Chamber Music of the French Baroque

Tamara Meredith, baroque flute

Brent Wissick, viola da gamba

James Richman, harpsichord

Sunday, February 25 at 3:00 pm – Free parking and admission

Tamara Meredith has been teaching and performing professionally for over 20 years. As an early flute specialist, she is principal flute with the Dallas Bach Society orchestra and the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and frequently lectures on historical performance topics. As a “modern” flutist, she has performed with the Bozeman Symphony, Greeley Philharmonic, Wyoming Symphony, and Fort Collins Symphony. Other performing credits include work with Apollo’s Fire, Concert Royal, and the Hawaii Performing Arts Festival orchestra. In addition to her flute career, Dr. Meredith has “doubled” as a violinist/violist for most of her life. For many years, she taught beginning-intermediate violin in the Dallas area and has played in orchestras in Washington, Indiana, Texas, Montana, Colorado, and Wyoming. Most recently, she held positions as a violist with the Wyoming and Cheyenne Symphonies. Dr. Meredith holds B.Mus. in Flute Performance from Central Washington University, a M.Mus. in Historical Performance from Indiana University-Bloomington, and an MLIS and Ph.D. in Learning Technologies from the University of North Texas. She recently relocated to Poulsbo, Washington, where she is the Director of the Jefferson County Rural Library District.

Brent Wissick has taught cello, viola da gamba, and chamber music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill UNC since 1982. A member of Ensemble Chanterelle and principal cellist of the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, he is also a frequent guest with American Bach Soloists, Folger Consort, Boston Early Music Festival, Concert Royal, Dallas Bach Society, Vancouver Early Music Festival and Collegio di Musica Sacra in Poland. With these ensembles has recorded for the Centaur, Albany, Koch, Radio Bremen, Bard and Dux labels as well as in the soundtrack for the Touchstone film Casanova. His online video article, “The Cello Music of Bononcini” can be viewed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Seventeenth-Century Music and several of his teaching videos are posted on the website of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. He served as president of that society from 2000 through 2004 and chaired its international Pan-Pacific Gamba Gathering in Hawaii during the summer of 2007. In addition to teaching cello at UNC, he directs its Cello Choir, Viol Consort and Baroque Ensemble; he also teaches classes in Historical Performance Practices and String Methods for Music Education Students as well as a First-Year Seminar in the Physics of Music with Laurie McNeil, chair of the Physics Department. He has served as a mentor of the Kenan Music Scholars and is chair of the String Area. His current research and performance interests include the cello music of Benjamin Britten, Chopin’s Cello Music on period instruments and French Gamba Music. A graduate of the Crane School of Music at Potsdam College in NY and of Penn State (MM cello, 1978), he also studied with John Hsu at Cornell University and was an NEH Fellow at Harvard in the 1993 Beethoven Quartet Seminar. He has taught at the College of St Scholastica in Minnesota (1978-82), Chautauqua Institution and the 1997 Aston Magna Academy at Yale; and has presented lectures, master classes and recitals at schools, colleges and workshops throughout North America, Europe, Asia and Australia.

James Richman, Artistic Director of the Dallas Bach Society since 1995, is a prominent harpsichordist and fortepianist, as well as one of today’s leading conductors of Baroque music and opera. The first musician since Leonard Bernstein to attend Harvard, Juilliard, and the Curtis Institute of Music, James Richman studied conducting with Max Rudolf and Herbert Blomstedt, piano with Mieczyslaw Horszowski, Rosina Lhevinne and Rudolf Serkin, and harpsichord with Albert Fuller and Kenneth Gilbert. He holds a degree in the History of Science magna cum laude from Harvard College. He is a prizewinner in four international competitions for early keyboard instruments, including first prize in the Bodky Competition of the Cambridge Society of Early Music, laureate of the Bruges Harpsichord Competition and bronze medal in the Paris Harpsichord Competition of the Festival Estival and in the First International Fortepiano Competition (Paris). His Concert Royal ensemble has been in residence at St. Thomas Church on Fifth Avenue in New York since 1982, performing chamber music concerts as well as the works of Handel, Bach and Purcell with the Choir of Men and Boys at St. Thomas. He is also Artistic Director and founder of New York’s Concert Royal and Music Director of the New York Baroque Dance Company, and he recently led the Hanover Band at the Pollenca festival in Majorca.