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Orange County
Recorder Society
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Conductors' Biographies

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Tom Axworthy

Mr. Axworthy currently teaches the Collegium Musicum and Recorder Workshop for Rio Hondo College and has directed the Collegium for the Claremont Graduate School. He teaches regularly for the early music workshops presented by the San Diego Early Music Society, the Southern California Recorder Society, the San Francisco Early Music Society and the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (ISOMATA). He directs his own annual SCEMC Workshop in Renaissance Reed Instruments and is co-director for the Canto Antiguo Workshop in Early Music and Dance .

Mr. Axworthy is the founder-director of the Southern California Early Music Consort and a member of the Renaissance Players, Harmonia Baroque and is a co-founder of Canto Antiguo. He also directs several other chamber ensembles in a wide range of musical styles. Mr. Axworthy has appeared as a recorder/shawm soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as an oboe soloist with many local orchestras. He records for the Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Dargason and Word Records. His early instruments and the SCEMC have been heard in numerous film and TV soundtracks.

Janet Beazley

Originally from Bakersfield but now living in San Juan Capistrano, California, Janet Beazley is an accomplished performer on recorders and historical flutes, as well as a songwriter, singer, and banjo player.   On historical winds she performs with the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, Los Angeles Musica Viva, Les Folies, and with her own early music/roots fusion group, Accenti.   Dr. Beazley received a Doctorate in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California and now teaches there as an instructor of recorders and historical flutes, and as a lecturer on early music performance practices.   She is the Director of the Collegium Musicum at the University of California at Riverside and also teaches recorder and flute at Claremont Graduate University.   As a banjoist, vocalist and songwriter, Janet is a member of the renowned band Chris Stuart & Backcountry.   She has taught at bluegrass workshops throughout the United States, Canada and the UK, and her solo bluegrass/Americana album, 5 South, was released last summer.    www.backcountrymusic.com

Ricardo Berón

Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, Ricardo Berón was a registered nurse for over ten years before moving to Los Angeles. He holds a degree in music from Los Angeles Valley College where he was the recipient of the Arts Council Showcase Award for Instrumental Music for 2003-2004 and a finalist for 2004-2005. He is a former student of Lia Levin and is currently a player with the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra (LARO) conducted by Tom Axworthy.

Marika Frankl

Marika Frankl graduated from the Budapest Conservatory of Music with a major in voice and a minor in piano.  She studied recorder with Betty Zuehlke and Anne Young and took numerous master classes with Marion Verbrueggen and Eva Legene.  She founded the Harmonia Baroque Players in 1984.  Besides performing with the ensemble, Marika also teaches recorder privately.

 

 

Inga Funck

Ms. Funck was born in Hamburg, Germany, where she grew up in a musical family and played recorder from early childhood.  She studied historical recorders and flutes with Peter Holtslag at the Hochschule fur Music und Theater in Hamburg, and participated in many workshops throughout Europe.

She has been featured in solo performances and period instrument ensembles in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, and the Netherlands. After coming to Los Angeles on scholarship to begin her graduate studies at U.S.C., she was awarded a teaching assistantship in music history and completed her Master's degree in Early Music Performance.

She is an adjunct faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts, concertizes with Musica Angelica, L.A. Baroque Orchestra, L.A. Musica Viva, Southwest Chamber Music Society, and L.A. Chamber Orchestra, and can be heard on recordings with the Ensemble de Medici.

Adam Gilbert

Adam Gilbert is director of the Early Music Program at the USC Thornton School of Music. He teaches music history, performs on recorder and historical double reeds,  and is one of the premiere international players of the Renaissance shawm.  He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina.  The first graduate of the Early Music program at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, he has performed as a member of New York's Ensemble for Early Music, the Waverly Consort and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band.  He has appeared with ensembles such as Calliope, ARTEK, New York Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble. The Court Dance Company of New York, the Folger Consort, Concert Royal, The Bach Ensemble, Chatham Baroque, Newberry Consort, Canto (Colombia) and La Caccia Alta (Belgium) among others.  He is also a founding member of ensemble Ciaramella, which performs concerts of fifteenth-century music in The United States, Israel and Belgium, and has recorded on the Naxos label.  Adam studied recorder at Rotterdam's Conservatorium and studied in Leuven, Belgium from 1998 to 2000 as a recipient of the Fulbright and Belgian American Education Foundation Grants working on his dissertation "Elaboration in Heinrich Isaac's Three-Voice Mass Sections and Untexted Compositions."  He completed his PhD at Case Western Reserve University in 2003, and taught for two years as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University.  Adam can be heard on Dorian, Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana and Lyrichord labels.  His research specialties include allusion in fifteenth-century song and Mass, pastourelles and their symbolism, improvisation, compositional processes and embellishment from 1400-1700.  Adam won the prestigious Noah Greenberg Award in 2008 for his proposed book and multimedia resource on 15th-century counterpoint and improvisation.

Rotem Gilbert

Rotem Gilbert is a gifted recorder player and a founding member of Ciaramella. She is also a memeber of Piffaro and has appeared with ARTEK, Fala Musica (Netherlands), La Caccia Alta (Belgium), Chatham Baroque, Pittsburgh Camerata, King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, Capilla Flamenca, Pittsburgh Opera and the LA Opera. Rotem can be heard on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana, Dorian and Naxos labels. She currently teaches Baroque and Renaissance performance practice courses at USC Thornton School of Music.

Richard Glenn

Richard Glenn has specialized in teaching and performing on plucked instruments (guitar, lute and cittern) for many years. He received his BM and MM degrees in Music from the University of Redlands. He has taught at UC, Irvine and UC, Riverside, and currently teaches at Orange Coast College and Concordia University. He performs regularly with the early music groups Harmonia Baroque Players and Musica Fortuna.

Stephan Haas

Stephan Haas is a recorder player, located in Los Angeles.  In 1987, he was awarded the first prize in the All Japan Recorder Competition, and has been teaching and performing internationally throughout Europe, Japan and the United States.  His musical interests span from early Italian composers to modern writers for the instrument.  He is currently a member of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Southern California, where he also teaches physics and astronomy. 

Dieneke Kalsbeek

Dieneke studied recorder at the Conservatory of Music in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with Marion Verbruggen and Heiko ter Schegget.  She finished her studies with the “performing Musician” exam.  After teaching recorder at different music schools in the Netherlands and Germany, she moved to Germany and taught recorder for ten years at the music school of Buende in North Rhine-Westphalia.  She performed with several ancient music chamber ensembles and baroque orchestras throughout Europe. In April 2006, she moved to the United States, where she married and became the mother of Sarah.  Dieneke is a member of the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra and was its featured soloist in September, 2006.

Lee Lassetter

Lee Lassetter, a member of OCRS, is a multi-talented, multi-faceted musician.  She is organist at Manhattan Beach Community Church, and has accompanied the Senior Choir there on three European concert tours.  Her work with older adults is in the North Orange County Community College District, where she teaches a Tonechime Choir and a Senior Chorus.  She teaches individual piano lessons.  She sings in the Camerata Singers of Long Beach and serves as its Administrative Coordinator.  Lee is in her second season as a member of the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra, where she plays second soprano.  She says it is always great fun and a real pleasure to conduct OCRS meetings!

Jody Pike

Jody Pike was a music history major at Stanford, got an MA at Occidental where she studied conducting with Howard Swan, and also studied conducting with Daniel Moe. She has taught choral music in high school and directed singing groups -- both mixed and women's voices. She began playing the recorder with Anne Young as her teacher, and became interested in the field of Early Music through attending workshops at Dominican College. Since then she has studied recorder primarily with Gloria Ramsey.

Beginning in 1990 she has taken choral groups to Europe, to study and to sing early music in the venues in which it was originally performed. (Members of OCRS have traveled to Spain and Siena on similar recorder workshops.)

Since 1992 she has directed Vox Feminae, a women's group that performs early music in the schools. It is an educational program of the history of music, beginning with chant through the early Renaissance, and it is performed with costumes, early instruments, and dance.

David Schnell

David sings Bass in the Los Angeles Opera Chorus and for over 25 years sang with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He holds advanced degrees in conducting and in musicology from the University of Southern California. For five seasons he was the Principal Guest Conductor of the Alaska Chamber Symphony and Chorus, and has conducted ensembles in Arizona, Florida and Washington D.C. A musician for over 30 years in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, David is retired from the post of Director of Music, Organist-Choirmaster at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in Los Angeles.

Ken Sherman

Mr. Sherman has more than fifty years of musical experience.  Starting on the clarinet, he later added the saxophone, oboe, bassoon, flute, and recorder.  Ken is a past president of the Southern California Recorder Society and for years directed their annual workshop. He is a freelance musician, directs and plays in several music groups, and also teaches privately.

Paul Sherman

Dr. Paul J. ShermanSouthern is California’s leading baroque oboist.  Paul is a graduate of CalArts and is holds a doctorate from USC’s Thornton School of Music.  While many of us know him as the baroque oboist for Harmonia Baroque Players, he also plays baroque oboe in the newly-formed ensemble Jealous Nightingale Baroque, and appears as a soloist with Musica Angelica and the Corona Del Mar Baroque Orchestra.  Later this year he will appear with Santa Fe Pro Musica.  Paul is executive director of the contemporary music group ensembleGREEN, which will be premiering nine commissions this season. 

In the jazz idiom he has performed and recorded with the Dutz Quintet, GO organic orchestra, the Vinny Gollia Large Ensemble, and Yusef Lateef.  On modern oboe, he performs with many orchestras on the west coast.  He teaches at USC, College of the Canyons, Glendale City College, Pasadena Conservatory of Music, Citrus Community College and the California Institute of the Arts.  He is also conductor and associate music director of the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Orchestra.

Learn about our previous conductors

Webmaster: Carol Jacoby
Last Updated: 9/24/09