Piffaro
Artistic director Priscilla Herreid is a musician in the ancient and living tradition of woodwind doubling. Her formative years studying recorder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School led her to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, where she began playing the oboe. The daughter of musicians rooted in Philadelphia’s music scene, she was exposed to the city’s vast musical landscape. Her time studying with Louis Rosenblatt at Temple University deepened her love of the oboe and orchestral repertoire, and playing renaissance wind instruments in Temple’s collegium felt like home.
As the collegium was led by Piffaro co-director Bob Wiemken, she was led to direct interaction with the group – whom she’d been listening to intensely for much of her childhood – and after further studies and occasional subbing, she became a member of Piffaro in 2007. Now as Artistic Director, Priscilla has the honor of continuing Piffaro’s mission of bringing the renaissance wind band and its repertoire to ever wider audiences. Passionate about sharing this slice of our musical history, Priscilla is also an avid educator, teaching at the Madison and Amherst Early Music Festivals and coaching existing ensembles in the art of playing renaissance polyphony – a form she believes is inherently satisfying for amateurs and professionals at every level.
Priscilla regularly performs on renaissance winds, early oboes, and recorder with many other prominent early music ensembles. Her appearances include the Handel + Haydn Society, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Tenet Vocal Artists, the Waverly Consort, Portland Baroque, Venice Baroque, the Gabrieli Consort, The City Musick, Philharmonia Baroque, Boston Baroque, the Dark Horse Consort, Ex Umbris, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, American Bach Soloists, The Bishop’s Band, New York Baroque Inc., The Sebastians, Les Delices, Ruckus, and Mr. Jones and the Engines of Destruction. She also accompanies silent films with Hesperus, sings the Latin Mass around New York City, and was part of the onstage band for the Broadway productions of Twelfth Night and Richard III starring Mark Rylance.
Priscilla’s playing has been called “downright amazing” by The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The New York Times has praised her “soaring recorder, gorgeously played…” She is a graduate of Temple University, where she was a student of the late Louis Rosenblatt, and The Juilliard School, where she was a member of the inaugural class of the Historical Performance program and a student of Gonzalo Ruiz.
Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Piffaro, Hesperus, and many other early music groups around the country. On the faculty at Yale University, he directs their Collegium Musicum and is artistic and music director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project (YBOP). Grant directs the New York Continuo Collective, and has created and directed several early music theatrical shows. A noted teacher and educator, he was the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education. Grant appeared on Broadway playing hurdy gurdy, lute, theorbo, cittern, and percussion in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard III, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. He devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the ensembles Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera.
Greg Ingles attended high school at the Interlochen Arts Academy and went on to graduate from the Oberlin Conservatory. Two days after graduation Greg won the position of Solo Trombone in the Hofer Symphoniker in Hof, Germany. He returned to the United States and completed both a Master’s and Doctoral degree in trombone performance at SUNY Stony Brook. Soon after beginning his early music studies Greg became a member of Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has since played with such ensembles as the American Bach Soloists, Chatham Baroque, Concerto Palatino, Quicksilver and Tafelmusik. He is Music Director of the Dark Horse Consort, an ensemble devoted to rarely performed brass music of the 17th century. Greg is also a member of Ciaramella and has recorded with this group on the Yarlung and Naxos record labels. Greg was the adjunct trombone professor at Hofstra University for over a decade. He teaches sackbut at the Madison Early Music Festival each summer and is the Lecturer in Sackbut at Boston University.
Erik Schmalz, a specialist in trombones and performance from the renaissance to the romantic periods, works internationally with many prestigious ensembles. Among others, these include Dark Horse Consort, Tafelmusik, Ciaramella, Green Mountain Project, The Toronto Consort, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Opera Lafayette, and Handel and Haydn Society. Performing on period trombones, renaissance slide trumpet, and recorder, his versatility also led him to be cast as one of the seven instrumentalists in the Globe Theater’s productions of Richard III and Twelfth Night on Broadway. Erik received degrees on trombone performance from Oberlin Conservatory of Music where he studied with Ray Premru, and from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music with Tony Chipurn. When not performing, he is usually maintaining and enjoying antique cars and boats, but also be found teaching at summer workshops such as Mountain Collegium in Cullowhee, NC. He resides in Collinsville, CT.