing regularly with Les Délices in concert, Shelby is the Associate Producer of SalonEra. She currently resides in New York City.
