The Hamilton Classical Connection concert series opens on Saturday, October 4, at 8 p.m. at Wellin Hall in the Schambach Center for Music and the Performing Arts with a performance by Piffaro, the Renaissance Band.
World-renowned for its highly polished, energetic and richly varied performances, Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, a Philadelphia based ensemble, has delighted audiences throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and South America.
Piffaro specializes in the rich, varied repertoire of the Medieval, Renaissance and early Baroque periods (1400 to 1625) using colorful combinations of early wind and stringed instruments. Modeled after the official civic, chapel and court wind bands that were the premier professional ensembles from the 14th to the 18th centuries, Piffaro also plays the instruments and music of rustic life and the peasantry, frequently combining the two milieus to dramatic effect. The ensemble's ever expanding collection of shawms, sacbuts, recorders, flutes, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, hurdy gurdies and a variety of percussion, are careful reconstructions of instruments from the period.
Under the direction of Joan Kimball and Robert Wiemken, Piffaro produces its own concert series in Philadelphia with three or four programs per year, bringing to their series some of the finest talents in early music performance as their guests. Excerpts from these concerts are regularly broadcast nationwide on National Public Radio's Performance Today. Piffaro has performed on many of the major early music series in the country including Music Before 1800 and The Cloisters Concerts in New York City, the Seattle Early Music Guild, the San Francisco Early Music Society, the Concert Society at Maryland, Milwaukee's Early Music Now, and the Pittsburgh Renaissance & Baroque Society.
Members of Piffaro include: Adam Gilbert, Rotem Gilbert, Grant Herreid, Greg Ingles, Joan Kimball, Robert Wiemken, and Tom Zajac. Adam Gilbert, who has been with Piffaro since 1989, grew up in Columbia, S. C., where he began playing recorder at the age of eight. After several years of "Go Tell Aunt Rhodie" he discovered early music at a concert of the University of South Carolina Collegium Musicum. He was the first graduate of the Early Music program at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, where he performed as a member of New York's Ensemble for Early Music and the Waverly Consort.
Rotem Gilbert is a native of Haifa, Israel. She began her professional career in New York City while still a student at the Mannes College of Music. She holds a solo diploma in recorder from the Scuola Civica di Musica of Milan where she studied with Pedro Memelsdorff. Originally a trumpet player from Portland, Grant Herreid is now a versatile musician/director/teacher on the early music scene. As a multi-instrumentalist and singer he performs frequently on winds, strings and voice with Hesperus and Piffaro, and he plays the orbo and lute with New York City Opera and the baroque ensemble Artek. He teaches at Mannes College of Music and directs the New York Continuo Collective.
Greg Ingles received his bachelor of music degree from Oberlin Conservatory. Immediately following Oberlin, Greg held the position of solo trombone with the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany. Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, turned to early music performance full time after a number of years as an educator. Since education is still one of her passions, Joan teaches recorder and early winds mostly to children, guaranteeing a new generation of early music performers. She is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private students and coaches recorder ensembles as well as a newly formed Renaissance bagpipe band.
Robert Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on the double reed instruments of the Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance and early Baroque dulcian, or curtal, and the Baroque bassoon. He is currently co-director of Piffaro, and also directs the early music ensembles at Temple University's Esther Boyer College of Music. Tom Zajac specializes in late-medieval and Renaissance music, and has been praised by critics both here and abroad for his exceptional versatility, performing fluently on a variety of early instruments.
Tickets for this performance of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, and $5 for students. All seating is general admission. For tickets or more information, call the Performing Arts Box Office at 859-4331.
