Featured Performers - Harpsichord Heaven 2024
Karen Flint • Friday, April 25 at 7:30 pm
Karen Flint is the founding artistic director of Brandywine Baroque with concerts held in Wilmington and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Ms. Flint established the Dumont Concerts in 2003, a weekend festival of harpsichord recitals. Now called Harpsichord Heaven, the programs are given on her collection of antique instruments in Delaware. She studied harpsichord with Edward Parmentier and Egbert Ennulat and organ with Fenner Douglass and Paul Terry and has degrees from Oberlin Conservatory of Music and The University of Michigan. Ms. Flint is Adjunct Instructor of Harpsichord at the University of Delaware.
Downlaod Karen's program here.
Olivier Baumont • Saturday, April 26 at 8:30 pm
Considered one of the major harpsichordists of his generation, Olivier Baumont has for several decades enjoyed a rich career as a performer, teacher, and researcher. At the Conservatoire national supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, juries unanimously awarded him first prizes for harpsichord and chamber music. He benefited from the artistic guidance of Huguette Dreyfus and Kenneth Gilbert and was occasionally invited by Gustav Leonhardt to attend his interpretation classes in Cologne. Olivier Baumont has performed at in numerous countries: Germany, Austria, Belgium, Belarus, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Spain, the United States, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Russia, Slovenia, Switzerland and Turkey. In September 2019, he accepted the direction, along with Rosana Lanzelotte, of a new festival in Rio de Janiero, initiated by the French Embassy: BAROQUE IN RIO. Although he primarily performs in solo recitals, Olivier Baumont has performed with many singers and instrumentalists, including Isabelle Druet, Jean-Paul Fouchécourt, Isabelle Poulenard, Julien Chauvin, Christophe Coin, Christine Plubeau, and Hugo Reyne. He equally enjoys performing duets for four hands, two harpsichords, with many friends like Béatrice Martin and Davitt Moroney, and also with young and brilliant colleagues like Aurélien Delage, Cristiano Gaudio, Jean-Luc Ho, and Justin Taylor. Visit http://www.olivierbaumont.fr for more information
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John Phillips • Saturday, April 28 at 1:00 pm
Growing up in Southern California, John Phillips spent his youth building model trains and playing the piano and various wind instruments. He was first smitten with the harpsichord as an undergraduate at the University of California at Santa Cruz, where he built his first harpsichord from a kit in 1969. He studied harpsichord with Mark Kroll while completing a BA degree with majors in German Literature and music and later earned an MA in musicology at UC Berkeley, while continuing harpsichord studies with Laurette Goldberg and Alan Curtis and learning to build and repair the instrument on the side.
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With a commission for a complicated French double harpsichord in hand, John opened his shop in Berkeley in 1975. Over the ensuing years he has produced over one hundred and twenty new harpsichords, as well as restorations of several antiques. He still plays the harpsichord for fun.
Janine Johnson • Saturday, April 26 at 3:30 pm
Janine Johnson performs on harpsichord and early piano, is a harpsichord builder and decorator, composer, and landscape artist. As a person with with such diverse interests, it has been a lifelong challenge to find outlets for her passions.
Ms. Johnson began her musical studies on the modern piano, and as a teenager, began playing the harpsichord as well. As a piano performance major (and two dimensional art) at California State University, Northridge, she focused on piano and harpsichord, performing on both. She began building harpsichords in earnest at this time (having made her first, at age 17), and has continued as an instrument maker ever since. For the past 26 years she has been working with renowned harpsichord builder and restorer John Phillips of Berkeley http://www.jph.us/ both as a maker and decorator.
Her performing career is primarily based in the San Francisco Bay Area where she gives numerous solo and chamber music recitals, often including original works. She composes solo and chamber music for the fortepiano and harpsichord, and was second place winner this year in the International Alienor Competition for harpsichord composition.
Joel Keller • Saturday, April 26 at 2:30 pm
After obtaining a degree in harpsichord with Christian Rieger in Germany, Joel Keller moved to Paris where he is currently pursuing a master's degree in harpsichord at the Paris Conservatory (CNSMDP) in the classes of Olivier Baumont and Blandine Rannou and a master’s degree in musicology. He has attended masterclasses with Bertrand Cuiller, Pieter-Jan Belder, Jean-Luc-Ho, Pierre Hantaï, and Benjamin Alard. Concerts have taken him to the Konzerthaus Dortmund, the Salle Gaveau, the Grande Halle de la Villette, and festivals such as Orgel+ Bottrop and the Vannes Early Music Festival. In March 2024, he won the 2ndprize at the 19thGianni Gambi International Harpsichord Competition in Pesaro, Italy.
Arthur Haas • Friday, April 25 at 8:30 pm
Arthur Haas, widely known as a performer and teacher of Baroque music, studied harpsichord with Albert Fuller at Juilliard and Alan Curtis in Berkeley and Amsterdam, as well as receiving a master’s degree in Historical Musicology from the University of California, Los Angeles. Mr. Haas is Professor of Harpsichord, Early Music Performance and Continuo at Stony Brook University and teaches harpsichord at the Yale School of Music.
After receiving the top prize in the Paris International Harpsichord Competition in 1975, he continued to live in France until 1983, performing and teaching in many of the major European early music festivals.
Mr. Haas has toured with Marion Verbruggen, Jaap ter Linden, Julianne Baird, Wieland Kuijken and Bruce Haynes. He is a member of the Aulos Ensemble as well as Empire Viols and the newly formed Gold & Glitter, touring the USA and Canada. Annual summer workshop and festival appearances include the International Baroque Institute at Longy, the Virginia Baroque Performance Workshop and the Amherst Early Music Festival, where he served as artistic director of the Baroque Academy from 2002-2012.