Included in museum admission, half-price on Thursday evenings after 5 pm and free to University of Rochester ID holders.
Join us for vocal and instrumental music from 17th- and 18th-century composers that highlight the unique sounds of Eastman’s stunning Italian Baroque organ! Heather Holmquest, Juli Elliot, and Peter Schoellkopff sing; Boel Gidholm and Noah Fields play baroque violins; Joëlla Becker plays the Baroque cello; and Chris Petit plays Eastman’s Italian Baroque organ.
Seating is limited and available on a first-come, first-serve basis. This concert is made possible by the Rippey Endowed Trust.
Owned by the Eastman School of Music, the fully restored Italian Baroque organ is the only full-size antique Italian organ in North America. The organ is the centerpiece of an installation that highlights more than 30 major Baroque-period paintings and sculptures.
About the Performers
HEATHER HOLMQUEST has sung in professional ensembles across the country, including the Oregon Bach Festival in Eugene and the South Dakota Chorale in Sioux Falls. She is the artistic director of Rochester’s Scivias Medieval Ensemble which specializes in the music of Hildegard von Bingen. An early music enthusiast, she has promoted Baroque opera works in Rochester and has sung as a soloist with Eastman’s Italian Baroque organ. Soprano section leader at Third Presbyterian Church, she has appeared in various Rochester choral ensembles including Voices, Musica Spei, and First Inversion. Holmquest teaches music theory at Nazareth College, as well as voice and piano lessons in her private studio. She received her Ph.D. and M.A. in music theory from the University of Oregon with a secondary area in vocal performance. She earned her B.A. in music from Knox College.
JULI ELLIOT has performed solo and choral music in England, France and Italy, in works ranging from Monteverdi, Mendelssohn, and Debussy to Arvo Pärt and Nobuo Uematsu. Conductor of the New Horizons Chorus, she has performed locally with Voices, Madrigalia, Musica Spei and Scivias Medieval Ensemble. Solo engagements include appearances with the Rochester Philharmonic and Genesee Valley orchestras, and the role of Morgana in a concert performance of Handel’s Alcina with Rochester Baroque Vocal Consort. Choral performances include Fairhaven Singers (Cambridge), City of Oxford and Vox choirs in (Oxford), Farm Street Singers and Excalibur Voices (London), and Oxbridge Summer Institute Choir in Oxford and Cambridge. She has served on the boards of the Cathedral Choir School and Society for Chamber Music Rochester. Juli studied World Religion and Music at Ashland (OH) University and Piano Pedagogy at Portland (OR) State University.
Originally from Madison, New Jersey, PETER SCHOELLKOPFF started singing in choirs and studying the piano and French horn as a young child. With the American Boychoir School in Princeton, NJ, he toured in thirty states and performed with the New York Philharmonic, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was a member of the Eastman Collegium Vocal Ensemble and has appeared in several productions with the Eastman Opera Theatre. At Eastman, he received a bachelor’s degree and is currently finishing his graduate degree in vocal performance. In 2021-2022 he was a choral scholar at Third Presbyterian Church.
BOEL GIDHOLM has more than twenty years of experience performing with early music ensembles such as Ensemble Aperto (Germany), Fiori Musicali/Barockorchester Bremen, Pegasus Early Music, NYS Baroque, Publick Musick, Apollo’s Fire, ARTEK, Ars Lyrica Houston, La Follia Austin Baroque and Texas Early Music Project. Since 2004 she has performed with the Victoria Bach Festival, TX, on both the modern and Baroque instruments, in repertoire ranging from Biber to Britten and beyond. Chamber music performances have taken her to Italy, France, Latvia, the Canary Islands, Canada, Sweden, and Denmark. She earned an MFA in violin pedagogy at the University of Gothenburg in her home country of Sweden and is a graduate of the Akademie für Alte Musik in Bremen. She is co-director of Publick Musick with her cellist husband, Christopher Haritatos.
An active chamber and freelance violinist/violist, NOAH FIELDS played with the Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. He has collaborated with artists such as Hsin-Yun Huang, Amy Schwartz Moretti, and the Tokai String Quartet, as well as members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, and the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra. He has also appeared as a soloist with the Berkshire Symphony Orchestra. Lawrence Dutton of the Emerson String Quartet and Rebecca Albers, principal violist of the Minnesota Orchestra, both at the Robert McDuffie Center for Strings in Macon, Georgia. He also studied with Peter Langgartner at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. He is currently pursuing a graduate degree at the Eastman School of Music and sings regularly with the Christ Church Schola Cantorum.
Born in Le Pian Médoc, France, JOËLLA BECKER currently studies with Paul O’Dette and Christel Thielmann pursuing a Masters Degree in cello performance and Early Music at the Eastman School of Music. She is the principal cellist of the Eastman Collegium Musicum, a period-instrument ensemble performing music from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. In addition, she has collaborated Publick Musick, and the Berwick Fiddle Consort. Aside from historically-informed performances, Joëlla has premiered works of emerging young composers and collaborated with ensembles such as Musica Nova and Ensemble Signal. Joëlla earned a Diplôme d’Etudes Musicales from the Conservatoire of Bordeaux as well as from the Conservatoire of Saint Maur des Fossés. She joined the faculty of the Hochstein School of Music in 2023.
CHRISTOPHER PETIT Is the music director at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Paul in Erie, Pennsylvania. Previous positions include Director of the Genesee Valley Orchestra and Chorus, Director of Choirs at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Music Coordinator at the University of Rochester Protestant Chapel, and Director of Music at the Episcopal Church of St. Luke and St. Simon of Cyrene. He accompanied a variety of local choirs and groups, and taught organ and keyboard at the Eastman Community Music School. Chris received a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the College of Wooster, and from the Eastman School of Music, a Master of Music, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in Organ Performance and Literature.