Jairo Serrano - Tenor, percussion
After approaching music via the harmonica, the guitar,
the piano, and even the accordion, 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. He eventually received his bachelor degree
in Music Composition from Universidad de los Andes in his
native Colombia. 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, having studied with
Alan Bennett and Paul Elliott. He then settled in Italy,
where he continued his studies with Margaret Hayward, his
research in early music from Spain and Latin America, and
worked with several early music ensembles, including Albalonga
and Villanos.
His vocal performances have received acclaim from specialized
critics, who highlight his natural tenor voice, stylistic
knowledge, warm expression and excellent diction, as well
as his versatility as 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 Arts Music labels. 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, Latin-America 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 Bogotá, 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 century vihuela fantasias of
Narváez and the century 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
attending courses given by Nigel North and Hopkinson Smith.
He is a member of the early music ensembles Villanos and
Delphín de Música, with whom he makes an intensive
effort to bring to light 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 doctoral dissertation, at Universidad
de Barcelona, was a study about pedagogy of the baroque guitar
based upon the analysis of its repertoire. He currently teaches
baroque guitar and plucked strings at Universidad Javeriana
in Bogotá. He dreams of finding baroque guitarists
who play 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 received a diploma
in recorder and early double reed instruments at the Early
Music Institute at Indiana University where he studied with
Eva Legene and Michael McCraw.
As founder of the ensemble Música Ficta, he has focused
all his creative energy and capacity for research on the performance
of Latin-American Baroque and Renaissance music on this endeavor.
In addition to his teaching and research at the Universidad
Javeriana in Bogotá, 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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