Jairo Serrano - Tenor, percussion
He began his music studies in Bogotá, concentrating
in harmonica, accordeon, guitar and piano. He soon lost track
of fingerings and scales and finally switched to singing after
hearing John, Paul and George one and a thousand times in the White
Album.
Later, he received his bachelor degree in Music Composition
from Universidad de los Andes in his native Colombia in 1994,
and in 1996, after "the gold rush," streams
of rock music, and following his discovery of Emma Kirkby and
Caetano Veloso, he was awarded a scholarship from the Mazda
Foundation to attend graduate school at the Early Music Institute
of Indiana University, in the USA. There he concluded his voice
degree in 1999, having studied with Alan Bennett and Paul Elliott.
In 2000 he settled in Italy, where he worked with several early
music ensembles, Albalonga and Villanos among others, as well
as receiving additional voice lessons with Margaret Hayward.
His vocal performances have received acclaim by specialized
critics, who highlight his natural tenor voice, stylistic knowledge,
warm expression and excellent diction, as well as his versatility
as singer and percussionist. He currently lives in the USA
where he is pursuing further vocal training with Professor
Paul Kiesgen.
He still listens to the White Album and hopes to
return, someday, to the garden of earthly delights.
contact: jairoserrano@yahoo.com |
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Elisabeth Wright - Harpsichord
At the age of five she spent hours sitting at the piano, studying
the music of Brahms, Chopin, and above all, Bach. She discovered
the harpsichord almost by accident while studying at Sarah Lawrence
College in New York, and with a lot of patience and discipline
was able to uncover its intimate and crystalline voice, which
asked more for caresses than force. After graduating, she took
a deep breath, and a plane, to continue her specialized studies
in harpsichord with Gustav Leonhardt at the Sweelinck Conservatory
in Amsterdam.
Upon her return to the USA she commenced an important career
as performer and teacher. She has toured in the USA, Latin America,
Canada, Europe and Australia, and performed at major early music
festivals, such as Tage Alter Musik, Lufthansa London Festival,
Festival dei Saraceni, Sydney Festival, Mostly Mozart, Aston
Magna, Santa Fe, Tanglewood, Boston Early Music Festival, Berkeley
Early Music Festival and Vancouver Early Music. She is a member
of Duo Geminiani, Ye Olde Friends and Les Sonatistes, and has
recorded for Classic Masters, Focus, Centaur and Musical Heritage.
Professor of harpsichord and fortepiano at Indiana University,
she also teaches basso continuo improvisation and performance
practices of music of the late Renaissance, Baroque and early
Classical periods, and has given countless master classes at
conservatories in Europe, Australia and the USA. She has served
on juries of various international harpsichord competitions,
and as panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts. She
has also written specialized reviews for Early Keyboard and presented
lectures at various academies devoted to early music topics.
contact: ebwright@indiana.edu
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Julián Navarro - Baroque
guitar, vihuela de mano, theorbo
He began playing the guitar on a sunny afternoon, while considering
whether or not to graduate as a mechanical engineer. After abandoning
his engineering studies, he studied guitar at Universidad de
Antioquia and Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, Colombia, where
he graduated in 1998. That same year he was admitted to the Escola
Luthier d’Arts Musicals in Barcelona, Spain, where he studied
guitar with Arnardur Arnarson. As time went by, he noticed that
the 16th c. vihuela fantasias of Narváez and the 17th
c. guitar pasacalles of Sanz would remain ringing in his head
for days and days, thus deciding to clip his fingernails and
dedicate himself to early music, studying plucked strings with
Xavier Díaz at the Escuela Superior de Música of
Catalonia, ESMUC, as well as courses with Nigel North and Hopkinson
Smith.
He has been a member of the early music ensembles Villanos and
Delphín de Música, with which he undergoes and
intensive effort to bring out Hispanic-American Renaissance and
Baroque repertoire. He has participated in various specialized
courses in the USA, Spain, Brazil and Cuba, and has been invited
to teach courses in guitar pedagogy and baroque guitar interpretation
at various universities. His doctorate dissertation dealt with
an educational study for teaching baroque guitar. He dreams of
finding baroque guitarists playing again on the streets and in
theaters exactly as he experienced it in his last reincarnation.
contact:
yulian27@yahoo.com
www.juliannavarro.com
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Carlos Serrano - Recorders,
shawm, dulcian, pipe and tabor
Undecided between the sound of David Munrow's bagpipes and Richie Ray's boogaloos, he opted for the recorder, so that, like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, he could try enchanting rodents. Years later, after mixing the dissection of petals, roots and seeds of his biological studies with those of the recorder and early music performance, he organized and directed several Renaissance instrumental ensembles. His growing interest in early music led him towards a progressive abandonment of photosynthesis, and further studies of the recorder at Mannes College in New York and Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio. He traveled to Italy where he received additional recorder lessons from Pedro Memelsdorff at the Civica Scuola in Milan. Afterwards, he concluded a diploma in recorder and early double reed instruments at the Early Music Institute at Indiana University. There, he studied with Eva Legene and Michael McCraw.
As founder of the ensemble Música Ficta, in this endeavor he has focused all his creative energy and capacity for research on the performance of Latin-American Baroque and Renaissance repertoire. Additional to his teaching and research at Universidad Javeriana in Bogota, he has been the director and producer of early music programs on various radio stations. In his free time he dances the boogaloo, plays the bagpipes and marches in delirium from one castle to another. He grows plants in his own garden, waters them with fresh water and, excitedly, watches them grow
contact: cserrano@indiana.edu |
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