creative team

Violinist Emily Hale collaborates with and connects people and ideas through music, as experienced through her ensemble The Halfmoon's innovative programs. Emily's performances have been described as animated, intuitive and elegant. She has performed with The Sebastians, Emmanuel Music, Four Nations Ensemble, the Early Opera Company on BBC Channel 4, and at the Valetta International Baroque Festival. Emily is Instructor of Violin and Viola at Bridgewater State University. She completed an MPerf in Historical Performance with Distinction at the Royal College of Music in London, winning the McKenna Prize for Baroque Music.

Julia Connor fell in love with the violin at an early age and spent several years wandering around the house playing air violin until her parents finally took the hint and signed her up for lessons. She has since developed an eclectic musical palette, performing everything from baroque music on period instruments to fiddle music from Ireland to new works by living composers. Julia is a founding member of both the violin and piano duo Room to Spare, which writes and performs original groove based new music, and of the Berwick Fiddle Consort, an early music ensemble which performs historical folk music from the British Isles on period instruments. When she isn't playing music, Julia loves to daydream about traveling, listen to podcasts, and bake bread with her sourdough starter, Sir Lancelot.

Alex Jaehyun Kim is a visual artist and educator who explores the world of Fantasia through art language. His artistic practice and philosophical inquiries focus on coexistent values of art language. In his view, the world of Fantasia is far from hallucination and closer to ontological reality. The moment that we experience Fantasia is the moment that we communicate through our own language. Alex works in various forms such as drawings, moving images, installations, performances, and workshops. One of his signature workshops is titled “paper-dialogue.” Alex studied FAV(Film/Animation/Video) at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) for BFA and completed his MFA in Media Arts at Yonsei University. Currently, Alex is also a Ph.D. student at Seoul National University in South Korea, studying Philosophy of Arts Education.

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 Music where 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.

Hideki Yamaya is a performer of lutes, early guitars, and early mandolins based in Connecticut, USA. Born in Tokyo, Japan, he spent most of his career in the West Coast before settling in New England, where he is a freelance performer and teacher. In demand both as a soloist and as a continuo/chamber player, Hideki has performed with and for Portland Baroque Orchestra, Portland Opera, Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, Los Angeles Master Chorale, Los Angeles Opera, California Bach Society, Oregon Bach Festival, Astoria Music Festival, Music of the Baroque, and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Audrey Wu is a composer and performer based in Boston, Massachusetts. Currently studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, her works have been performed by members of the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Philadelphia Orchestra, and the New England Conservatory Junior Repertory Orchestra. Her compositional practice delves into the relationship between recorded text and electroacoustic music, with a focus on the role that spoken word plays as a tool for musical storytelling. She is interested in exploring the combination of instrumental and electronic music with found audio, radio, podcasting, and other word-based extramusical concepts. Future projects include a commission from the Women in Sacred Music project (WSMP) for SATB chorus, as well as a commission from the Philadelphia Music Alliance for Youth (PMAY) for two musicians. 

Deeply inspired by the relationship between music, movement, and dance, violinist and Dalcrozian Sylvia Schwartz is a passionate chamber musician in both modern and historical performance practices. The power of music to heal and to bring us together drives Sylvia to perform wherever she can, from the Scarborough COVID-19 vaccine clinic to Shostakovich Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. With her partner, cellist/gambist John Ott, as Guts Baroque, she has been determinedly reimagining the possibilities of historically-informed chamber music performances. Sylvia has performed with Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra, Los Angeles Baroque, Portland Bach Experience, Harvard Baroque, and Eudaimonia: A Purposeful Period Band, and on the Quietside, Hoson House, and BEMF Fringe concert series. Sylvia earned a M.Mus. in Violin Performance from Longy School of Music, where she studied violin with Laura Bossert and historically-informed performance with Dana Maiben, Na’ama Lion, and Vivian Montgomery. She has continued her education with Julie Andrijeski and Elizabeth Blumenstock. She also earned a B.S. in Engineering from Olin College. Sylvia enjoys nurturing vivid, historically-informed playing in her students of all ages in Portland, Maine and at Powers Music School.