Artist Bio’s

Hailed for her “floating, silky” “luminous soprano” and deemed “a standout in acting and voice” as well as “hypnotic (Chicago Classical Review), soprano Nathalie Colas is a versatile and curious musician, artist, producer, educator, and music advocate. Soloist and co-founder of Third Coast Baroque, Liederstube, and new music ensemble Fonema Consort, she has been a featured soloist with Music of the Baroque, Haymarket Opera Company, the St Louis Bach Society, Valparaiso Bach Institute and Symphony of Oak Park and River Forest. Ms. Colas teaches voice at Concordia University Chicago in Oak Park and Triton College in River Forest, where she also serves as director of Choral Activities. A graduate of DePaul University School of Music and of the Brussels Royal Conservatory, she completed her opera training at the Swiss Opera Studio/Hochschule der Kunst Bern, Switzerland. Nathalie was born and raised in Strasbourg, France.

Allison Selby Cook, mezzo-soprano, is a Chicago-based singer, actor, and multi-instrumentalist specializing in early music. She recently performed with Bella Voce in Dido and Aeneas and appeared on Live From WFMT 98.7FM with Kerry Frumkin, following up on her 2017 debut international broadcast of works by Salomone Rossi. Allison is regularly featured as a singer and violist with Newberry Consort, and her current season includes appearances with Music of the Baroque and Oriana Singers, and debuts with the New York Philharmonic and Aspen Music Festival. She has performed or recorded with Chicago Symphony Orchestra at Ravinia, Piffaro, Marion Consort, Early Music at the Barn, Schola Antiqua, Early Music Now, EcoVoice Project, Chicago Radio Theatre, ShawChicago, The Shakespeare Project of Chicago, and Court Theatre. Allison studied with Ellen Hargis and David Douglass at Northwestern University, and went on to opera and early music festivals in Siena, New York, Boston, and Berkeley. Her first memories of Bloomington are traveling with her father, Jeff Holland Cook, for his IU Ballet performances as orchestral conductor in the early 2000s.

Chicago-based oratorio tenor Steven Caldicott Wilson has been praised for his “limpid tenor, marked by wondrous phrasing and aching lyricism in ‘Thy rebuke hath broken his heart’” (Chicago Classical Review) and his “powerful, polished and moving Evangelist” (New York Times). In 2024, he was a soloist with the Newberry Consort at Roosevelt University’s Ganz Hall, and a member of Schola Antiqua for Dante 360 at the Athenaeum Center. 2023 saw him return to NYC for Messiah solos with Musica Sacra at Carnegie Hall and as a soloist for Gounod’s St. Cecelia Mass at Trinity Church Wall Street. From 2007-2012, he was a gentleman of the choir at St. Thomas 5th Avenue under the direction of the late John Scott. Mr. Wilson has been a member of New York Polyphony since 2011, one of the foremost vocal chamber ensembles active today. Founded in 2006, the quartet’s discography includes two Grammy-nominated albums and a new album, Sky of my Heart, to be released in June 2025. Steven has been a member of Boston’s Handel + Haydn Society since 2015, and is a tenured member of the Grant Park Music Festival chorus. He is a veteran of the United States Air Force Band Singing Sergeants and a graduate of Ithaca College (BM) and Yale University (MM).

John Orduña, bass, is a singer of great versatility, with a voice “rich and powerful top to bottom” (Peninsula Reviews) in repertoire that spans the sacred oratorios of Bach and Handel to comic roles by Prokofiev and Verdi. Recently, Orduña has performed with Kaleidoscope Vocal Ensemble, Evergreen Ensemble, Santa Fe Desert Chorale, Music of the Baroque, Bella Voce, and the Artefact Ensemble. Soloist engagements include the Omaha Symphony, the Grant Park Music Festival, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Tallahassee Symphony, and the Richmond Symphony. He has also been seen on the operatic stages of Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha, Opera Columbus, Glimmerglass Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Sarasota Opera, and North Carolina Opera. John holds degrees and certificates from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the Florida State University School of Music, and the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

Wendy Gillespie was inexplicably attracted to renaissance polyphony long before she knew either word. A string player since childhood, she began playing the viola da gamba as an undergraduate. Wendy has performed on five continents, mostly as a founding member of Fretwork and long-time member of Phantasm, both ensembles of violas da gamba, but also as a bass viol soloist and not least as a very willing continuo player. She has explored medieval music on the vielle with the Ensemble Sequentia, Elizabethan Enterprise, and others, more recently specializing in renaissance viols and early notation with Nota Bene. Wendy can be heard on more than 100 commercially released recordings, sharing three Gramophone awards, several Gramophone and Grammy nominations, and two Grands Prix du Disque with colleagues. In 2011, Wendy received Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award and in 2012 a Wellesley College Alumnae Achievement Award. She is Past President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America. After 32 years on its faculty, Gillespie graduated in 2017 to Professor Emeritus at what is now called the Historical Performance Institute at the Jacobs School of Music, Indiana University, Bloomington. She often wonders how we got projected so far into the future.

Joanna Blendulf has performed and recorded with leading early music ensembles throughout the United States. A native of Sweden, she grew up listening to traditional folk music and was drawn to the sound of early instruments. Joanna now performs on viols and Baroque cello with the Nota Bene Viol Consort, Wildcat Viols, the Catacoustic Consort, Parthenia, the Portland Baroque Orchestra and Pacific MusicWorks. Ms. Blendulf holds performance degrees with honors from the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University where she was awarded the prestigious Performer’s Certificate for her accomplishments in early music performance. Joanna’s summer engagements have included performances at Tage Alter Musik Regenburg, Musica Antigua en Villa de Lleyva in Colombia, the Bloomington, Boston, and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, the Ojai Music Festivals, as well as the Carmel and OregonBach Festivals. Ms. Blendulf has been on the faculties of the University of Oregon and the Berwick Academy as well as viol workshops across the country. She currently resides in Bloomington, Indiana, whereshe teaches Baroque cello and Viola da gamba as Associate Professor of Music at the Jacobs School of Music’s Historical Performance Department.

Erica Rubis is a versatile performer on the viola da gamba and baroque cello whose work ranges from renaissance viol consort to improvising and co-creating new music. She is a member of Alchymy Viols, Twin Cities Viol Consort, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and Echoing Air, plays with Bach & Beethoven Experience and North Carolina Baroque, and collaborates regularly with composer/performer Tomás Lozano in his song project on the poetry of Juan Ramón Jiménez. Erica’s most recent discography includes Alchymy Viols’ Deep River, Les Ordinaires’ Inner Chambers and Monteclair: Beloved and Betrayed, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra’s The Colourful Telemann and Tomás Lozano’s Eternal Juan Ramón Jiménez. An active music educator, Erica teaches adult workshops and holds regular intensives on the viola da gamba for public school students. She pioneered the multi-media program, Shakespeare’s Ear, which has toured and held residencies in elementary schools since 2009.

An active performer on cello, baroque cello, and viola da gamba, Lara Turner enjoys a varied career performing music from the contemporary to the baroque. She has been the principal cellist of the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado since it began 20 years ago, is a core member of the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and was the principal cellist of Bourbon Baroque for 13 years. She has frequently performed with the Fort Wayne Bach Collegium, NYS Baroque, and Three Notch’d Road, and was a featured soloist on viola da gamba in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the Baldwin-Wallace Bach Festival. As a modern cellist, Lara has been Principal Cello with the South Bend Symphony Orchestra since 2004, and is a founding member of the contemporary clarinet and cello duo Claricello, which has performed in Canada, Italy, Holland, Ireland, and across the United States. Clarincello performed “Dust” by Belinda Reynolds on her CD recording, Cover. Lara has taught at the National Music Camp for Youth in Panama and as part of a Fulbright project in Bolivia. Adjunct cello faculty at Saint Mary’s College and Andrew’s University, Lara holds a Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory where she studied with Andor Toth, Jr. and Catharina Meints, and a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory where she studied with Bonnie Hampton.

Located in Indianapolis, Stephanie Newberry Hall is an active freelance harpist. A native Texan, Stephanie began her professional career in 2004, serving as principal harpist of the Corpus Christi Symphony Orchestra, and she has performed with orchestras in Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. Stephanie received a Master of Music Degree from the University of Houston, her Bachelor of Music Degree from Vanderbilt University, and she is an alumnus of the Salzedo School in Camden, Maine where she studied with legendary harpist Alice Chalifoux. Stephanie has performed in masterclasses with harpists such as Yolanda Kondonassis, Isabelle Moretti, and Sunita Stanislow, and participated in the Texas Music Festival, Rome Festival, and Sewanee Summer Music Festivals. Stephanie is a Music Unites Artist with Classical Music Indy and joined the faculty of the Indianapolis Suzuki Academy in 2015.

Alchymy Viols founder and director Philip Spray performs, records and consults with period instrument ensembles and publishers across the country. He co-founded the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra under Barthold Kuijken and later Musik Ekklesia whose first recording The Vanishing Nordic Chorale was part of a 2011 Grammy nomination for Best Classical Producer. He has long maintained interest in writing, composing, teaching, and arranging. In 2016, he founded the ensemble Alchymy Viols which offers performances from some of America’s finest players on the viola da gamba. The ensemble performs traditional literature for the viol, but as its name implies, they also mix viols with diverse musical elements to create an event even richer than the sum of its parts. Alchymy has mixed its viols with Indianapolis Early Music Festival bands, Bloomington Early Music, Dana Marsh and the HPI, Jacobs School of Music, with Haymarket Opera’s dancers and director Sarah Edgar, and has drawn on less-likely collaborations as well: with Scottish folk fiddler Tim MacDonald to create a chamber version of Scotland’s first opera, and with Paul Krasnovsky and Indianapolis’s contemporary music choir Mon Choeur. In 2024, Alchymy released its first recording on Navona Records, Deep River: Spirituals’ Cross-Currents.