GUEST ARTISTS 2024-25
Nathan Dougherty
Nathan Dougherty is Assistant Professor of Musicology at the University of Oklahoma, where he teaches graduate courses in music history and directs the Collegium Musicum. He is a specialist in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century French song and song cultures, with broader interests in historical performance practices, gender studies, historiography, and the medical humanities. He has presented papers nationally and internationally at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and the France: Musiques, Cultures, 1789-1918 network, as well as at the Rocky Mountain Music Scholars Conference, the Indiana University Historical Performance Conference, and the University of Oregon Musicking Conference. His research has been supported by numerous fellowships and awards, including a Richard A. Zdanis Research Scholarship Award, a travel grant from the M. Elizabeth C. Bartlet Fund, a Graduate Affiliateship at the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, and a Case Western Reserve University Fellowship at the Library of Congress.
He also maintains an active career as a tenor and haute-contre, and has sung with many of the nation’s leading early music ensembles, including Apollo’s Fire, Les Délices, The Newberry Consort, The Thirteen, Atlanta Baroque, Bourbon Baroque, and Trobàr.
He received his PhD in Historical Musicology with an emphasis in Historical Performance Practice from Case Western Reserve University in 2022. He holds degrees in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California and Vocal Performance from St. Olaf College.
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Soprano Naomi Grace McMahon (they/them) finds their home in San Antonio, Texas. From 2019-2023, they regularly performed with Opera San Antonio as a member of the chorus (Romeo et Juliet, Pagliacci, Tosca) and with the company's educational outreach program. Most recently, in 2024 they were one of 9 singers invited to participate in the Amherst Early Music Festival’s Medieval Program, coached by Benjamin Bagby. In the summer of 2017, Naomi was selected to perform Sister Rose in the south Florida premiere of Jake Heggie's Dead Man Walking at the Miami Music Festival. While pursuing their first Master of Music degree, they performed with the Texas Christian University Opera Studio as Nella in Gianni Schicchi and Zina in the Texas premiere of Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters. Naomi's operatic credits include Der Königin die Nacht (Die Zauberflöte), Susannah (Susannah), Laetitia (The Old Maid and the Thief), and The Mother (Amahl and the Night Visitors) with the Abilene Christian University Opera.
Ms. McMahon holds a Master of Music in Voice Performance from Texas Christian University and a Bachelor of Music from Abilene Christian University. During the Covid-19 pandemic, they began to foster a long-time love for early music from the medieval to baroque periods, and are currently working toward a Master of Musical Arts in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University.
Scott Metcalfe
Scott Metcalfe has gained wide recognition as one of North America’s leading specialists in music from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries and beyond. Musical and artistic director of Blue Heron since its founding in 1999, from 2010 through 2019 he was also music director of New York City’s Green Mountain Project (Jolle Greenleaf, artistic director), whose performances of Claudio Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610 and other Vespers programs devised by Metcalfe were hailed by The New York Times as “quite simply terrific” and by The Boston Globe as “stupendous.” He has been guest director of TENET (New York), the Handel & Haydn Society (Boston), Emmanuel Music (Boston), the Toronto Consort, The Tudor Choir and Seattle Baroque, Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver, BC), Quire Cleveland, and the Dryden Ensemble (Princeton, NJ), in repertoire ranging from Machaut and Du Fay through Monteverdi, Charpentier, Purcell, and Bach, and he conducted Early Music America’s Young Performers Festival Ensemble in its inaugural performance at the 2011 Boston Early Music Festival.
Metcalfe also enjoys a career as a baroque violinist, playing with Cleveland’s Les Délices (dir. Debra Nagy), Québec’s L’Harmonie des Saisons (dir. Eric Milnes), and other ensembles. He has taught vocal ensemble repertoire and performance practice at Boston University and Harvard University and served as director of the baroque orchestra at Oberlin Conservatory, and in 2019-20 he was a visiting member of the faculty of Music History at the New England Conservatory.
Debra Nagy
Debra Nagy has been called a “musical polymath” (San Francisco Classical Voice) for her accomplished performances as a singer and historical wind player. She is the founder of the Cleveland-based ensemble Les Délices and plays principal oboe with Boston’s Handel & Haydn Society, Apollo’s Fire, and many other ensembles. Inspired by a creative process that brings together research, composition in historical styles, improvisation, and artistic collaboration, Debra creates programs that “can’t help but getting one listening and thinking in fresh ways” (SAN FRANCISCO CLASSICAL VOICE). During the pandemic, Debra reimagined Les Délices’ traditional concert series for the virtual space and created an acclaimed webseries variety show called SalonEra. Other recent projects have included critically-acclaimed multimedia productions of Machaut's medieval masterpiece Remede de Fortune, music from the Leuven Songbook (c. 1470), and an acclaimed CD combining jazz and French Baroque airs called Songs without Words, and The White Cat, a pastiche Baroque opera for singers and chamber ensemble with puppetry and projections based on the Countess D’Aulnoy’s 1690s feminist fairytale. She has recorded over 30 CDs with repertoire ranging from 1300-1800 on the Chandos, Avie, CPO, Capstone, Bright Angel, Naxos, and ATMA labels, and has had live performances featured on CBC Radio Canada, Klara (Belgium), NPR’s Performance Today, WQXR (New York City) and WGBH Boston. www.debranagy.com
ALLEN OTTE
Allen Otte was a co-founder of the historic Blackearth Percussion Group and of Percussion Group Cincinnati, and toured for decades throughout the world performing new and experimental music created for him and his colleagues. Otte regularly presents his own creative work—solo and collaborative performances (The Innocents Project/John Lane; the improvisation trio Vaster Than Empires), often in residencies centered around the theme of performing social justice. He is Professor Emeritus, University of Cincinnati, and in 2017 was inducted into the International Percussion Arts Society Hall of Fame. He has appeared with Trobar since 2018.
SIAN RICKETTS
Sian Ricketts (vocals, winds) enjoys a multi-faceted career as a singer and period woodwinds specialist. She performs medieval, Renaissance and baroque chamber music and orchestral repertoire with ensembles such as Bach Collegium Fort Wayne (IN), Apollo’s Fire (OH), Dallas Bach Society, Piffaro (PA), Forgotten Clefs (VA), and Labyrinth Baroque (NY). Sian is also a co-founding member and co-managing director of the medieval ensemble Alkemie. In addition to her interest in early music, Sian also regularly performs 21st-century repertoire as both an instrumentalist and singer, and has collaborated with composers such as Elliot Cole, Fiona Gillespie, Jonathan Dawe, and Gregory Spears. Sian was a Visiting Medieval Fellow at Fordham University from 2019-2020, and is co-director of Fordham University's Collegium ensemble. Sian holds a D.M.A. in historical performance practice from Case Western Reserve University with concentrations in voice and baroque oboe.
Karin Weston
Karin Weston is a singer specializing in early music, with a particular emphasis on medieval repertoires. She is a founding member of Trobár, and is a member of the ensembles memor and Contre le Temps, which respectively garnered the first and second prizes in the 2023 International Van Wassenaer competition. She is active within the medieval scene at large, singing with the medieval ensembles Per-Sonat, Ensemble Parlamento, Rubens Rosa, Concordian Dawn, Moirai and Dialogos. A regular on international stages, she has sung in festivals and on series such as AMUZ (Belgium), the Utrecht Early Music Festival (Netherlands), Freunde Alte Musik Basel (Switzerland), Voix et Route Romane (France), Montalbâne (Germany), Tage Alter Musik in Herne (Germany), and Innsbruck Early Music Festival (Austria), amongst others. Karin can be heard on albums by Concordian Dawn (Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera, Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra) and Moirai (Wa funde man sament so manic liet?), as well as on Trobár’s recently released Il dit/Elle dit. She holds degrees in historical performance practice, medieval/Renaissance music performance, and voice pedagogy from Case Western Reserve University and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and is currently based in Basel, Switzerland.