ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Malina Rauschenfels, voice & violin

Juilliard-educated Malina Rauschenfels is a vocalist, cellist and baroque violinist. Praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “spellbinding” and for her “powerful clarion tones and crisp articulation,” she has also been commended by Cleveland Classical: “Her ability to turn notation on a page into fully realized human emotion was a feat of the imagination.” Equally comfortable with early music and contemporary music, she has been featured in recordings with The Newberry Consort, Duo Mignarda, Quire Cleveland, Marble Sanctuary Choir and Toby Twining Music. Additionally, she performs with El Fuego Early Music Ensemble, Crescendo, and Trinity Chamber Singers, and recently won the Waterloo Region Contemporary Music Sessions’ Contemporary Performance Prize for performing two pieces for singing cellist. In the last year she has mentored emerging musicians and performed at WRCMS in Waterloo, Canada and Escuela Superior de Artes de Yucatán in Mérida, Mexico. While completing her Master’s in Cello Performance at Juilliard, Malina performed Davidovsky’s Divertimento for Cello and Orchestra with the Juilliard Orchestra under Reinbert de Leeuw and also played a solo recital in Carnegie’s Weill Hall. She majored in Composition and Cello at Eastman School of Music. Malina loves to work in interdisciplinary contexts, incorporating gesture and theatricality into musical performance and working with creators in different art areas. Connecting all work to present day situations, and her life in particular, is of the utmost importance to make the performance come alive for the audience. malinarauschenfels.com

Paula Maust, harpsichord

Praised as “a refined and elegant performer” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer, harpsichordist and organist Dr. Paula Maust performs extensively as a soloist and chamber musician across North America. She is a co-director of both Burning River Baroque and Musica Spira and is dedicated to edgy concert programming that connects baroque music to current social issues such as the #MeToo movement, women’s empowerment, and climate change. Other recent collaborations include performances with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Tempesta di Mare, the Washington Bach Consort, Modern Musick, the Handel Choir of Baltimore, Third Practice, and the Folger Consort. An advocate for conducting dramatic early modern works from the keyboard, she is also working on a project to present twenty-first century recreations of baroque operas that have not been performed since their premieres. Paula has been a faculty member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County since 2016 where she teaches harpsichord, organ, music theory, keyboard skills, and music history courses. She also teaches music theory and aural skills at the Johns Hopkins University. Paula recently completed a doctorate degree in harpsichord at Peabody, where she was the recipient of the Dean’s DMA fellowship. Committed to both performance and scholarship, her primary research areas include the reception history of 17th-century female professional musicians and early modern society’s fascination with unconventional women. She recently presented “Turning the Madwoman Upside Down” at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society and “The Ugly Virtuosa” at UMBC and the George Peabody Library. More info can be found at www.paulamaust.com. 

Kristine Caswelch, soprano

Soprano Kristine Caswelch is a local Cleveland musician who has been creating a name for herself as a soloist and ensemble singer within the early and contemporary music scenes. Interested in using performance as a tool to have conversations around gender and race, 

Kristine took part in a recent collaboration with local tenor Matt Jones to create a program for Cleveland’s ‘Big Reads’, composed of predominantly African American female composers as a response Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. 

During the summer Kristine has regularly participated in the WCC Summer Choral Festival, and has been a featured soprano soloist. Recent summer programs have included the Ensemble Singing Intensive at the Amherst Early Music Festival. In 2015 Kristine walked El Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a 500-mile pilgrimage across northern Spain, where she shared her love of music with fellow pilgrims and locals by singing in the various churches and cathedrals. From 2016-2018 Kristine served as the founding Artistic Director of Cleveland Transgender Choir, the first group of its kind in the area. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Music and Art at Trinity Cathedral.

William Marshall, baritone

Known for his full and lyric baritone, William Marshall is passionate about the study and vocal performance of Renaissance and Baroque repertoires. In addition to acting as a specialist in the field of early music, he also performs traditional operatic and art song repertoire. His recent career highlights include the Bach Vocal Competition for American Singers as part of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem Bach Festival, Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival with The Baltimore Bach Ensemble, and the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco. William has portrayed opera roles such as Belcore

in L’elisir d’amore, Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, and Papageno in The Magic Flute. On the concert stage he has been a featured soloist for Bach’s Mass in b minor, Handel’s Messiah, Mozart’s Requiem, and Orff’s Carmina Burana among others.

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William Marshall holds a Master of Music degree in Historical Performance from the Peabody Conservatory and Bachelors degree in Music Education from Rowan University.

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www.williammarshallbaritone.com

Sarah Elizabeth Cranor, violin

Violinist Sarah Elizabeth Cranor is passionate about the freedom of sonic possibilities found in both historical and contemporary music. She currently directs Tonos del Sur at Indiana University, which explores the intersection of European music with the colonization of the New World, and is acting Concertmaster and Principal Second Violin with the Midland-Odessa Symphony & Chorale.  Sarah recently recorded for NAXOS with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, was co-director for a production of La Púrpura de la Rosa with Nell Snaidas, and recorded the premiere of Kurt Vonnegut’s Requiem with Voces Novae. Recent and upcoming collaborations include Tono del Sur at the Berkeley Early Music Festival, a recital of music of Clara Schumann with Byron Schenkman, the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, Burning River Baroque, the Zenith Ensemble, Sphere Ensemble, a Midwest tour of the St. Matthew Passion with the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra and Valaparasio University, the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Bourbon Baroque, Alchymy Viols, Chatham Baroque, ¡Canta, Bogotá, Canta!, the Michigan Bach Collective, the Princeton Festival, concertmaster of the Junges Stuttgarter Bach Ensemble, and Sun Sneeze New Music. Sarah is finishing a Doctor of Music degree at the Jacobs School of Music with Stanley Ritchie and Grigory Kalinovsky. When she is not holding a violin, she enjoys running marathons and fishing for trout!

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Stephanie Zimmerman, violin & viola

Stephanie Zimmerman is a baroque violinist and violist based in Baltimore, Maryland. In this capacity, she performs with the Washington Bach Consort, Tempesta di Mare, the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the North Carolina Baroque Orchestra, Modern Musick, Musica Spira, the Baltimore Baroque Band, and Charm City Baroque. A connoisseur of medieval and renaissance music, Stephanie also plays the vielle, rebec, viola da gamba, and renaissance violin with Galdra and the Peabody Renaissance Ensemble. Stephanie holds a Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Music from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as a Master of Music and Graduate Performance Diploma from Peabody Conservatory. She is currently pursuing a Doctor of Musical Arts degree at Peabody.

Jamie Gallupe, cello

Jamie Gallupe is a cellist, viola da gamba player, and soprano who specializes in the budding field of historically informed performance practice. Like many who are drawn to historical performance, Jamie’s musical studies began with traditional cello pedagogy. However her taste for the more eclectic things in life has taken her to perform in a variety of nontraditional venues. This immersion in diverse styles and performance practices eventually led her to find her passion in early music. 

Jamie completed a Master of Music degree in historical performance at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University in the spring of 2019.There she studied baroque cello and viola da gamba with Dr. John Moran as well as voice with Ah Young.  During her time at Peabody she also served as Musician-In-Residence at the Edenwald Community. She completed her Bachelor of Music degree in cello performance in 2017 at Eastern Michigan University with Deborah Pae. Currently Jamie teaches chamber music, cello, and assistant directs the Brandenburg Project at the Ann Arbor Community School of Music.

Alexis Bacon, composer

Alexis Bacon is a composer recognized nationally and internationally for both her acoustic and electroacoustic music. Her work draws inspiration from a diverse array of sound worlds, including vanishing American oral traditions, medieval Provençal poetry, Norwegian fiddle music, and Afro-Brazilian religious ceremonies. Throughout her career, she has won awards including the IAWM Search for New Music Pauline Oliveros Prize, the Ossia International Composition Prize, the ASCAP/SEAMUS student composition commission, and most recently an honorable mention in the 2018 Hildegard Competition. Her work has been supported by awards and grants from the Indiana Arts Council, the Percussive Arts Society, the American Music Center, and the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and commissioned by ensembles and artists including National Sawdust, Burning River Baroque, Due East, the Bro-Fowler Duo, violinist Robert Simonds, and several commissioning consortiums comprising dozens of commissioners. A Fulbright scholar in France, she completed undergraduate studies in music composition and viola performance at Rice University and graduate studies in music composition at the University of Michigan. She is currently Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Michigan State University.