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2238 Fairmount Avenue  |  Philadelphia, PA 19130
info@piffaro.com  |  phone/fax (215) 235-8469

      Artistic Directors:  Joan Kimball & Robert Wiemken
      Administrative Director:  Matthew Smith-Soley

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    Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, turned to early music performance full time after a number of years as an educator. Since education is still one of her passions, Joan teaches recorder and early winds mostly to children, guaranteeing a new generation of early music performers. She is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private students and coaches recorder ensembles as well as a newly formed Renaissance bagpipe band.

In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes, and teaches bagpipe classes at summer music workshops. She has also performed with New York's Ensemble for Early Music, The Philadelphia Classical Symphony, The Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and with numerous instrumental and vocal ensembles in the Philadelphia area. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro on Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, and Dorian, she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical and Vox Amadeus.		  
   
    Robert Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on the double reed instruments of the Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance and early Baroque dulcian, or curtal, and the Baroque bassoon. He is currently co-director of Piffaro, and also directs the early music ensembles at Temple University’s Esther Boyer College of Music in Philadelphia.

He has performed with numerous ensembles, including New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, the Grande Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Brandywine Baroque Orchestra, the Folger Consort and others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Records, Vanguard Classics, Windham Hill and Pasacaille labels. He is also a noted reed maker, specializing in the double reeds of the medieval through Baroque periods.