Midday @1pm Concert -Baroque Orchestra of Maine _March 15

Join us for our next Midday @1pm Concert featuring the Baroque Orchestra of Maine on March 15, 2024.

Heidi Powell

Artistic Director Heidi Powell is a baroque violin specialist and has appeared as soloist with the New York Collegium, Rebel, Tafelmusik, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Early Music New York, New York State Baroque, Santa Fe Pro Musica and the Washington Bach Consort and served as concertmaster for Early Music New York, Washington Bach Consort and San Francisco Bach Choir. She has performed throughout North America and Europe, playing in Carnegie Hall, the Library of Congress, Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center, Versailles, France and many others. Her performances have appeared on NPR ‘Performance Today’, The CBS National Evening News & ‘60 Minutes’ and on the soundtrack for the Disney Movie ‘Casanova’.

She holds a Bachelor of Music in Violin Performance from Indiana University, an Artist Diploma in Baroque Violin from Oberlin Conservatory with further studies at the Darius Milhaud Conservatoire d’Aix-en-Provence, France. Heidi's prize-winning performance in the American Bach Soloists International Bach Violin Competition was heralded by the New York Times as 'supremely confident and powerful'. She was also a finalist in the York, England Chamber Music Festival Competition and the Concorso Internazionale Antonio Vivaldi in Turino, Italy.

Heidi recently performed a solo violin recital of Bach and Biber at St. Malachy’s Church in NYC, presented by Gotham Early Music New York, Midtown Concerts, which was live streamed and can be seen at gemsny.org. Heidi has taught violin and chamber music at Oberlin Conservatory, Kneisel Hall and George Stevens Academy. She is a Suzuki violin teaching specialist and teaches privately in the Downeast Maine area as well as at Ellsworth Community Music Institute.

Heidi is Music Director at the Bar Harbor Congregational Church and Founder & Artistic director of BOOM, the Baroque Orchestra of Maine, a non-profit organization seeking to educate rural Maine audiences about historical baroque performance practice.  

https://www.baroqueorchestraofmaine.org/

Sylvia Schwartz

Fascinated and deeply inspired by the relationship between music, movement, and dance, violinist and Dalcrozian-in-training Sylvia Schwartz is a passionate chamber musician in both modern and historical performance practices. A native of Boston, MA, Sylvia performs currently with Guts Baroque Duo, L’Esprit Baroque, Los Angeles Baroque, and Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra. She has also played with UCLA Early Music Ensemble, Eudaimonia, A Purposeful Period Band, Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, Amherst Baroque Academy Opera & Festival Orchestras, the folk/baroque band Lizzie and the Flakjackets, and the prog/alt rock bands The Mood Swings and The Fixtures. As a chamber and orchestral musician she has performed across the United States and Europe, including Shostakovich Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia, and the major halls of Boston.  She has performed recitals extensively in the Boston area. She has also been a member of the Harvard Summer Chorus, Chorus pro Musica, and The Masterworks Chorale, and sees in her students as well as herself the great benefit singing has for string players.

Sylvia is equally passionate about bringing music to life as a performer and nurturing creative expression and empowerment in her music students. She uses a combination of Suzuki approaches, improvisation, Dalcroze-inspired eurythmics, and Alexander Technique-inspired movement awareness to simultaneously develop fluent musicality, joy in making music, a solid instrumental technique, and musicianship (including reading and theory). A former sufferer of tendonitis, she has a particular interest in addressing and preventing performance injuries, in both beginning and experienced players.

Sylvia earned a Master of Music in Violin Performance from the Longy School of Music, where she studied with Laura Bossert and coached extensively with Dana Maiben, Na’ama Lion, Vivian Montgomery, and Ryan Turner. She is also a certified Suzuki Violin Teacher through Book 3. Sylvia teaches privately, in person and online, and at the Vienna Music Institute. She has also taught at the Josiah Quincy Orchestra Program, Music 101, and the Winchester Community Music School, where she was also Administrative Director of the WCMS Summer Chamber Music Festival. She was thrilled to be Interim Orchestra Director in the fall semester of 2018 at Woodbridge High School, a Grammy Signature School, where teacher, students, and families alike enjoyed exploring baroque performance practice as part of the curriculum..

Raffael Scheck

Raffael Scheck comes from Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) and is Gibson Professor of modern European history at Colby College, where he has taught since 1994. Before becoming a historian, he studied cello for several semesters with Claude Starck at the conservatory of Zürich (Switzerland). He has specialized in baroque cello and performed with baroque groups in Maine, including the Colby Collegium, BOOM, Music's Quill, and St. Mary Schola. With theorbo player Timothy Burris, Scheck is member of the ensemble ScheckMate, which performs baroque music on period cello and theorbo as well as more recent music for modern cello and guitar. Scheck contributed many times to the Portland Early Music Festival and plays in the Colby Symphony Orchestra.