Jos van Veldhoven was artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society for more than 35 years. Under his leadership, an impressive CD series was created, as well as concert tours in the Netherlands, Europe, the United States, and Japan. Music was not limited to Bach and his contemporaries, but also often included ‘new’ repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries.
In his programming van Veldhoven knows how to connect tradition and adventure. He is the initiator of All of Bach, an ongoing unprecedented project in which the Netherlands Bach Society performs, records and publishes all of Bach’s works online. More than 20 million followers worldwide now enjoy the widely acclaimed recordings on YouTube.
Van Veldhoven often attracts attention with performances of ‘new’ repertoire within the early music genre. There have been some remarkable performances of oratorios by Telemann and Graun, vespers by Gastoldi, reconstructions of Bach’s St Mark Passion and the Köthener Trauer-Music and many lesser known seventeenth-century oratorios and dialogues. He has also conducted a large number of modern premieres of Baroque operas by such composers as Mattheson, Keiser, Bononcini, Legrenzi, Conti, and Scarlatti. Van Veldhoven is in great demand as a guest conductor, and has conducted the Dutch Chamber Choir, Netherlands Radio Choir, Flemish Radio Choir, Beethoven Orchester Bonn, Robert Schumann Philharmonic, Essen Philharmonic Orchestra, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, and many of the Dutch symphony orchestras. Between 2001 and 2010, van Veldhoven worked with director Dietrich Hilsdorf on a cycle of staged Handel oratorios in the opera houses of Bonn and Essen.
Van Veldhoven has been associated with the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague as a teacher of choral conducting for more than 30 years.
In 2007, Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands made him a Knight in the Order of the Dutch Lion for his ground-breaking work in early music.
Destrubé enjoys a rich and varied musical life as soloist, chamber musician, teacher, and leader of orchestras, and divides his time between playing modern instruments, and performing baroque and classical music on period instruments.
He plays with the Smithsonian Institution-based Axelrod String Quartet, the Microcosmos Quartet in Vancouver, and is a member of the Turning Point Ensemble, specializing in 20th century music and new music. He has appeared in chamber music performances on the Early Music Vancouver series and summer festival and is artistic director of the annual Pacific Baroque Festival (Victoria).
A founding member of Tafelmusik (Toronto), he went on to perform with leading European ensembles, including Anima Eterna (Belgium), the Academy of Ancient Music and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.
As a concertmaster he has played under Simon Rattle, Roger Norrington, Kent Nagano, Helmuth Rilling, Christopher Hogwood, Philippe Herreweghe, Gustav Leonhardt and Frans Brüggen. As co-concertmaster of Brüggen’s renowned Orchestra of the 18th Century for over two decades, he toured the major concert halls and festivals of Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, as well as leading numerous performances and recordings.
A much-loved teacher, he has been a visiting artist/faculty at the Paris, Moscow and Utrecht Conservatoires, Indiana University, Case Western University, Australian National University, Sydney Conservatorium, San Francisco Conservatory, DePaul University, the MacPhail School, the Banff Centre and the University of Victoria, and has presented children’s concerts at the Cité de la Musique (Paris).
His teachers included two eminent string quartet leaders of the past century, Sandor Végh (Végh Quartet), and Norbert Brainin (Amadeus Quartet).
Augusta McKay Lodge is a historically informed violinist, globally established at a young age as leader, chamber musician, and soloist. McKay Lodge has appeared as soloist with Voices of Music, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, The American Classical Orchestra, Juilliard415, Jupiter Ensemble, Les Arts Florissants, and more. McKay Lodge regularly performs as concertmaster with Les Arts Florissants, Les Musiciens de Saint-Julien, La Chapelle Harmonique, and others. She has appeared as guest concertmaster for Opera Fuoco, The American Classical Orchestra and the Irish Baroque Orchestra, and has guest directed the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra Chamber Players as a substitute for Richard Egarr. McKay Lodge’s solo discography includes Beyond Bach and Vivaldi (Naxos), Corelli’s Band (Naxos), and a disc with her sister (violist) Georgina McKay Lodge, J.G. Graun: Chamber Music from the Court of Frederick the Great (Brilliant Classics). McKay Lodge performs on a Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume (1867) and a baroque-copy Jason Viseltear (2014).
Grammy-nominated cellist and gambist William Skeen performs as Principal Cellist with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and American Bach Soloists. He has served as Principal Cellist with Musica Angelica (Los Angeles), Portland Baroque Orchestra, Pacific MusicWorks, and Bach Collegium San Diego. William has also appeared as continuo cellist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, San Diego Opera, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. In addition, William has soloed on the viola da gamba with the Dallas Symphony, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Carmel Bach Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, Musica Angelica, Orquestra Nacional de Mexico, and the American Bach Soloists. He is co-founder of the New Esterházy Quartet, whose repertoire includes over 150 string quartets performed exclusively on gut strings. With NEQ, William co-founded the San Francisco Early Music Society’s Classical Workshop in 2012. He has served on the faculty on the University of Southern California since 2000. William currently tours and records with Smithsonian Chamber Players, Musica Pacifica, El Mundo, and Agave Baroque. He is represented on over 80 audio recordings and 30 video recordings.
Debra Nagy, oboe, is recognized as “a baroque oboist of consummate taste and expressivity” (Plain Dealer). As Artistic Director of Les Délices, she has acquired a reputation for creating concert experiences that “can’t help but getting one listening and thinking in fresh ways”(San Francisco Classical Voice), and she plays principal oboe with the Handel & Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire, Boston Early Music Festival, and other ensembles around the country. Recent creative initiatives with Les Délices have included a three-year commissioning project expanding the repertoire of mythological cantatas, Vivaldi’s Seasons reimagined with wind instruments, multimedia productions of Machaut’s medieval masterpiece Remede de Fortune, an acclaimed CD combining jazz and French Baroque airs called Songs without Words, and The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera with puppetry and projections based on Marie Catherine d’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale. In addition to recording over 40 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800, Debra was awarded a 2022 Cleveland Arts Prize (Mid-Career Artist) and honored with the 2022 Laurette Goldberg Prize from Early Music America for her work on Les Délices’ acclaimed web series and podcast SalonEra. When not rehearsing, performing, or dreaming up new projects, Debra can be found cooking up a storm in her kitchen or commuting by bike from her home in Cleveland’s historic Ohio City neighborhood.
Kris Kwapis regularly collaborates as soloist and principal trumpet with period-instrument ensembles across North America, including Portland Baroque Orchestra, Early Music Vancouver, Pacific MusicWorks, Bach Collegium San Diego, Staunton Music Festival, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Montana Early Music Festival, and performing with Oregon Bach Festival since 2014. A student of Armando Ghitalla on modern trumpet, with a BM and MM in trumpet performance from the University of Michigan, Dr. Kwapis also holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in historical performance from Stony Brook University.
Her playing is heard on Kleos, Naxos, ReZound, Lyrichord, Musica Omnia and Dorian labels, including the 2013 GRAMMY nominated recording of Handel’s Israel in Egypt, and broadcast on CBC, WNYC, WQED (Pittsburgh), Portland All-Classical (KQAC), Sunday Baroque and Wisconsin Public Radio, as well as a soon to be released album of 17th century music with Agave Baroque.
Kris enjoys sharing her passion of exploring historical performance with the next generation of performers and teachers as a faculty member at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music Historical Performance Institute since 2010 in addition to teaching at her home in Seattle and online. When not playing, writing, speaking or thinking about music, she is active as a visual artist in the encaustic medium, an avid cook, and home remodeler. www.kriskwapis.com
Peter Sykes, “a formidable organist who plays with artistry, subtlety, and insight,” is one of the most distinguished and versatile keyboard artists performing today. His live performances have been called “compelling and moving,” “magnificent and revelatory,” and “bold, imaginative, and amazingly accurate” – his ten CDs of music for organ, harpsichord and clavichord ranging from Buxtehude to Couperin, Bach (complete Leipzig Chorales and harpsichord Partitas), Reger, and Hindemith to his groundbreaking transcription for organ of Holst’s “The Planets,” have been called “satisfying and persuasive,” “hauntingly beautiful,” and “simply stunning.” He is a core faculty member and principal instructor of harpsichord in the Historical Performance Department of the Juilliard School in New York City, and an adjunct professor at Boston University, teaching harpsichord and organ performance. For thirty-seven years he was a member of Boston Baroque, with whom he participated in all of their recordings, concerts, and tours; he also appears on recordings made by the Boston Early Music Festival (Lully’s Thesée and Psyché) and Aston Magna (Handel’s The Triumph of Time and Truth, Bach’s Art of Fugue and Musical Offering, Monteverdi’s Orfeo). He has been Music Director at First Church in Cambridge since 1986. He holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and Concordia University in Montreal, and has taught at the University of Michigan (2022-24), the New England Conservatory (1996-2003), and the Longy School of Music (1984-2013). He often performs and teaches in Europe and has been a judge in numerous harpsichord and organ playing competitions. A founding board member and current president of the Boston Clavichord Society, a member of the board of the Cambridge Society for Early Music and Early Music America, as well as past president of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies, he is the recipient of the Chadwick Medal and Outstanding Alumni Award from the New England Conservatory, the Erwin Bodky Prize, and the Distinguished Artist Award from the St. Botolph Club Foundation, a major gift awarded annually to an artist who has demonstrated outstanding talent and an exceptional diversity of accomplishment. Previous recipients include painter Edward Hopper, poets Elizabeth Bishop and Stanley Kunitz, sculptor Alexander Calder, and writers George V. Higgins, Annie Dillard, and Sissela Bok; the award letter characterized him as “one of the major musical intellects and imaginations of our time.”