The Southeast Baroque Ensemble

The Southeast Baroque Ensemble will also perform on the Meramac Community Concert Series on Saturday, September 19, 2009

The group is a faculty ensemble based at Southeast Missouri State University and is dedicated to the performance of chamber music from the Baroque period on musical instruments of that era. Members include Paul Thompson, baroque flute; Brandon Christensen, baroque violin; Sara Edgerton, baroque cello; Jeffrery Noonan, therobo; and Gary Miller harpsichord. Also performing will be guest baroque violinist, Lorraine Glass-Harris, of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. The program will include works of Bach, Handel, Telemann and LeClair. 

The Southeast Baroque Ensemble is a faculty group based at Southeast Missouri State University. It is dedicated to the performance of chamber music from the Baroque period on musical instruments of that era. This ensemble has appeared on numerous concert series, including performances at the Sheldon Concert Hall (St. Louis); at Westminster College; on the Cedarhurst (IL) Chamber Music Series; the Illinois State, Murray State, East Tennessee State, and Western Illinois State University Concert Series; the First Concert Series (Rockford, IL); the Knoxville (TN) Westminster Presbyterian Church Concert Series; the “Music on Market Fine Arts Series” in Wilmington, North Carolina; and was a featured ensemble at the International Baroque Festival, Jackson, Mississippi. The ensemble also performs throughout Missouri under the auspices of the Missouri Arts Council Touring Program.

PAUL THOMPSON, a graduate of the London College of Music, continued his studies at the Paris Conservatory on a French Government Scholarship.  He earned his Master of Music degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he was a member of the award-winning Mercury Wind Quintet.  He has performed extensively in the United States and England as a flute soloist, and has recently performed at the National Flute Association Conventions in New York City and Dallas, Texas. He is Instructor of Flute at Southeast Missouri State University, and has given concerts as a solo artist under the auspices of the Missouri Arts Touring Program.

BRANDON CHRISTENSEN completed the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Stony Brook University in New York in 2002 where he studied violin with Mitchell Stern and Baroque performance practice with harpsichordist Arthur Hass. That same year, he joined the faculty of Southeast Missouri State University.  Before moving to Missouri, Dr. Christensen was a visiting professor of violin and viola at Dickson College, and a member of the Artist Faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music (Lancaster, PA). He has been heard as a recitalist and chamber musician throughout the United States, and has recently performed and given master classes in China.  Dr. Christensen is also the Artistic Director of the chamber music concert series, “Sundays at Three.” He performs with such early music groups as Early Music St. Louis, Musicke’s Cordes, the Kingsbury Ensemble, and Collegium Vocale St. Louis.

SARA EDGERTON received her B.Mus. degree with Distinction in Cello Performance from the Eastman School of Music and her M.A. and D.M.A. degrees in Cello and Historical Performance Practice from Cornell University, where she was the recipient of numerous fellowship awards. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has concertized throughout the United States and England, and has just returned from performing and giving master classes in China. She performs with such early music groups as the Kingsbury Ensemble and Early Music St. Louis. She is Professor of Cello and String Bass and Artistic Director of the Southeast Missouri Symphony Orchestra at Southeast Missouri State University.

JEFFREY NOONAN was trained as a classical guitarist.  He has played early plucked instrument for over twenty-five years, performing regularly on Renaissance lutes, baroque guitar, and theorbo with Early Music St. Louis, the Kingsbury Ensemble, Collegium Vocal St. Louis, and Musicke’s Cordes. In addition to undergraduate degrees from the University of Notre Damen (B.A.) and Hartt School of Music (B.Mus.), Noonan olds a M.Mus. in Historical Performance Practices and the Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from Washington University. He is an Associate Professor of Music and teaches music history and literature and directs the classical guitar program. 

GARY MILLER holds the B.Mus. degree from the University of Northern Iowa, the M.M. and D.M.A. degrees from the University of Michigan, and the Artist’s Diploma from the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne, Germany, where he held a scholarship from the German government. He has performed in Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United States as a solo organist and harpsichordist. He is Associate Dean and Director of the School of Visual and Performing Arts at Southeast Missouri State University, and is Professor of Organ and Music Theory.

LORRAINE GLASS-HARRIS has been a member of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra since 1972 and leads an active career as performer and presenter throughout the St. Louis community. With interests in both modern and Baroque violin, she has appeared as soloist and chamber musician throughout the Midwest, including featured soloist with the St. Louis Symphony, KFUO Radio’s From the Garden -Live!, and as soloist and leader of  the String Orchestra of the Rockies. With her husband, flutist, James Harris, she co-founded L’Esprit de Musique, a period-instrument ensemble based in St. Louis. Born in Philadelphia to a music-loving family, Ms. Glass-Harris began her musical studies at the age of six.  She holds two degrees in violin performance from Indiana University where she studied with Josef Gingold. More recent studies have been with renowned Dutch Baroque violin master Jaap Schröder

The Southeast Baroque Ensemble performs on instruments that are originals or replicas of those used during the Baroque era.

The Baroque flute used by Mr. Thompson was made by Rod Cameron; it is made of rosewood and is a replica of a Heinrich Grenser Baroque flute.

Dr. Christensen is playing on a Baroque violin from the shop of Larry Bowers, made in 1988.  His bow is a transitional reconstruction by William Salchow of New York.

Lorraine Glass-Harris performs on a Baroque violin built around 1760 by the English maker, Henry Jay. It is in its original state of preservation and ha not been altered. Her snakewood bow is a copy of the 1750 original not in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford and was made by Ralph Ashmead of Tuolumne, CA.

The Baroque cello played by Dr. Edgerton is by Mathias Neuner of Mittenwald, Germany, and dates from c. 1800. The Baroque bow by Christopher English is a copy of an early eighteenth-century cello bow, and is made of snakewood.

Dr. Noonan’s theorbo was built by Andre Pernikoff in 1966 in Iowa City. Based on an early 17th century instrument, it carries fourteen gut strings, eight on the fingerboard and six diapasons running to the neck extension. At six feet long, this theorbo is actually small compared to most 17th century instruments.

The harpsichord played by Dr. Miller is a single-manual harpsichord from the shop of Theodore Robertson of Bloomington, Indiana. The instrument is modeled after a Flemish harpsichord by Jan Couchet. It contains two choirs of strings at 8’ pitch. The body of the instrument is painted in dark blue, trimmed in grey. The interior lid of the harpsichord is a copy of a painting by Dutch painter, Jacob van Ruisdael, entitled “A View of Haarlem Seen from the Dunes at Overveen,” and was completed by hand by Mr. Robertson in his Bloomington shop.