The Robin Hood Project featuring Hesperus
Sunday, April 29, 2007 at 2:00 PM
Music Center at Strathmore

HESPERUS
Tina Chancey, viola da gamba, vielle, fiddle, recorder
Grant Herreid, lute, early guitar, recorder, pipe and tabor, cornetto, shawm, tenor voice
Kathryn Montoya, recorders, shawm, sordoune
Nell Snaidas, soprano voice, early guitar

TINA CHANCEY, a founding member and Director of HESPERUS, is also a former member of the rock band Blackmore’s Night, the Folger Consort, the Ensemble for Early Music and the New York Renaissance Band. A multi-instrumentalist specializing in early bowed strings, she has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts to support debut performances on the pardessus de viole at the Kennedy Center and Weil Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall. She has performed with Ex Umbris, La Rondinella, Terra Nova Consort, and QUOG. Dr. Chancey received her PhD in Musicology from the Union Institute. Her articles on early music appear in scholarly and popular publications (particularly in Early Music America Magazine for which she is book review editor) and she has recorded for a score of labels from Arabesque to Windham Hill. She directs “What’s That Note, Inc.,” teaching musical skills, and also works as a recording producer.

GRANT HERREID is a multi-instrumentalist and singer who performs frequently on winds, strings and voice with Hesperus and Piffaro, and plays theorbo and lute with the baroque ensemble Artek. He also teaches at Mannes College of Music and directs the New York Continuo Collective. Grant has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, including 'Il Caffe d'Amore',a pastiche of early 17th century Italian songs and arias. For the Amherst Early Music Festival he has created and directed a number of productions, featuring German alchemy, English gypsies, French fools, Italian zanies, and Death. But mostly he devotes his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early Renaissance music with the group Ex Umbris.

KATHRYN MONTOYA has performed with many ensembles, including Apollo's Fire, The Newberry Consort, Ensemble Arion, the Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Opera Theatre, the Washington Bach Consort and tours internationally with the Celtic group Ensemble Galilei. She is a recipient of the prestigious Performers Certificate at Indiana University and was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study in Germany. Kathryn was a finalist in the American Bach Soloist Competition and has appeared as a soloist with the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. This past summer she performed with the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra in the world premiere of Johann Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow and was on faculty at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute. Kathryn has recorded for the Naxos label.

NELL SNAIDAS began her professional career while still a student at the Mannes College of Music singing leading roles in zarzuelas at NYC’s Repertorio Español; specialization in Italian and Spanish Baroque music has since taken her all over Europe and North America. Recent projects include her Los Angeles Philharmonic debut in John Adams' "Grand Pianola Music", creating the role of "Olga" in the world premiere of the Baroque opera Boris Goudenow at the Cutler Majestic Theater in Boston and at Tanglewood, a North American Tour of “Le Canterine Romane” with Tragicomedia and a tour of Mexico with her own all-female Baroque/New Music ensemble, RECONSTRUCTION. Nell starred internationally as “Christine” in The Phantom of the Opera, was a featured soloist in the concert version of the musical HAIR on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theater and can be heard in Mel Brooks’ major-motion picture musical, The Producers. Ms. Snaidas has recorded for Dorian with Ex Umbris, Koch, Sefarad, Classical Recordings London and Naxos with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra. Her voice is also heard, with Hesperus, on the Emmy Nominated soundtrack of the film "Patrick" on the Hallmark channel.

Innovative, historically-informed and multi-cultural, HESPERUS performs a variety of programs designed to bring musical history alive including silent movie soundtracks of early music, musical portraits of a single culture through time, fusions of European early music with American traditional styles, and single-genre early music programs from medieval to Spanish and British Colonial music. Whatever the genre, HESPERUS performs with creative energy, technical assurance and a sense of fun.
Founded by the late Scott Reiss and his wife, Tina Chancey, HESPERUS has appeared throughout the US, Southeast Asia, Latin America and Europe, most recently at Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Lincoln Center, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Cloisters, as well as at festivals in Italy, Germany, Indonesia and Bolivia. The ensemble can be heard in three recent Hallmark Channel specials (including the Emmy-nominated Patrick: Patron Saint of Ireland), the film Sleepy Hollow, and on fifteen recordings on the Koch International, Dorian, and Maggie’s Music labels.
HESPERUS is currently an ensemble-in-residence in Arlington County, VA, and maintains an active schedule of local concerts, as well as national and international touring. For more about HESPERUS, visit www.hesperus.org.