The Vivaldi Project
Founder of The vivaldi Project, violinist Elizabeth Field is distinguished for her passionate and stylistic playing on both period and modern instruments. Field has been concertmaster of The Bach Choir of Bethlehem for over 20 years and has performed as guest concertmaster with a wide variety of ensembles throughout the US: from Washington DC’s acclaimed Washington Bach Consort to Opera Lafayette. She also performed and recorded extensively with the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Field holds a Doctorate in Historical Performance Practice from Cornell University and has held professorships at Sacramento State University and the University of California at Davis, she is currently on faculty at George Washington University. Her DVD with fortepianist Malcolm Bilson, Performing the Score, has been hailed by Emanuel Ax as both “truly inspiring” and “authoritative.” Seen and Heard International proclaimed that Field “played so thrillingly that if Mendelssohn had heard Field play he would have written her a concerto too.”
Noted for the beauty of her playing as well as for her versatility, Allison Nyquist is one of the preeminent performers of Baroque and Classical violin and viola. She has performed throughout North America, collaborating with many of the top Baroque ensembles, including Chatham Baroque, the Washington Bach Consort, Haymarket Opera Company, and Apollo’s Fire. Her discography includes recordings for Eclectra, Delos, and MSR Classics. Nyquist was concertmaster of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra for 20 years and was a member of Ensemble Voltaire, Third Coast Baroque (Chicago), and artistic director of Music City Baroque (Nashville).
Highly regarded as a teacher, Ms. Nyquist has served on the faculties of Indiana State University, DePauw University, Ohio State, the Interlochen Arts Camp and Lawrence University. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Baroque Violin at Vanderbilt University's Blair School of Music.
Together with Elizabeth Field, cellist Stephanie Vial is co-cirector of The Vivaldi Project.
She enjoys a multi-faceted career as a performer, educator, and writer on music. She has traveled widely, giving solo and chamber music concerts, lectures, and master classes at numerous universities and institutions: The Shrine to Music Museum in South Dakota, The University of Virginia, Boston Conservatory, McGill University, and The Curtis Institute of Music. She has performed as principal cellist with a number of early music ensembles, including The Washington Bach Consort, Les Violons du Roy in Quebec, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, and the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra.
Stephanie is also the Artistic Director of the series Baroque & Beyond (www.baroqueandbeyond.org) in Chapel Hill, NC. Her book, The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical “Period,” published by the University of Rochester Press Eastman Studies in Music series in 2008, is praised by Malcolm Bilson as "inspired scholarship" and "essential reading." Recent writing includes a chapter on the performance practices of Luigi Boccherini for the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Boccherini. Her recordings can also be heard on the Dorian Label, Naxos, Hungaroton, and Centaur Records.
Stephanie holds degrees from Northwestern, Indiana, and Cornell Universities, and is indebted to her many teachers along the way: Alan Harris, Peter Shelton, Joan Dickson, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Malcolm Bilson, and John Hsu. She has taught for many years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is currently part of the cello teaching team at Duke University.
William Simms is an active performer of early music. Equally adept on lute, theorbo and baroque guitar, he appears regularly with Apollo’s Fire, The Bach Sinfonia, The Washington Bach Consort, Ensemble Vermillian and Harmonious Blacksmith. He has performed numerous operas, cantatas, and oratorios with such ensembles as The Washington National Opera, The Cleveland Opera, Opera Lafayette, and American Opera Theatre. Venues include The National Cathedral, The Museum of Fine Arts Boston, The Library of Congress, The Corcoran Gallery, The Kennedy Center and The Barns at Wolftrap. He has toured and recorded with The Baltimore Consort as well as with Apollo’s Fire. His recording with Ronn McFarlane, Two Lutes, was the CD pick of the week on WETA in Washington DC in 2012. Mr. Simms received a Bachelor of Music from The College of Wooster and a Master of Music from Peabody Conservatory. He serves on the faculties of Mount St. Mary’s University and Hood College, and is the founder and director of the Hood Early Music Ensemble. He has recorded for the Dorian, Centaur, Naxos and Eclectra labels.
Pianist Andrew Willis (andrewwillispianist.com) explores the historical development of keyboard instruments and their performance practice, maintaining a commitment to the study, performance, and teaching of the widest possible range of repertoire. Keenly interested in the history of the piano, he contributes frequently to conferences, festivals, and concert series. He is a past president of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society and has served as a Trustee of the Westfield Center for Historical Keyboard Studies and a juror for Westfield’s International Fortepiano Competition. He has served as Artistic Consultant at the Cornell Center for Historical Keyboards and is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Sigal Music Museum.
In a thirty-year career at the UNC Greensboro School of Music, Willis taught performance on instruments ranging from harpsichord to modern piano. He directed the biennial UNCG Focus on Piano Literature for over a decade and inaugurated a student Historical Performance Consort. For the Albany, Bridge, Claves, Centaur, and CRI labels he has recorded solo and ensemble music of three centuries on pianos linked historically to the chosen repertoire.
Willis received the D.M.A. in Historical Performance from Cornell University, where he studied fortepiano with Malcolm Bilson, the M.M. in Accompanying and Chamber Music from Temple University under Lambert Orkis and George Sementovsky, and the B.M. in Piano from The Curtis Institute of Music, where his mentor was Mieczyslaw Horszowski.
Christopher Caudill began playing the horn at age ten while living in London, England, with his family. Piano and violin lessons had failed to do the trick, but a London Symphony concert at the Barbican with famous soloist Barry Tuckwell made him fall in love with the horn. He is a graduate of Northwestern University, where he earned a B.A. in European History before studying horn with the Chicago Symphony’s former Principal Horn, Dale Clevenger. He was a member of the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and the New World Symphony in Miami where he met his horn duet partner, Rachel Niketopoulos.
He has performed on Baroque and Classical Horns with Atlanta Baroque, North Carolina Baroque, Apollo’s Fire, Brussels Chamber Orchestra, and Bach Akademie Charlotte. He and his wife Rachel were featured Baroque Horn soloists with the North Carolina Symphony in performances of the Vivaldi Concerto for Two Hunting Horns RV 539.
Christopher plays on copies of historical instruments made by Richard Seraphinoff (Leichnambschneider, Vienna, c.1700; Anton Kerner, Vienna, c. 1760; Courtois, Paris, c.1800).
Growing up in a house full of art, music, books, and bicycles in Davenport Iowa, Rachel Niketopoulos began playing the horn at age 11. She earned horn performance degrees at the Universities of Iowa and Missouri (Kansas City). During college summers, she attended the Music Academy of the West, the Sarasota Music Festival, and the Aspen Music Festival, where she studied with orchestral horn players from Europe, The Met, the Chicago Symphony, and other major American orchestras. She also toured Europe and Israel with the New World Symphony (where she met her future husband) and the North Carolina School of the Arts Orchestra. After seven seasons with the Virginia Symphony and Opera, she joined her husband Christopher Caudill in the horn section of the North Carolina Symphony in 2005 as fourth horn. She is a member of the NC Symphony Wind Quintet, and has been a soloist with the Orchestra in performances of Schumann’s Konzertstuck for four horns, and the Vivaldi Concerto for 2 Hunting Horns RV 539 on the Baroque horn.
After developing a passion for early music, she attended numerous summer natural horn workshops at Indiana University, led by IU professor of horn Richard Seraphinoff. Rachel has played her historical horns in several early instrument orchestras including Atlanta Baroque, Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), NC Baroque, and Bach Akademie Charlotte. She performs on Seraphinoff copies of Baroque and Classical horns originally made by Haleri of Paris, Kerner of Vienna, and Haas of Germany.
In addition to her musical pursuits, Rachel graduated as a certified instructor of the Alexander Technique in 2003 from the Alexander Alliance in Philadelphia. She leads a weekly class at UNC-Greensboro for the music, dance, and theatre departments, as well as her busy schedule of private lessons. Rachel has taught workshops for musicians all over North Carolina and Virginia, including the UNC School of the Arts in Winston-Salem, Southeast Horn Workshops at Appalachian State University, Virginia Commonwealth University, and UNC-Greensboro. She completed the Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction course, offered through Duke University Hospitals. Until Covid, she spent 9 years volunteering with the JobStart program in Raleigh, where she taught yoga and mindfulness to 10 inmates from the Raleigh Correctional Center for Women every Friday. She is currently training to become an Oxygen Advantage breathwork instructor.
Dominic Giardino is a New York City–based arts administrator, public historian, and historical clarinetist. He is Executive Director of Gotham Early Music Scene, Inc., teaches historical clarinets at the University of North Texas, and performs throughout North America. Recent performance highlights include appearances with the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston Baroque, the Oregon Bach Festival Period Orchestra, and the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra. As a researcher, his work examines European military cultures and their influence on music in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world, a subject he also explores with his ensemble, Music of the Regiment. He is a 2016 Fulbright grantee and holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music and the Royal Conservatory of The Hague.
Jennifer Streeter has performed throughout the United States and Europe with acclaimed ensembles such as the North Carolina, Indianapolis, and Seattle Baroque Orchestras, Three Notch’d Road: the Charlottesville Baroque Ensemble, Raleigh Camerata, and as concerto soloist with the Monte Carlo Philharmonic and Indiana University Baroque Orchestras. In addition she has been a featured artist at the Bloomington, Magnolia Baroque and Amherst Early Music Festivals. She holds masters’ degrees in harpsichord and recorder from the Early Music Institute at Indiana University, studying with Elisabeth Wright and Eva Legêne. She teaches privately and at workshops such as the Amherst Early Music Festival, the Shenandoah Recorder Society, and the Triangle Recorder Society (NC). Originally from Europe, she now calls Cary, NC home where she is a freelance musician and massage therapist.