Performing Arts and The Pandemic: Live Renaissance chamber music concert and discussion on how COVID-19 has impacted music and the arts—with Elisabeth Reed, Julie Jeffrey, David H. Miller, Farley Pearce, and soprano Jennifer Paulino. Moderated by Andrew Luchansky.

Elisabeth Reed, a College Prep parent, teaches Baroque cello and viola da gamba at University of California at Berkeley and at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she is co-director of the Baroque Ensemble. A soloist and chamber musician with Voices of Music, Archetti, Pacific Musicworks, and Wildcat Viols, she has also appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the American Bach Soloists and the Seattle, Portland, Pacific, and Philharmonia Baroque Orchestras. She can be heard on the Virgin Classics, Naxos, Focus, Plectra, and Magnatunes recording labels and has many HD videos on the Voices of Music Youtube channel. She is a Guild-certified practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method™ of Awareness Through Movement™ with a particular interest in working with musicians and performers. 

Julie Jeffrey has been playing the viol since 1976. She has performed throughout the U.S., in Canada, Mexico, Europe and Australia, and teaches privately and at workshops in the U.S. and abroad. Ms. Jeffrey is a founding member of Sex Chordae Consort of Viols, Wildcat Viols, Antic Faces, and The Barefoot All-Stars, and she embodies half of the viol duo Hallifax & Jeffrey. She is co-founder and co-director of Barefoot Chamber Concerts, and has served on the board of directors of The Viola da Gamba Society of America, The Pacifica Viola da Gamba Society, and The San Francisco Early Music Society.

David H. Miller is a musicologist and performing musician, and Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. David holds a BA in music from Harvard University and a PhD in musicology from Cornell University. His research focuses on modernist music, particularly that of Anton Webern, and its performance and reception in the United States. As a performer, David plays a variety of early bowed bass instruments, including the viola da gamba, violone, and Baroque double bass, focusing on the music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. He has worked with ensembles such as the Handel and Haydn Society, Trinity Wall Street, New York Baroque Incorporated, and the Arcadia Players, and collaborates frequently with the Renaissance band Seven Times Salt. 

Farley Pearce is a San Francisco based freelance musician who plays cello, viols, violone, and contrabass. He has performed with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra and the baroque orchestras of Portland, Vancouver, and Los Angeles. He appears in many YouTube videos with the Voices of Music ensemble.

Jennifer Paulino, soprano, is celebrated for her “graceful yet powerful” and “sensitive and clear” voice (San Francisco Classical Voice). Specializing in baroque, contemporary, and chamber music, Ms. Paulino has performed as a soloist in Australia, Denmark, Poland, The Netherlands, and across the U.S. In 2012, she was the Cal-Western regional winner and a national finalist in the NATS Artist Award Competition. Ms. Paulino is on faculty at the San Diego Summer Choral Festival, and holds degrees from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague and Westminster Choir College.

Andrew Luchansky, a College Prep parent, is professor of cello and chamber music at the California State University Sacramento, School of Music. He has performed at Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York as principal cellist in the Musica Sacra orchestra and in Spain, Italy and Denmark as a chamber musician and soloist with Camerata Deia. As a member of the Classical Band he performed in Germany at the Schleswig-Holstein music festival and recorded for Deutsche Grammophon. Mr. Luchansky teaches string pedagogy at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and cello and chamber music at the SF Conservatory Pre-College. He is the founder/director of the Sacramento State String Project, a nationally recognized service-learning program that provides string instrument lessons to underserved children from Sacramento. He is also the founder and artistic director of The New Millennium Series which presents eminent concert artists from all over the world.