Piffaro: Eagle and Empire

About the program

A major new project by Philadelphia-based Piffaro comes to fruition in May with Eagle & Empire: Music of Colonial Mexico, exploring cultural collision and combination in colonial era Mexico.

“Wind bands like ours were a massive part of the soundscape of colonial-era Mexico,” notes Piffaro artistic director Priscilla Herreid. “Letters from the time expressed amazement at the number of Indigenous musicians who’d mastered instruments like the shawm, dulcian, and sackbut, as well as the sheer number of players.” The program reflects this rich musical environment, featuring sacred polyphonic works housed in Mexican collections—including two pieces in Nahuatl from the Valdés Codex—alongside villancicos (a rustic song, often on a Christmas text), jácaras (a poetic song that highlights individual singers), instrumental dances such as the zarabanda, gaita, and the Aztec tocotín, and a chant from one of the earliest Mexican choir books (the Graduale Dominicale of 1576), newly adapted from Latin into Nahuatl. More information about the program.

Piffaro (Priscilla Herreid, Grant Herreid, Greg Ingles, Jonatan Alvarado, Ariel Abramovich, Héloïse Degrugillier, Sian Ricketts, and Erik Schmalz) will be joined by a stellar cast of guest singers and instrumentalists, including Nell Snaidas, Estelí Gomez, Cecilia Duarte, Andrew Padgett, Daniel Swenberg, Danny Mallon, and Ben Matus.

Early music concerts at Music of the Americas are co-curated by Nell Snaidas and Sebastian Zubieta. 

About the artists

Piffaro, The Renaissance Band delights audiences with highly polished recreations of the rustic music of the peasantry and the elegant sounds of the official wind bands of the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Its ever-expanding instrumentarium includes shawms, dulcians, sackbuts, recorders, krumhorns, bagpipes, lutes, guitars, harps, and a variety of percussion—all careful reconstructions of instruments from the period. “Widely regarded as North America’s masters of music for Renaissance wind band” (St. Paul Pioneer Press), Piffaro has delighted audiences since its founding in 1980 by Joan Kimball and Bob Wiemken.  

Under the current direction of Herreid, the ensemble recreates the elegant sounds of the official wind bands and the rustic music of the peasantry from the late Medieval and Renaissance periods. Through concert appearances throughout North and South America and Europe, nineteen recordings, and radio and internet broadcasts, its music has reached listeners as far away as Siberia. The ensemble, active in the field of education since its inception, has received two Early Music America awards and the American Recorder Society’s Distinguished Artist Award. Founders Kimball and Wiemken received Early Music America’s Howard Mayer Brown Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Field of Early Music in 2021.

Herreid is a musician in the ancient and living tradition of woodwind doubling. Her formative years studying recorder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School led her to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts. She studied oboe with Louis Rosenblatt at Temple University, where she began playing Renaissance wind instruments in Temple’s Collegium, directed by Bob Wiemken. After further studies in baroque oboe with Gonzalo Ruiz at The Juilliard School, she became a member of Piffaro in 2007. Now as Artistic Director, Priscilla has the honor of continuing Piffaro’s mission of bringing the renaissance wind band and its repertoire to ever wider audiences. 

Herreid is also an avid educator, teaching at the Madison and Amherst Early Music Festivals and coaching existing ensembles in the art of playing renaissance polyphony—a form she believes is inherently satisfying for amateurs and professionals at every level. Herreid regularly performs on renaissance winds, early oboes, and recorder with many other prominent early music ensembles. Her appearances include the Handel + Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Tenet Vocal Artists, the Waverly Consort, The Metropolitan Opera, Portland Baroque, Venice Baroque, the Gabrieli Consort, The City Musick, Philharmonia Baroque, Boston Baroque, the Dark Horse Consort, Ex Umbris, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, The Bishop’s Band, New York Baroque Inc., The Sebastians, Les Delices, Ruckus, and Mr. Jones and the Engines of Destruction. She also accompanies silent films with Hesperus, sings the Latin Mass around New York City, and was part of the onstage band for the Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III starring Mark Rylance. 

Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with many U.S. early music ensembles. A specialist in early opera, he has played theorbo, lute, and Baroque guitar with Chicago Opera Theater, Aspen Music Festival, Portland Opera, New York City Opera, and others. A noted teacher and educator, he is the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education. On the faculty at Yale University, he leads the Yale Collegium Musicum and the Yale Baroque Opera Project. Grant also directs the New York Continuo Collective and often sings Gregorian chant for the Tridentine mass. He has created and directed several theatrical early music shows and devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the ensembles Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera. 

Greg Ingles attended Interlochen Arts Academy, Oberlin Conservatory, and SUNY Stony Brook. Before his career in early music, Greg was the Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker. He enjoys unearthing rarely heard gems as the music director of the early brass ensemble Dark Horse Consort. Greg is a member of Piffaro and made his Carnegie Hall debut with Quicksilver. He has played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque, Concerto Palatino, The Handel + Haydn Society of Boston, Portland Baroque and Tafelmusik. He played with the Globe Theater’s Shakespeare on Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III. Greg is currently the Lecturer in Sackbut at Boston University and teaches at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer. 

Erik Schmalz, a specialist in trombones and performance from the Renaissance to the Romantic periods, works internationally with many prestigious ensembles. Among others, these include Dark Horse Consort, Tafelmusik, Piffaro, Ciaramella, Green Mountain Project, The Toronto Consort, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, and Handel + Haydn Society. Performing on period trombones, renaissance slide trumpet, and recorder, his versatility also led him to be cast as one of the seven instrumentalists in the Globe Theater’s Shakespeare on Broadway productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night. Erik received degrees in trombone performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where he studied with Ray Premru, and from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with Tony Chipurn. 

Héloïse Degrugillier has worked extensively as both a recorder and traverso performer, as well as a teacher throughout Europe and the United States. She has performed with leading period ensembles, including Handel + Haydn, the Boston Camerata, Boston Early Music Festival, and Tempesta Di Mare.Héloïse also enjoys an active teaching career. She teaches at Tufts University and Rhode Island College. She is the president and music director of the Boston Recorder Society. She has completed her studies in the Alexander Technique and has a Masters in Music from the Utrecht Conservatory in the Netherlands. 

Jonatan Alvarado started studying guitar in his native Mercedes in the province of Buenos Aires, and later followed composition and conducting studies at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. He graduated in voice and lute from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, under Xenia Meijer and Fred Jacobs, respectively. He further specialized in medieval and renaissance repertoires with Dr. Rebecca Stewart. Alvarado is director and co-founder of the Ensemble Seconda Prat!ca, dedicated to renaissance and early baroque Latin American music. He is also a member of Da Tempera Velha, Sollazo Ensemble, and Concerto di Margheritta, and sings regularly with lutenist Ariel Abramovich. He often collaborates with prominent groups such as La Chimera, Club Medieval, Ensemble Phoenix, Constantinople and Armonía Concertada. He has appeared as a soloist in the most important European stages and festivals, from the Abbey of Royaumont, to the Bimhuis Amsterdam and the Vienna Konzerthaus. Alvarado’s eclectic musical restlessness extends his artistic activity to completely disparate projects, always under the common denominator of working from historical sources and the use of historical instruments, as in the recovery of the unpublished songbooks of the Spanish Republican exile together with Samuel Diz, or the medieval musical archive of the Cathedral of Tui. His first solo CD, “Pajarillos Fugitivos” (Ayros 2018) was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards in the category of Best Early Music Vocal Album. His latest album ‘Voces de Bronce’ is dedicated to early 20th-century Argentine traditional music. Upcoming recordings include the debut album of Da Tempera Velha, which will revisit the famous Cancionero de Palacio, and an album with Ariel Abramovich focusing in the 16th century archive of Huehuetenango, Guatemala. 

Praised for her “clear, bright voice” (New York Times) and “artistry that belies her young years” (Kansas City Metropolis), soprano Estelí Gomez is quickly gaining recognition as a stylish interpreter of early and contemporary repertoires. Highlights of the 2022-23 season include: performances with the NY Philharmonic and Grammy-winning Roomful of Teeth in the new David Geffen Hall; recording a Spanish translation of Handel’s Messiah with Bach Collegium San Diego; the world premiere of chamber opera Dreams Have No Borders in Ashland, OR; solo appearances with A Far Cry, Madison Bach Musicians, Westminster Choir College, Jacksonville Symphony Orchestra, and iSing Silicon Valley; teaching residencies at University of Oregon and Oregon Bach Festival; and concerts at Lincoln Center and the Baryshnikov Arts Center, with additional tours throughout Europe and Portugal, with Roomful of Teeth. Roomful’s third studio album, Rough Magic, will be released in May 2023. Originally from Watsonville, California, Estelí received her Bachelor of Arts with honors in music from Yale College, and Master of Music from McGill University, studying with Sanford Sylvan. Estelí is thrilled to be teaching at Lawrence University as assistant professor of voice, in addition to continuing her work as a performer. 

Born in NYC, Danny Mallon holds Bachelor’s and Master’s of Music degrees in percussion from the Mannes College of Music, where he has been a faculty member since 1989. He has played on Grammy-nominated and Juno-awarded period instrument recordings and performs with period ensembles in the United States and Canada. He traveled as a musical ambassador for the U.S. Dept. of State from 2009-2012. 

Praised for his “powerful baritone and impressive vocal range” (Boston Music Intelligencer) and as a “musicianly, smooth vocalist, capable in divisions” (Opera News Online), bass-baritone Andrew Padgett is an accomplished interpreter of early music from medieval to baroque repertoire, and has been featured as a soloist in concert venues worldwide, such as Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, NYC, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., and the Esplanade Concert Hall in his hometown, Singapore. He is a frequent collaborator with ensembles such as TENET, Pegasus Early Music, Musica Sacra, and Brandywine Baroque, both as an ensemble artist and a soloist. Andrew holds a B.S. in physics, an M.M. in voice from UC Santa Barbara, and an M.M. in Early Music, Oratorio, and Chamber Ensemble from Yale University’s Institute of Sacred Music. After several years in New York City, as a member of the internationally-acclaimed Saint Thomas Choir of Men and Boys, he now lives in Boston with his wife and son, where he sings in Emmanuel Music’s long-running Bach Cantata Series, under the direction of Ryan Turner. In his free time, Andrew is an avid comic book reader, miniature painter, and homebrewer.

Grammy-nominated artist Nell Snaidas has been praised by the New York Times for her “beautiful soprano voice, melting passion” and “vocally ravishing” performances. Of Uruguayan-American descent, Nell is recognized for her specialization in Latin American/Spanish and Italian baroque music and has sung in venues ranging from Tanglewood (Boston Early Music Festival) to the missions of Bolivia. Favorite projects include co-directing The Bishop’s Band with Tom Zajac in his beautiful program “Trujillo Codex of Peru”, concertizing with Ex Umbris, and singing in Grant Herreid’s “Don Quixote” with Piffaro. This season Nell appeared at Carnegie Hall with El Mundo (Richard Savino, dir.) in a program of music from the Archives of the Guatemala Cathedral and was the musical and stage director for the first known opera to have been performed in the Americas, La Púrpura de la Rosa (by Tomás Torrejón y Velasco 1701) for Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado. With Sebastián Zubieta, Nell is the Co-Artistic Director of EMAS: Early Music of the Americas, a project dedicated to early music and early msuicians from Latin America, the Caribbean , and Canada. 

Daniel Swenberg plays a wide variety of lutes and guitars: baroque, renaissance, classical/romantic, small, medium, and large. Chief among these is the theorbo—the long lute that you are either wondering about or overhearing your neighbor discuss. He plays with myriad groups, mostly in the EZ-Pass territories, California, and Toronto. He is on faculty at Juilliard’s Historical Performance program. His programing integrates and emphasizes music with the history, sciences, economics, politics, and broader culture of the time, from Weiss to Vice.