Music and Satire: From the Writings of Rabelais

Robert Eisenstein 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; former faculty member of Mount Holyoke College, where he taught music history and performed 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.

Christopher Kendall is founder of the Folger Consort. He is dean emeritus of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance after serving two terms 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 ArtEngine 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’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. Mr. Kendall served as Director of the University of Maryland School of Music from 1996 to 2005 during a period of rapid development 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, Bridge, and Smithsonian Collection labels.

Robert Aubry Davis, television and radio personality, is a native Washingtonian and an active member of the area’s cultural community. Davis is the creator and host of “Millennium of Music,” a program dedicated to music from the thousand years before Bach. The program, now in its 44th season, is carried by more than 100 public radio stations nationwide, internationally, and on SiriusXM Satellite Radio. He has been host and moderator of WETA TV’s Emmy Award-winning weekly arts discussion program, “Around Town,” since its inception in 1986. Davis can also be heard on SiriusXM’s classical music channel. He is a regular lecturer at a variety of area seminars and performances and has written liner notes for a wide variety of classical and folk recordings. Robert has been awarded knighthoods by the Republic of France and the Kingdom of Belgium for service to the arts; and was named a Knight of the Order of the Lion by the Republic of Finland.

Crossley Hawn (Soprano) has served as a soloist with ensembles including Folger Consort, Cathedra, the Washington Bach Consort, The Thirteen, the City Choir of Washington, Chatham Baroque, Choralis, the Reston Chorale, Maryland Choral Society, and University of Maryland Summer Chorus. Hawn was the winner of the 2018 Choralis Young Artists Competition. In addition to her solo work, Hawn is an active ensemble singer. She is a member of Eya Medieval Music and has also appeared chorally with the US Air Force Band’s Singing Sergeants, Kinnara, True Concord, EXO Choir, Chorosynthesis, Chantry, and The District Eight. She has performed worldwide in Italy, Canada, Switzerland, France, England, Germany, Austria, and Hungary. She is an Artistic Director of Bridge, a professional vocal chamber ensemble specializing in new works for voices. Hawn served as project manager and ensemble singer for Experiential Orchestra’s Grammy-winning premiere recording of Dame Ethel Smyth’s The Prison.

Anna Marsh (Bassoon) early bassoons and recorders is a multi-instrumentalist fluent in Renaissance, Baroque, Classical and Modern styles. Originally from Tacoma, WA, Anna holds a doctorate of music in historical performance from Indiana University and has appeared worldwide with Opera Lafayette, Tempesta di Mare, Folger Consort, Musica Angelica, Tafelmusik, Washington Bach Consort and Atlanta Baroque among others.  She has taught privately & at festivals at the Eastman School of Music, Los Angeles Music and Art School, Amherst Early Music, San Francisco Early Music Society, the Hawai’i Performing Arts Festival & Western Double Reed Workshops.  She also has been heard on dozens of recordings & on Performance Today, Harmonia, CBC radio & recorded for Chandos, Analekta, Centaur, Naxos, the Super Bowl, Avie, and Musica Omnia’s Grammy nominated album, Handel’s Israel in Egypt. www.annamarshmusic.com 

P. Lucy McVeigh (Alto), Baltimore native, is an avid interpreter of early and contemporary music. She currently serves as an alto and enlisted conductor in the United States Army Field Band. McVeigh also enjoys singing with the Washington National Cathedral Choirs, The Washington Bach Consort, Cathedra, and the Folger Consort. McVeigh holds degrees in music from Wellesley College and the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She is most passionate about bringing new music to life, and in her free time greatly enjoys playing board games and dancing with her husband Clyde and two wonderful kitties, Stevie and Alexis.

Described as “excellent” and “sterling,” by The New York Times, tenor Oliver Mercer performs regularly throughout North America and Europe as a concert soloist, recitalist, and opera singer. A specialist of the Baroque era, he has performed with Glyndebourne Opera Festival; English National Opera; Spoletto Festival USA; Boston Early Music Festival; Opera Theater Company, Dublin, Ireland; Back Society of Charleston; Savannah Philharmonic, Charleston Symphony, INseries Opera, and Mid Wales Opera. He has appeared as a soloist at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Trinity Church Wall Street, the Barbican Centre London, Washington National Cathedral, the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Royal Albert Hall. Recent and upcoming engagements include an international tour of Handel’s Solome with The English Concert, his debut with Opera Lafayette, and concerts with Folger Consort, the Washington Bach Consort, The Thirteen, and Clarion Music Society.

A versatile multi-instrumentalist, Dan Meyers is a flexible and engaging performer of both classical and folk music; his credits range from premieres of contemporary chamber music, to headlining a concert series in honor of Pete Seeger at the Newport Folk Festival, to playing Renaissance instruments on Broadway for Shakespeare’s Globe. He is a founding member of the early music/folk crossover group Seven Times Salt, and in recent seasons he has performed with the Newberry Consort, Hesperus, the Henry Purcell Society of Boston, Early Music New York, Amherst Early Music, 21st Century Consort, In Stile Moderno, and the Cambridge Revels, making concert and theatrical appearances in New York City, Washington, DC, Chicago, Minneapolis, Memphis, Santa Fe, at the Yellow Barn Summer Festival in Vermont, and at the “La Luna e i Calanchi” festival in Basilicata (Italy).

Patricia Ann Neely has appeared with many early music ensembles including the Folger Consort, Tempesta di Mare, Opera Lafayette, TENET Vocal Artists, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the New York Collegium, the Washington Bach Consort, Amor Artis, ARTEK, Glimmerglass Opera, New York City Opera, the Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Newberry Consort, the New York Consort of Viols, and Early Music New York, among others, and was a founding member of Parthenia Viol Consort. For many years she was the principal violone player for Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity. She spent three years touring with the acclaimed European-based medieval ensemble Sequentia as the medieval fiddle player, performing throughout Europe and North America, at festivals including, Festival Oude Muziek Utrecht, Bach Tage in Berlin, Tage Alter Musik in Herne, Wratislavia Cantans in Poland, Music Before 1800, and Early Music Vancouver. Ms. Neely began playing the viol at Vassar College and continued her studies, earning an MFA in Historical Performance at Sarah Lawrence College, with additional studies in Belgium with Wieland Kuijken.

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.

Cameron Welke (Lute) spends most of his time explaining to well-meaning strangers that the lute is, in fact, quite a different instrument from the flute. He brings a passionate curiosity and a deep creative drive to all manner of historical plucked instruments, which he plays with “expert technical dexterity, consummate phrasing and endearing expressivity” (Chestnut Hill Local). Past and current engagements include performances with the Washington Bach Consort, Tempesta di Mare, the Folger Consort, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Three Notch’d Road, and Hesperus. In 2022, he gave the first lute masterclasses to ever take place in the Dominican Republic through La Fundación de la Villa de Santo Domingo. He explores repertoire for two baroque lutes in Duo Silvio with duo partner Richard Stone, and is a co-founder of the early music collective Magdalena.