About — SIREN Baroque

SIREN is:

Antonia Light Nelson founded SIREN Baroque in 2011 in an effort to support women and shed light on rarely performed works by Baroque women composers. She regularly plays with The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Musica Sequenza, DiCapo Opera, Norwalk Symphony Orchestra, World Civic Orchestra (concertmaster) Morningside Opera, Glenn Falls Symphony, Birmingham Symphony, to name a few. She honed her early music practice and obsession at Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, Vancouver Early Music Festival and Amherst Early Music Festival under the tutelage of teachers Marc Destrubé and Julie Andrijeski. She received her undergraduate degree from The University of Georgia and Masters from New York University

Kelly Savage has been praised by the New York Times for her “deft accompaniment.” She is the artistic director of SIREN Baroque and is a founding member of the New York opera company Opera Feroce. Ms. Savage enjoys an active performing schedule as a continuo player and solo harpsichordist. She is an Associate Professor at Berklee College of Musicwhere she teaches ear training. Ms. Savage holds a doctorate from Stony Brook University, where she studied with Arthur Haas and holds masters degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Wisconsin—Madison. She co-created Partifi, a popular online part-making tool for musicians.

Anneke Schaul-Yoder studied with Julia Lichten and Marcy Rosen at Yale, Purchase Conservatory, and Mannes College of Music. Anneke performs in both period and modern styles at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, BAM, the 92StY, and other venues in New York and beyond. Anneke is the cellist for various chamber ensembles, including SIREN Baroque, Queens Consort, Skid Rococo, Piano Music & Song Trio, and Eudemonia; she also performs with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, BalletNext, Morningside Opera, and La Fiocco. She has recorded with the Lumineers, Jade Bird, Shawn Mendes, and members of Antibalas and Arcade Fire. She plays on a French cello from 1713 by Jacques Boquay.

Soprano, Brittany Palmer, resides in New York City where she performs as a soloist, choral soprano, and chamber music collaborator. Her performing career has included solo performances with the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, the Western New York Chamber Orchestra, Siren Baroque, and the Trinity Church at Wall Street, among many others.

Ms. Palmer was praised in the Washington Post for her performance as Maria Clara in Noli Me Tangere at the Kennedy Center and has received accolades from other reputable publications such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Ms. Palmer is also a certified and licensed speech-language pathologist.

For over a decade, soprano Brett Umlauf has brought her "pealing, focused sound" and "luminous yet earthy" (New York Times) performances to NYC troupes Morningside Opera, Company XIV, and SIREN Baroque. The Swedish Institute, American Scandinavian Society, and Swedish Women's Educational Association granted support to Umlauf’s shows about "Sweden’s Shakespeare," C.M. Bellman, with her groups Bellman om Bellman and Skid Rococo. Brett is developing Hazelnut Road: Vows of Stability, Acts of Mobility, a travel-performance project about women religious composers from 9th-c. Byzantium to 17th-c. Milan and is slated to play Lady Reason in the 2022 premiere of Kate Soper’s The Romance of the Rose.

Based in New York City, Dr. Kristina Giles (neé Hendricks) enjoys a creative and varied musical career. Trained as a classical violist, she has become known for her artistry on both the violin and viola and their baroque counterparts. She has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and China, and recorded solo improvisations on folk and country albums. She has become widely known as the first artist to record all 41 of Campagnoli's Caprices for Solo Viola, available to view on YouTube. Kristina is a member of NYC-based groups SIREN Baroque, and performs frequently with REBEL Baroque, Brooklyn Baroque, Ars Antiqua, and Dorian Baroque. She has performed with the Dallas Opera, Kansas City Symphony, and Huntsville Symphony, and played in various festivals including Aspen, Sarasota, Longy Baroque Institue and Kneisel Hall.

Violinist Claire Smith Bermingham performs on both baroque and modern violin. She is the founding director of her early music ensemble, The Queens Consort (www.queensconsort.com). Early music performances include The American Classical Orchestra,Trinity Baroque, Siren Baroque, Big Apple Baroque, Dorian Baroque, La Fiocco Baroque, Ensemble Leonarda and Vox Ama Deus. Modern work includes Astoria Symphony, Sinfonia Celestis, Greenwich Symphony, Northeastern Pennsylvania Philharmonic, Di Capo Opera, on Broadway and off-Broadway in the Lortel Award Winning revival of "Sweeney Todd.". Appearances on “Saturday Night Live,” “David Letterman” and “The View” with Sean "Puffy" Combs and Father John Misty. She is the violinist for Ritchie Blackmore’s band, “Blackmore’s Night.” Recordings including Shakira’s album, “She Wolf” and Blackmore’s Night’s “Dancer and the Moon.” Performances with Blackmore’s Night in Germany, Holland, Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, England, France, Scotland, Luxembourg and in America, and baroque orchestral performances in England, and historical performance studies at Oxford University.

Marina Fragoulis performs on both modern and historical violins, and is the artistic director of Dorian Baroque, a Queens-based early music organization that presents orchestral, chamber, and opera performances on period instruments. She has appeared with NYS Baroque, REBEL, and the Queens Consort, and is a member of SIREN Baroque, the Cecilia’s Chorus & Orchestra, Kollective366, the New England Symphonic Ensemble, and the Symphony of Westchester. Marina teaches violin at the Dalton School and is a teaching artist with Midori & Friends. She is a graduate of the Mannes College of Music where she was a student of David Nadien. More info at dorianbaroque.org