Early string specialist Dongmyung Ahn is a performer, educator, and scholar whose interests span from the twelfth to eighteenth centuries. She studied with Stanley Ritchie at Indiana University where she received her B.M. with high distinction and her M.M. in Early Music. Dongmyung is co-founder of Guido’s Ear and performs regularly with the Sebastians, TENET Vocal Artists, Raritan Players, and Pegasus. She has played rebec in the critically acclaimed production of The Play of Daniel at the Cloisters. A dedicated educator, Dongmyung is the director of the Queens College Baroque Ensemble and has taught music history at Queens College, Rutgers University, and Vassar College. She received her Ph.D. in musicology at the Graduate Center, CUNY and has published an article on medieval liturgy in the Rodopi series Faux Titre. For younger audiences, Dongmyung recently wrote a children’s book Eggy Goes to Venice, a story about her niece’s tip to Venice to hear the Monteverdi Vespers (www.tenet.nyc). Ahn plays a violin by Karl Dennis (2012) after Nicolo Amati.
Musicologist and historical keyboardist Rebecca Cypess is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University. She holds a Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in music history from Yale University, an M.Mus. in harpsichord from the Royal College of Music (London), an M.A. in Jewish Studies from Yeshiva University, and a B.A. from Cornell University in music. A specialist in the history, performance practices, and meanings of music in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, she is the author of Curious and Modern Inventions: Instrumental Music as Discovery in Galileo’s Italy (University of Chicago Press, 2016), co-editor of Sara Levy’s World: Gender, Judaism, and the Bach Tradition in Enlightenment Berlin (University of Rochester Press, 2018), and author of over 30 articles and book chapters. Her forthcoming book, Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment, will be published by the University of Chicago Press. She has presented recitals and lecture-recitals stemming from her research and teaching at major conferences and concert series, collaborating with artists including Julianne Baird, Marguerite Krull, and Christa Patton. Cypess founded the Raritan Players to explore little known performance practices and repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, with special emphasis on musical practices of women. She was the 2018 recipient of the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for contributions to historical performance.
Soprano Sonya Headlam is active as a soloist, chamber musician, and choral singer of a diverse range of repertoire from the Baroque era to the 21st century. She is a member of the GRAMMY®- nominated Choir of Trinity Wall Street; Vocalis, a group of musicians devoted to sharing their passion for art song; and the Raritan Players. Recent performances include the role of Fiordiligi in Mozart’s Così fan tutte with Light Opera of New Jersey, and appearances as soprano soloist in Handel’s Messiah with Trinity Wall Street, Beethoven’s Mass in C with Downtown Voices, Ellen Reid’s Dreams of the New World in the Prototype Festival 2018, and a short opera film created during the COVID-19 pandemic, How They Broke Away with music and film direction by Andy Teirstein and words by Carl Sandburg. Sonya is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at the Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University where she has also worked as a Part-Time Lecturer in the Department of Music.
Eve Miller is a freelance musician, recording artist, composer, and music educator. She received her bachelor’s degree in cello performance from the Peabody Conservatory of Music and a master’s degree in Music History from Temple University, studying cello with David Teie, Stephen Kates and Jeffrey Solow, and baroque cello and viola da gamba with Ann Marie Morgan. Eve is currently principal cellist of Philadelphia’s Bach Collegium and is a member of the city’s leading baroque orchestra, Tempesta di Mare, having formerly served as its principal cellist. As a member of La Rocinante baroque ensemble, she helped to found Festival Internacional de Música Barroca de Barichara in Colombia. Eve has also performed, recorded, and toured as a rock cellist in bands such as Rachel’s, Matt Pond PA, and Lewis & Clarke. She has recorded and performed as a guest artist with The Swivel Chairs, Trolleyvox, Mazarin, Mission of Burma, Low, Arcwelder, Rosu Lup, and Swearing at Motorists, and frequently performs as a session cellist for rock and alternative artists. Eve composes music for film and theater, notably for the American Friends Service Committee’s 90th anniversary documentary Spirited Engagement, and has collaborated with the SITI Company of New York on several theater pieces. Miller plays a cello of Bohemian origin ca. 1707 with a false Italian label reading “Thomas Balestrieri Cremonensis Mantua.”
Steven Zohn performs on historical flutes with many ensembles in the eastern United States, holding principal positions with the Philadelphia Bach Collegium and NYS Baroque. From 1995 to 2004 he served as founding Artistic Director of the period-instrument orchestra Publick Musick, and currently co-directs Night Music, a period-instrument ensemble devoted to music of the Revolutionary era (roughly 1760 to 1850). Among his latest recordings are a world premiere of Telemann’s moral cantatas with soprano Julianne Baird, chamber music from Sara Levy’s Berlin salon with the Raritan Players, orchestral music by Telemann with Tempesta di Mare, and works by Haydn, Kraus, and Dittersdorf with Night Music. He has taught for The Juilliard School’s graduate program in historical performance and for Amherst Early Music, and his contributions to the study and performance of early music was recognized by the American Musicological Society with its Noah Greenberg Award. As a musicologist, Steven specializes in the music of Telemann and the Bach family, and is Laura H. Carnell Professor of Music History at Temple University. Zohn can be heard here on a flute by Martin Werner after Carlo Palanca (Turin, ca. 1760).
Founded by Rebecca Cypess, the Raritan Players explore little-known repertoire and performance practices of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries based on new musicological research, especially on the music and musical environments cultivated by women. The group’s first recording, In Sara Levy’s Salon (Acis, 2017), has garnered praise as “simply mesmerizing” (Early Music America) and “a fascinating concept, brilliantly realised” (Classical Music, 5 stars). The recording Sisters, Face to Face: The Bach Legacy in Women’s Hands (Acis, 2019), a program of fortepiano–harpsichord duos, has been called “an enchanting disc” (Classics Today) and an “unexpected treasure. . . . This album could be better only if they could find a way to scent it with freshly-baked cookies” (American Record Guide). The Raritan Players have been recipients of grants from Chamber Music America, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the American Philosophical Society. See www.raritanplayers.org for more information.