About Us
Elizabeth Conner
bass viola da gamba
Elizabeth Conner (bass viola da gamba) received her Bachelor of Music in Double Bass Performance at New England Conservatory and her Masters of Music in Double Bass Performance at the University of Michigan. She has performed in numerous orchestras and was the Assistant Principal Double Bassist for the Lansing Symphony Orchestra.
Elizabeth has concertized with many early music ensembles on bass viola da gamba including the Thyme Consort, Night’s Black Bird, Oriana’s Muse, the Wincoma Consort, and the Muhlenberg Collegium musicum. She has been a frequent guest artist performing continuo on bass viola da gamba for both singers and instrumental soloists.
Ted Conner
lute & baroque guitar
Ted Conner (Lute, Baroque Guitar) holds a BA from the Johns Hopkins University, a BM from New England Conservatory, a MM from the University of Michigan, and a Ph.D from the University of Connecticut. He has performed on the lute, viola da gamba, and Baroque guitar in early music ensembles including Night’s Black Bird, the Wincoma Consort, Oriana’s Muse, and the Thyme Consort with concert performances in New York, Massachusetts, Indiana, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. He is also an accomplished Jazz guitarist who has performed throughout the northeastern United States.
Dr. Conner is Professor of Music at Muhlenberg College where he teaches courses in Music History and Music Theory and directs the Muhlenberg Collegium musicum and Jazz Improvisation Ensemble. He has written numerous articles examining sixteenth and seventeenth-century English music, transcribed and edited early music editions for viola da gamba and lute including John Moss’s Lessons for the Basse-viol, John Playford’s The Division Violin, and The Works of Tobias Hume. Dr. Conner recently finished a textbook on Jazz theory and improvisation entitled Twenty Steps to Giant Steps: A Practical Approach to Jazz Theory and Performance.
Katherine Kaiser
voice
Katherine Kaiser holds a BA in Music and German Studies from Mount Holyoke College and an MA and PhD in Music History and Theory from Stony Brook University. Her scholarly work focuses on notions of technology and vocality in modern and contemporary music, and she has presented papers at the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and the Feminist Theory and Music Conference.
As a singer, she has performed 17th century solo cantatas on Long Island, in New York City, at the Boston Early Music Festival, and gave the American premiere of works by Marc'Antonio Pasqualini at the Society for Seventeenth-Century Music. She studied voice with Cheryl Cobb, Christiane Wartenberg, Andrew Fuchs, and Kathleen Flynn and has sung in masterclasses with Helen Boatwright and Julianne Baird. She has participated in the Queens Opera Workshop, The New York Continuo Collective, The Leipziger Vocalensemble, and the Stony Brook Baroque Ensemble. She is currently the soprano section at the Church of the Mediator in Allentown (Episcopal) and a member of the Bach Choir of Bethlehem. She has taught at Kutztown University and Stony Brook University and currently teaches at Muhlenberg College and Northampton Community College.