Adam Pearl is a widely respected harpsichordist and continuo player. Currently finishing his doctorate at the Peabody Conservatory, he performs extensively in the Baltimore, Washington, and Philadelphia areas, as well as around the country, with ensembles such as Tempesta di Mare, Opera Lafayette, Barefoot Baroque, the Richmond Symphony, and Ensemble Gaudior. As Music Director for Ignoti Dei Opera, Mr. Pearl has directed performances of Venus and Adonis, Dido and Aeneas, Cavalli's La Calisto and La Didone, and Charpentier's David et Jonathas. His recent recording of Handel with Tempesta di Mare and Julianne Baird on the Chandos label will be released in early 2007. In August 2004 he won third prize at the prestigious international harpsichord competition in Brugge, Belgium.
Baroque violinist Daniel Boothe has appeared with many of America's premier Baroque ensembles including Tempesta di Mare, the Folger Consort, and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. An avid chamber musician, he concertizes regularly along the East coast and in Europe. His work in early opera has been as varied as productions of Charpentier's David et Jonathas, Handel's Clori, Tirsi, e Fileno, and Cavalli's La Calisto. He is a founder and core-member of the acclaimed Ignoti Dei Opera orchestra, often leading the ensemble. He has studied extensively with Risa Browder of the Peabody Conservatory, Stanley Ritchie of the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, and Davide Amodio of the Scuola di Musica Antica di Venezia. As a part of the 2006 Washington Early Music Festival, Daniel performed with reknowned early violinist, Robert Mealy, in Ignoti Dei Opera's New World premiere performance of Cavalli's La Didone. Most recently, Daniel performed Vivaldi's Concerto in B minor, RV 386 with the Indiana University Baroque Orchestra, having won the recent concerto competition, and appeared in the International Musica masterclass in Leuven, Belgium, performing in Antwerp and the surrounding area.
Robert Mealy has received much critical acclaim for his performances on a wide variety of historical strings. He has toured and recorded with period-instrument ensembles throughout Europe and the Americas, including the Paris-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants, the Canadian baroque orchestra Tafelmusik, and Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society. He is a member of the King's Noyse, a Renaissance violin band which appears frequently at international early music festivals and records for harmonia mundi USA, and of Louis Louis, an ensemble devoted to the rich repertoire of the French Baroque. Mr. Mealy also serves as concertmaster for The Boston Camerata, with whom he has recorded music from the twelfth through the twentieth centuries. His interest in earlier repertoires let him to co-found Fortune's Wheel, a medieval ensemble as well as perform and record with Ensemble Project Ars Nova. He is currently involved with Sequentia's ongoing project to record the works of the twelfth- century mystic Hildegard of Bingen, and recently appeared at Lincoln Center in their production of her Ordo Virtutum. Mr. Mealy is non-resident tutor of music at Harvard College, where he directs the baroque undergraduate orchestra.
Kiri Tollaksen enjoys a varied career as a performer and teacher. Equally skilled on trumpet and cornetto (a wind instrument used primarily in 17th century Western Europe), Kiri has been praised for her "stunning technique, and extreme musicality," (Journal of the International Trumpet Guild). She has performed extensively throughout North America and Europe with numerous groups such as Apollo's Fire, The Folger Consort, Piffaro, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, New York Collegium, Concerto Palatino, La Fenice, the Huelgas Ensemble, the Catacoustic Consort and Seattle Baroque Orchestra. She has performed both at the Boston Early Music Festival, and at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, and she is a regular member of the quartets La Gente d'Orfeo and Anaphantasia, both based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Kiri is currently Adjunct Lecturer in Music at the Early Music Institute at Indiana University. She also maintains a teaching studio in Ann Arbor, and has taught cornetto at the Amherst Early Music Festival. Kiri holds performing degrees in trumpet from Eastman, Yale, and a Doctorate in Musical Arts from the University of Michigan. Her discography includes recordings with the Huelgas Ensemble, Apollo's Fire, Piffaro, The New York Collegium, La Gente d'Orfeo, the River Raisin Ragtime Revue and the Dodworth Saxhorn Band.
Born in Sydney in the 1960s, Geoffrey Burgess enjoyed a diverse musical upbringing. His oboe teachers were from British and Czech schools, and his academic training fostered analysis, historical and cultural studies to nourish informed performance practice. By the age of 20 he was playing with major Australian orchestras: The Australia Chamber Orchestra, Sydney Philharmonic Society, Australian Opera and the Sydney Dance Company (in premieres of new ballet scores). He also taught himself Baroque oboe. This he was able to pursue under the supervision of Ku Ebbinge in The Hague with the assistance of a Dutch Government Scholarship. He also worked with Bruce Haynes, beginning a long-term collaboration which culminated in the publication of their book, The Oboe (Yale UP, 2004). Shortly after his arrival in Europe he received invitations from early music ensembles in the Netherlands, Belgium and France among others from the Paris-based opera copmany Les Arts Florissants with whom he was associated for over 20 years. He relocated in the US in 1990 to undertake a PhD at Cornell University, with a dissertation on French Baroque opera which took best advantage of his experiences with Les Arts Florissants. In addition to articles in The New Grove, and The Oboe, he has published numerous articles and reviews. His recording of music from the Bach family is available from Move Records (Melbourne) and contemporary works written for baroque oboes and harpsichord performed with Elaine Funaro with whom he forms Duo d'amore will be released later this year. Geoffrey has taught on the faculties of Duke University and SUNY Stony Brook. He is currently a fellow of the Five Colleges and lives in Northampton Massachusetts where his thriving garden helps to ground his global peregrinations.
Viol and lirone player Annalisa Pappano (lirone, viola da gamba; Cincinnati, Ohio) is the director of the Catacoustic Ensemble. The Catacoustic Consort recently won the 2003 Naxos / Early Music America Live Recording Competition and will record on the Naxos label in a CD to be released in early 2005. The Catacoustic Consort also is featured in the new edition of the Norton Anthology of Music. Ms. Pappano studied at Indiana University's Early Music Institute (Wendy Gillespie) and at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music (Catharina Meints). She has performed throughout Belgium and the U.S. and has appeared on nationally syndicated radio. Annalisa is a member of Baroque Northwest (Seattle), and Les Plaisirs Durables (Brussels, Belgium), and has performed with numerous other ensembles including the Houston Grand Opera, the Cleveland Opera, Opera Atelier, Cappella Artemisia with Bruce Dickey, Saints and Sinners, Camerata Pacifica Baroque, Bella Voce, and the Collegium Vocale of St. Louis. Annalisa has taught at Viola da Gamba Society of America national conclaves, the Viola da Gamba Society Pacific Northwest and Northeast chapters, the San Diego Early Music Workshop, and has been a guest lecturer on early music performance at numerous universities.
Daniel Rippe received a Maryland State Arts Council 2004 Individual Artist Award for solo instrumental performance on viola da gamba. He recently appeared as a soloist with the Richmond Symphony in J.S. Bach's St. John Passion, and with Anonymous 4 in their final Washington, D.C. area performance, Voices of Light. He is a founding member of the Ceciliana Quartet, a member of the Chesapeake Consort of Viols, has performed with the Washington Bach Sinfonia, Ensemble Gaudior, Orchestra of the 17th Century, and has contributed creative continuo performances in every major Ignoti Dei Opera production. Mr. Rippe received his Graduate Performance Diploma from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University in April of 2000, and has recorded on the Centaur and Koch labels. He is the founding editor of RipMeister Publications, adding performance editions to early music repertory, and currently collaborating with Timothy Nelson on the first printed edition of Cavalli’s opera La Didone, to be published in conjunction with Ignoti Dei Opera's U.S. premier of the work at the 2006 Washington D.C. Early Music Festival.