Gabriel Arregui
Harpsichord
Gabriel
Arregui graduated from Loma Linda University with a degree in organ
performance and secondary emphasis on piano. He went on to earn
his master’s degree in keyboard collaboration at the University
of Southern California under Gwendolyn Koldofsky, Brooks Smith and
Jean Barr, studying harpsichord with Malcolm Hamilton. Arregui won
the Hans Schiff Memorial Chamber Music Scholarship, was awarded
a graduate assistantship and the Departmental Award for Outstanding
Graduate. Following graduate study, he returned to Loma Linda University
to teach 18th-century counterpoint. Arregui is currently organist
of the Roman Catholic Church of the Immaculata on the campus of
the University of San Diego. Remaining active in coaching and recital
work, he is regularly a featured soloist and chamber musician in
our Baroque Music Festival, and has appeared in recitals with sopranos
Julianne Bard and Rosa Lamoreaux.
Elizabeth Blumenstock
Violin
Elizabeth
Blumenstock is one of the country’s leading Baroque violinists.
A frequent soloist, concertmaster, and leader with Philharmonia
Baroque Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, Chicago Opera Theater,
and the Italian ensemble Il Complesso Barocco, she is also a member
of several of California’s finest period-instrument ensembles,
including Musica Pacifica, Trio Galatea, Trio Galanterie (with William
Skeen), the Arcadian Academy, and American Baroque, which focuses
not just on Baroque performance, but on the growing repertoire of
new music written for old instruments. In 2004, Blumenstock was
named Resident Artistic Director of the Los Angelesbased period-instrument
orchestra Musica Angelica.
With over 80 recordings to her credit, she has recorded for Dorian,
Harmonia Mundi, Virgin Classics, BMG, Reference Recordings, Koch
International, Sony, New Albion, and others. She has appeared with
period orchestras and chamber ensembles throughout the United States
and abroad, and she has performed at the Boston and Berkeley Early
Music Festivals, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Los Angeles
Opera, the Carmel Bach Festival, and the San Luis Obispo Mozart
Festival, among others. She is instructor of baroque violin at the
University of Southern California and U.C. Berkeley, has taught
at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute and the International
Baroque Institute at Longy. She is organist and choir director at
Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Richmond. Our Festival values her
continuing performances in Corona del Mar.
Rob
Diggins Viola/Violin
Rob Diggins, a versatile freelance violinist and
violist with numerous period-instrument ensembles, has appeared
with the Collegium Vocale of Ghent and La Chapelle Royale
both under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe as well
as Les Arts Florissants, the Gabrieli Consort, Cantus Köln,
Musica ad Rhenum, the Ricercar Consort, Kammer Orchester Stuttgart,
the American Bach Soloists, American Baroque, Lux Musica, the
Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Benevolent Order for the Music
of the Baroque (BOMB), the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Trinity
Consort, and the Portland Baroque Orchestra.
Diggins has recorded more than 20 compact discs
for labels such as Harmonia Mundi, Koch International, Musica
Omnia, Pro Gloria Musica, Helicon, Gourd, Musical Heritage Society,
and Music for Little People. Recipient in 1993 of a Soloist Diploma
in violin from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, he is founder/director
of the Accademia dei Fiolmusi, current co-director of the Alard
String Quartet, and director of Les Theâtres des Funambules
(a puppet/circus theater) in Humboldt County, California. He returns
regularly to our Baroque Music Festival as violist, violinist
and orchestra member.
Jolianne
von Einem Violin
Jolianne von Einem currently appears with the Philharmonia Baroque
Orchestra, Magnificat, the California Bach Society, and the Portland
Baroque Orchestra. She has traveled to Japan with the Amsterdam
Baroque Orchestra, to Singapore and Hong Kong with the American
Bach Soloists, and has appeared in New York City, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, Germany, England and France. Her recordings include
the Mendelssohn Octet with Hausmusik on EMI, Eighteenth Century
Music for Lute and Strings with Trio Galanterie on Audioquest,
and Legrenzi cantatas and trio sonatas with El Mundo on Koch International.
A native of Los Angeles, she holds degrees from UCLA and the University
of Southern California, where she studied modern violin with Alex
Treger and Alice Schoenfeld. Baroque violin study with Monica Huggett
led her to specialize in historical performance practice, and she
became a founding member of the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra. She
performs regularly with fellow violinist Rob
Diggins, and they are the proud parents of an 8-year-old daughter.
Clayton
Haslop Violin
Clayton Haslop made his professional solo debut at age 20 under
Sir Neville Marriner and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra touring
the western United States. These highly acclaimed performances led
to numerous engagements with orchestras and also resulted in his
appointment, at Marriner’s recommendation, as founding violinist
of the Los Angeles Piano Quartet. Having toured and recorded with
this quartet for eight seasons, he left the ensemble in 1986 to
focus more fully on an emerging partnership with guitarist Jack
Sanders, resulting in two recordings (Centaur and Townhall labels),
tours of North America and China, and numerous master class appearances.
Founding first violinist of the acclaimed New Hollywood String
Quartet, Haslop has served as concertmaster for the Los Angeles
Chamber Orchestra, the Dallas Opera, the Santa Barbara Symphony,
and the Los Angeles Opera. He was coached extensively by the legendary
Nathan Milstein, studied under violinist Eudice Shapiro while a
student at USC, and was a faculty member at Pomona College and Santa
Monica college. He performs on a rare 1782 Storioni violin, and
appears regularly in our Festival.
Timothy Howard
Organ/Harpsichord
Timothy
Howard is Lecturer in Music at California State University, Northridge,
where he teaches organ, harpsichord, music theory and music technology.
He is founding Artistic Director of Opus Performing Arts, a professional
arts group. He is the organist at the Pasadena Presbyterian Church
and has held a number of elected positions in the American Guild
of Organists, including Far West Regional Councillor and local chapter
Dean. Howard holds the Doctor of Musical Arts degree with honors
from the University of Southern California and is a member of Pi
Kappa Lambda, the national music academic honor society.
For some fifteen years, Howard was Chorusmaster for
the Los Angeles Music Theatre Company, preparing vocal ensembles
for that company’s semi-annual opera productions; in 1998
he made his operatic conducting debut, leading singers and orchestra
in Mozart’s Bastien und Bastienne and Der Schauspieldirektor.
His work as composer, arranger, and collaborative performer can
be heard on Christopher Parkening’s Simple Gifts (Angel
Records), and he has several published compositions and arrangements
to his credit.
Timothy Landauer
Violoncello
Timothy
Landauer was hailed as “a cellist of extraordinary gifts”
by the New York Times when won the coveted Concert Artists
Guild International Award in 1983. He has won numerous prestigious
prizes, among them the national Gregor Piatigorsky Memorial Cello
Award of the Young Musicians Foundation, the Samuel Applebaum Grand
Prize in the American String Teachers Association’s National
Solo Competition, and the 1984 Hammer-Rostropovich Scholarship Award.
Landauer was born in Shanghai, the son of musicians.
He first studied with his father and attended the Shanghai Conservatory
Middle School. He continued his studies with Eleonore Schoenfeld
at USC, where he earned his master’s degree and was immediately
invited to join the faculty as a lecturer and assistant to Lynn
Harrell. Since then his extensive engagements have included acclaimed
recitals at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Ambassador Auditorium in
Los Angeles, and the Orford Art Center in Montreal. He has performed
as a soloist with the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, Gulbenkian
Orchestra (Lisbon), Hong Kong Philharmonic, Taiwan National Symphony,
Beijing Symphony, Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, Maryland Symphony,
Pacific Symphony Orchestra, and at the Grand Teton Festival. He
was recipient of the “Outstanding Individual Artist Award”
in 2004 by Arts Orange County.
David
Shostac Flute
David Shostac, principal flutist and a frequent soloist
with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, has collaborated as a featured
artist with conductors Sir Neville Marriner, Jean-Pierre Rampal,
Iona Brown, Christopher Hogwood, Cristof Perick, Gerard Schwarz,
Claudio Scimone, Karl Richter, Helmut Rilling, Jorge Mester, Henryk
Szeryng, Jeffery Kahane, and many others. Solo appearances have
included the Hollywood Bowl, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart
Festival, the Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, the Aspen Music Festival,
the Ojai Festival, the Stratford (Ontario) Festival, and the Carmel
Bach Festival.
Shostac holds a master’s degree from Julliard,
where he studied on a scholarship with Julius Baker. He has recorded
on the Crystal, Angel, Nonesuch, Excelsior Records and Columbia
labels, most recently J.S. Bach: The Six Flute Sonatas with
harpsichordist Igor Kipnis and cellist John Walz. He played the
flute solos on the 2006 Academy Awards show, heard by over one billion
people, and will perform his own Carmen Fantasy for solo
flute and orchestra at the National Flute Association Convention
in Albuquerque this August. Formerly a faculty member at the University
of Southern California and currently on the faculty of California
State University Northridge, he is the author of Super Warm-ups
for the Flute.
William
Skeen Violoncello
William Skeen resides in the Bay Area, where he is
principal cellist with the American Bach Soloists and a member of
Philharmonia Baroque and the Stockton Symphony. Formerly on the
faculty of the University of San Diego, since 2001 he has been with
the Early Music Department of the University of Southern California,
teaching cello. This year, he will spend his sixth summer at the
Carmel Bach Festival as cellist and viola da gamba soloist.
Skeen is cofounder and director of La Monica, a period-instrument
sextet devoted to Italian and German repertoire of the 17th century
— a youthful group that has been received with great acclaim
at many of the country’s top early-music series, including
Pittsburgh’s Renaissance and Baroque Society, and New York
City’s Music Before 1800. He has served as principal cellist
with Seattle Baroque, the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Musica
Angelica, the San Diego Opera, and the Chicago Opera Theater. He
is a member of El Mundo, Trio Galanterie (with Elizabeth
Blumenstock and John Schneiderman), and Just Strings, a new-music
ensemble exploring microtonal repertoire. We welcome his return
to our Festival.
John
Thiessen Trumpet
John Thiessen appears as soloist and principal trumpet
with early music ensembles throughout the U.S. and Canada, including
Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists,
Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra and Washington Bach Consort,
and has performed with the Academy of Ancient Music, Taverner
Players, English Baroque Soloists and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.
Thiessen graduated with high distinction in trumpet
performance from the Eastman School of Music. He holds a Master
of Historical Musicology degree from King’s College, University
of London, and is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council
and Ontario Arts Council for baroque trumpet studies in the UK.
He serves on the faculties of the Baroque Performance Institute
at Oberlin College and the International Baroque Institute at
Longy in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has recorded extensively
for Sony Classical Vivarte, Telarc, EMI, BMG, Deutsche Harmonia
Mundi, London/Decca, Analekta, CBC, and Denon.
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