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

ABOUT US

RECORDINGS

Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Hesperus, Piffaro, and My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, and plays theorbo and lute with ARTEK and New York City Opera. He teaches at Mannes College of Music in New York, and directs the New York Continuo Collective. He recently worked as stage director for the Accademia d’Amore baroque opera workshop with Stephen Stubbs, and played theorbo for the Chicago Opera Theater’s production of Monteverdi’s Ritorno d’Ulisse, and Aspen Music Festival’s production of Cavalli’s Eliogabalo, both conducted by Jane Glover. He has created and directed several theatrical early music shows, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval and Renaissance music with the group Ex Umbris.

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Greg Ingles is in demand as a free-lance sackbut player performing with such period instrument ensembles as the New York Collegium, Tafelmusik, Concerto Palatino, Early Music New York, the Orchestra of the Renaissance and the American Bach Soloists. He is Music Director of Spiritus Collective, an ensemble devoted to rarely performed brass music of the 17th century. Greg is also a member of the early wind band, Ciaramella, with whom he recorded their debut CD on the Naxos label. Greg recently recorded music by Bertali with Chatham Baroque on the Sono Luminus label. A graduate of Oberlin Conservatory, Greg recently completed his doctoral degree at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is also the professor of trombone at Hofstra University.

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Joan Kimball, co-director and a founding member of the ensemble, gave full time to early music performance in 1980 after a number of years as an educator. She teaches recorder and early winds to children and adults, and is on the music faculty of The Philadelphia School, an elementary and middle school, where she has a full roster of private recorder students and recorder ensembles. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson of New York City on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes and is a maker of double reeds for Renaissance shawms, dulcians and capped winds. Joan teaches bagpipe, recorder and double reed classes at summer music workshops and festivals. In addition to her recordings with Piffaro she can also be heard on Vanguard Classical, Eudora and Vox Amadeus.

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Christa Patton, in addition to being a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, has performed in the US, Mexico, Europe and Japan with New York's Ensemble for Early Music and Ex Umbris. Also a baroque harpist, Christa has appeared with Tafelmusik, Toronto Consort, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, ARTEK, Apollo's Fire, the New York City Opera, and the Wolf Trap Opera Company. A former Fulbright scholar, Christa studied the Italian baroque harp at the Civica Scuola di Musica in Milan, Italy with historical harp specialist, Mara Galassi. She can be heard on the Dorian, Lyrachord, and Helicon labels.

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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 recorders and double reed instruments of the late Medieval through the Baroque periods, most notably the Renaissance shawm and 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 and Dance 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, King’s Noyse, the Newberry Consort, the Folger Consort, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, Brandywine Baroque Orchestra and others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Records, Vanguard Classics, Windham Hill, Pasacaille and Eufoda labels. He is also a noted reed maker, specializing in the double reeds of the medieval through Baroque periods.

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A multi-instrumentalist specializing in wind instruments of the medieval and Renaissance periods, Tom Zajac is a member of Piffaro as well as his own group Ex Umbris. He is a frequent guest artist with the Folger Consort, Hesperus, and the Yale University Collegium, and has recorded and performed both in the US and throughout the world with many of the leading American early music ensembles. He has performed 14th-century music in the East Wing of the White House during the Clinton administration, he played serpent in a piece by PDQ Bach on the NPR program A Prairie Home Companion and the sound of his bagpipe (on a recording) awoke the astronauts every morning on a 2001 space shuttle mission. Tom has performed on the sound track of several PBS documentaries for Emmy award-winning producer and composer Brian Keane, including Ric Burn’s New York: A Documentary, last fall’s special on the French and Indian wars, The War that Made America and a special on the history of the Supreme Court that aired in January. He is currently studying medieval and Renaissance canons as well as the music of the Turkish Ottoman classical tradition, performing with the Boston-based group Dünya. He teaches at Wellesley College and at workshops throughout the US.

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