Ingrid Matthews, Joanna Blendulf, and Nigel North
This Concert Was Presented May 15th 2022 and was a Free Concert, courtesy of an anonymous donor
The baroque violinist Ingrid Matthews joined with Joanna Blendulf (baroque cello/viola da gamba) and lutenist Nigel North. All are long-time favorites of IEM audiences.
Biographies
Joanna Blendulf has performed and recorded with leading early music ensembles throughout the United States. As a native of Sweden, she grew up listening to traditional folk music and was drawn to the sound of early instruments. Joanna now performs on viols and Baroque cello with the Nota Bene Viol Consort, Wildcat Viols, the Catacoustic Consort, Parthenia, the Portland Baroque Orchestra and Pacific MusicWorks. Ms. Blendulf holds performance degrees with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where she was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate for her accomplishments in early music performance.
Joanna’s summer engagements have included performances at Tage Alter Musik Regenburg, Musica Antigua en Villa de Lleyva in Colombia, the Bloomington, Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, the Ojai Music Festivals as well as the Carmel and Oregon Bach Festivals. Ms. Blendulf has been on the faculties of the University of Oregon and the Berwick Academy as well as viol workshops across the country. She currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana, where she teaches Baroque cello and Viola da gamba as Associate Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music’s Historical Performance Department.
Ingrid Matthews is a Visiting Associate Professor at Indiana University, and one of today’s most respected baroque violinists. She won first prize in the Erwin Bodky International Competition for Early Music in 1989, and since then has appeared as soloist, guest director, chamber musician, and concertmaster with leading ensembles including the New York Collegium, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Ars Lyrica (Houston), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Musica Pacifica (San Francisco), and countless others. She co-founded the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and served as its Music Director from 1994 to 2013. Matthews has won high critical acclaim for her extensive discography; her recording of the Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin of J.S. Bach has been named “top recommendation for this music... on either period or modern instruments” by American Record Guide. Ingrid also plays jazz and swing styles (she was a member a Seattle’s all-female jazz band “Lulu Swing”) and is active as a visual artist (she is the featured artist in an episode of “Commissioned,” the Design Network’s documentary series about art and artists). Ingrid lives in Bloomington with her greyhound, Socks.
Born in London, England, Nigel North has been playing the lute for over 50 years, since the age of fifteen. Teaching and playing have gone hand in hand and he has been Professor of Lute at the Historical Performance Institute (formerly Early Music Institute), Indiana University, Bloomington (USA) since 1999. Previous positions include The Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London (1976-1996), Hochschule der Künste, Berlin (1993-1999) and the Royal Conservatory, Den Haag, (2006-2009).
Initially inspired at the age of seven by the early 60s instrumental pop group "The Shadows," Nigel studied classical music through the violin and guitar and eventually discovered his real path in life, the lute. Nigel is basically self-taught on the lute and was inspired by Michael Schäffer, Gustav Leonhardt and the Jazz duo, Tuck and Patti.
The music of Bach has always been his first love in music, especially after a dream at age 12 in which Bach handed him a lute. After hearing one of Nigel’s Bach recitals in London in 1996, Julian Bream later recalled in 2002 “I remember going to a remarkable recital, one which I wish I had the ability to give: it was one of Nigel North’s Bach recitals, and I was bowled over by how masterful and how musical it was. A real musical experience, something you don’t always get from guitar and lute players and which, in general, is pretty rare.”
Nigel North wrote “Continuo playing on the Lute, Archlute and Theorbo” (FABER 1986). Recordings include a four CD boxed set “Bach on the Lute” (Linn Records), four CDs of the lute music of John Dowland (Naxos), and more recently four CDs of music by Sylvius Weiss (BGS) and two CDs of music by Francesco da Milano (BGS).