PRESIDENT & CEO

Suzanne Ryan-Melamed has directed the Bloomington Early Music Festival since 2022. A twenty-year veteran of academic publishing, Suzanne was Editor in Chief of Humanities and Executive Editor of Music at Oxford University Press from 2005 to 2020 and continues to consult and speak on publishing widely. She holds degrees from the University of Chicago (AB), DePaul University School of Music (BM), the New England Conservatory (MM), and IU’s O’Neill School (MPA). She completed Leadership Training with Netherlands-based Musicians Without Borders in 2021 with focus on work with displaced communities. Suzanne serves on the Bloomington Arts Commission and the board of directors of the Bloomington Chamber Singers, and she co-chaired Temple Beth Shalom’s sponsorship of Afghan refugees in 2021-2022 in partnership with Exodus Refugee Immigration, an organization with which she continues to collaborate.

TREASURER

Paul Borg is professor emeritus at Illinois State University; he earned his doctorate in musicology from the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Borg taught various music history courses for Illinois State’s School of Music and was presented with its College of Fine Arts Outstanding Teacher Award. He also taught at the Jacobs School of Music during summer sessions in the 1990s-2000s.

His musicological research interests include Latin American Music especially the music of colonial Guatemala.

Active as a pianist, Borg performed as faculty and guest-artist at Illinois State, Indiana, Western Illinois, Illinois Wesleyan, Northwestern, Roosevelt and Millikin universities. In 1995, he performed the world premiere of Roque Cordero's “Three Poetic Meditations” for piano.

His many years of leadership in curriculum development, campus governance and administration earned him Illinois State’s University Outstanding Service Award in 2012.

SECRETARY

Thomas Schaller came to Bloomington thanks to his wife, Julia Bentley, who is an Associate Professor of Voice at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. They met in Vienna singing in a Renaissance vocal ensemble. His music education started as a Vienna Choir Boy, where he appeared in the role of the 2nd Knabe in the Magic Flute at the Vienna Staatsoper. He got his bachelor degree in Music Education and Piano Education at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst before his wife whisked him away to the US. He founded the company Mensuro Engraving, preparing music scores of all genres, including award-winning art song editions, the Essential Elements method books, and numerous John Williams orchestral film scores, all published by Hal Leonard. In January of 2009 he had the honor of engraving John William’s Air and Simple Gifts, which was performed by Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman at the inauguration of President Obama.

Thomas is also passionate about soccer, the beautiful game, and can occasionally be found arguing the perfect play on a dimly lit field. He is the referee assignor for Cutters, the local youth soccer club and as a licensed referee seems to enjoy the abuse slung at him from the sidelines. Why else would he keep doing it?

Dr. Carolann Buff is a scholar, teacher, and musician regarded for both her research on late medieval and early Renaissance motets as well as expertise on historical performance. She is a founding member of the internationally renowned medieval ensemble Liber unUsualis and recorded two critically acclaimed CDs of 14th-century polyphony with the group, Unrequited: Machaut and the French Ars Nova and Flyleaves: Music in English Manuscripts. Buff has toured worldwide with the Boston Camerata and has recorded with the Renaissance choir Cut Circle on CDs featuring works by Josquin, De Orto, and Du Fay. Buff has also performed with the women's ensemble Tapestry and can be heard on their recording Sapphire Night, which received the 2005 ECHO Klassik prize in Germany. Buff is currently an Assistant Professor of Music at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music.

​​J. Peter Burkholder is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. Ranging from borrowing to modernism, from musical meaning to music history pedagogy, and from fifteenth-century masses to Charles Ives, Alban Berg, and Arnold Schoenberg, his research has won awards from the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, ASCAP, and the Association for Recorded Sound Collections. He is most widely known as the primary author of A History of Western Music and the Norton Anthology of Western Music (W. W. Norton), the leading music history texts in the English language. His writings have appeared in Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, German, Spanish, and Braille. He is an Honorary Member and former president of the American Musicological Society.

Born in Santa Clara (Cuba), Oscar Cañizares completed his Bachelor in Trombone Performance & Teaching Degree at the Instituto Superior de Arte in 2005. The same year he joined the Early Music Ensemble Ars Longa, becoming the first sackbut performer in Cuba, taking part in several recordings of Latin American Renaissance and Baroque repertoire, and more than a dozen of concert tours and festivals around Europe and America.

In 2020 he finished Master’s Degree studies in Early Music (Performance) at IU Jacobs School of Music.

His experience as a scholar includes research about the presence of wind instruments in Cuban 18th Century, as well as the revival of the 19th Century’s Cuban trombone virtuoso Raimundo Valenzuela.

Anastasia Chin is a harpsichordist and fortepianist active in the United States and Singapore. Praised for her sensitive, elegant and eloquent performances as soloist, chamber musician and continuo player, she won the top prize ex aequo at the 2021 Jurow International Harpsichord Competition and was one of three finalists at the 2018 Berkeley Festival International Early Piano Competition. Recent and upcoming engagements include solo fortepiano recitals for the Western Early Keyboard Association and MusicSources, harpsichord concerti with Seven Hills Baroque and the Indiana University Historical Performance Institute for the Madison Performing Arts Foundation, Handel’s Messiah with the Oregon Symphony, concerts with the Tonos Del Sur ensemble in Chicago and Bloomington, and guest recitals and lecture-recitals at the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music, Singapore.

Anastasia is concert manager for the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project. She holds historical keyboards degrees from Indiana University (MM, PD, DM), where she studied with Elisabeth Wright, and a Piano Performance degree (BMus) from the Yong Siew Toh Conservatory of Music in Singapore, where she studied with Albert Tiu.

Linda Handelsman joined the Bloomington Early Music board in 2024. She has been working in the field of World Music since 2006, with the California-based agency Riot Artists (formerly Eye for Talent), representing artists from around the globe. World travel is an important part of her musical, cultural, and linguistic education. Over the past 10 years she has participated in travel seminars doing deep dives into the music of Cuba, Spain, New Orleans, and Tanzania.

Coming from a strong background in classical piano, flute, and harpsichord, she began college at Oberlin Conservatory before she discovered other interests and migrated toward the visual arts, earning her BA from Southern Illinois University. She soon returned to music, gravitating toward traditional British Isles and American genres, playing music for dancers (English Playford, Scottish, Contra, Square), and touring for 16 years with the Ohio-based percussive dance and music company, Rhythm in Shoes. She also lived for 15 years near Lafayette, LA, where she was deeply embedded in Cajun and zydeco cultures.

Linda is active in organizing and presenting house concerts of traditional music in Bloomington for visiting artists. She participates in local Irish music sessions and in Ritmos Latinos, Bloomington’s salsa dance club. She is an avid gardener, and has something of a local reputation as a baker of fine cakes.

One of today's most respected baroque violinists, Ingrid Matthews is a Visiting Associate Professor of Violin Performance at Indiana University's Historical Performance Institute. She co-founded the Seattle Baroque Orchestra with Byron Schenkman in 1994 and served as its Music Director until 2013, while performing extensively around the world with many other leading early music ensembles. Since winning First Prize in the Irwin Bodky International Competition in 1989, she has collaborated as a soloist, guest director, chamber musician, and concertmaster with such groups as the New York Collegium, the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Ars Lyrica (Houston), Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra (Toronto), Musica Pacifica (San Francisco), and countless others. She has previously taught at the University of Southern California/LA, Oberlin College, the Comish College of the Arts, and many workshops and festivals, including masterclasses in Beijing and Dubai. Ingrid Matthews has won high critical acclaim for her extensive discography; her recording of the Sonatas and Partitas for Unaccompanied Violin of J.S. Bach has been named "top recommendation for this music ... on either period or modem instruments" by American Record Guide. She also plays jazz and swing styles, and is active as a visual artist.

Martie Perry enjoys a vibrant national career as a respected baroque specialist on both violin and viola.  Her playing has been called "…ideally realized…taut and loaded with nuance" by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and “highly expressive” by the Boston Musical Intelligencer.  Martie performs with many North American period instrument ensembles including the Indianapolis, North Carolina, and Atlanta Baroque Orchestras, Tallahassee Bach Parley, Spire Ensemble, and Wyoming Baroque, as well as with the ensemble she founded and directs, Heartland Baroque. She earned a Master of Music in Early Music Performance/Baroque Violin at Indiana University, where she studied with Stanley Ritchie and was graduate assistant for the baroque orchestra.  Martie has been heard in a live international broadcast on Chicago's WFMT radio, on the early music program "Harmonia," and on N.P.R.'s "Performance Today," and has recorded for ATMA Classique, Edition Lilac, Musica Omnia, Naxos, WFIU, Cedille, the National Cathedral, and Concordia Publishing. Martie served as the executive assistant for the Bloomington Early Music Festival from 2002-2005, and is excited to return to being a part of supporting its mission.