Click photo above to visit
Nigel North’s website.

Nigel North was initially inspired into music, at age 7, by the early 60’s instrumental pop group “The Shadows”. Nigel studied classical music through the violin and guitar, eventually discovering his real path in life, the lute, when he was 15. Basically self taught on the lute, he has (for over 30 years) developed a unique musical life which embraces activities as a teacher, accompanist, soloist, director and writer. Nigel also enjoys accompanying singers and is an enthusiastic teacher. For over 20 years he was Professor of Lute at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, in London; from 1993-1999 he was Professor at the Hochschule der Künste, Berlin and since January 1999 Nigel North has been Professor of Lute at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University, Bloomington in the USA.

“I remember going to a remarkable recital, one which I wish I had the ability to give: it was one of Nigel North’s Bach recitals, and I was bowled over by how masterful and how musical it was. A real musical experience, something you don’t always get from guitar and lute players and which, in general, is pretty rare.”

Julian Bream (London, 2002) in a talk given to the Lute Society
regarding a recital given by Nigel North
at London’s Wigmore Hall, 1996.

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Click photo above to visit the
Venere Lute Quartet website.

Douglas Freundlich launched his lute career in the 1970s with The Greenwood Consort, winning the Erwin Bodky Award and Musical America’s “Young Artist of the Year.” He has performed with the Boston Symphony, Boston Baroque, Swanne Alley, Capriole, Renaissonics, and others. He teaches lute at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, where he directed the Early Music Program in the 1980s. Doug has commissioned and performed many new works for the lute. He also cross-trains as a bebop bassist, catalogs music manuscripts at Harvard’s Isham Library, and teaches a popular course on music cognition at Tufts. He has recorded for the Telarc, Titanic, and Sine Qua Non labels.

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Click photo above to visit the
Yale University website

Grant Herreid has toured much of the world as a singer, lutenist, and multi-instrumentalist on early reeds and brass with the ensembles Hesperus, Piffaro, Early Music New York, the Newberry Consort, and My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort. In addition he plays theorbo and lute with the baroque ensemble ARTEK and New York City Opera.  Grant has also been a featured guest artist with such groups as the King’s Noyse, Tapestry, the Folger Consort, Brandywine Baroque, and Apollo’s Fire. Active as an educator and coach, Grant is Artistic Director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project directing its 2009 productions of Cavalli’s Giasone, and Le Tre Stagioni (a pastiche of operatic works by Handel). Grant is also co-director of the Yale Collegium Musicum, and he has also performed with the opera programs of Juilliard and the Curtis Institute. Grant devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval and early Renaissance music as a founding member of the New York-based groups Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera, and has recorded for Archiv, Dorian, Koch, Maggie’s Music, Ex Cathedra, Lyrichord, Musical Heritage Society and Newport Classics, among others.

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Christopher Morrongiello, a former British Marshall Scholar, is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music, the Royal College of Music, and the University of Oxford. In 1996 the Marco Fodella Foundation awarded him a scholarship for studies at the Scuola Civica di Musica of Milan, and in 2006 the Lute Society of America conferred upon him the first Patrick O’Brien LSA Seminar Lectureship. An expert on Elizabethan and Jacobean music, Christopher is currently preparing an edition of Daniel Bacheler’s complete works for solo lute. His musical portrait of the Elizabethan muse and songstress Penelope Devereux, created for soprano Emily Van Evera (My Lady Rich, Avie 0045), has been greeted with much critical acclaim. Christopher directs the Bacheler Consort and teaches lute and related plucked-fretted instruments in Long Island, New York.

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Click photo above to visit
Phil Rukavina’s website.

Phillip Rukavina (LSA Program Director) has performed widely as a lute and vihuela soloist, ensemble performer and as a continuo lutenist. He studied lute with Patrick O’Brien at Sarah Lawrence College and Hopkinson Smith at the Academie Musical in Villecroze, France and in Basel, Switzerland. He was the Director of the Lute Society of America’s summer program at the Amherst Early Music Festival in 2005, and regularly serves on the faculty of the Lute Society of America’s Seminars at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. He has released two solo recordings on the Alpha Omega label, including Fiori Italiani and Ala spagnola. Phillip has been a frequent guest instrumentalist with the Rose Ensemble and appears on their recent CD release, Celebremos el Niño. Phillip has performed with numerous instrumental ensembles, including the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the New World Symphony and appears on several recordings issued on the Lyrichord Discs Early Music label with the ensemble Minstrelsy!  Phillip teaches lute privately at his home in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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