Program and Artist Biography

Andrew Arceci performs regularly on viola da gamba, violone, and bass throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. He has appeared with the Washington Bach Consort, Tempesta di Mare Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, Pro Musica Rara, Harmonious Blacksmith, and L'Académie, and recently won a double bass fellowship with England's Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Festival appearances include the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival, the Washington Early Music Festival, the Indianapolis Early Music Festival, the Shandelee Music Festival, and the 2011 Focus! Festival, in which Arceci performed the North American premiere of Elżbieta Sikora’s Canzona for viola da gamba and orchestra with the New Juilliard Ensemble at Alice Tully Hall. Radio credits include WETA-District of Columbia, WLOY-Maryland, WBJC-Maryland, WQXR-New York, Harmonia-Indiana Public Media,  National Public Radio, DeutschlandRadio (Germany), and Taipei Broadcasting Station (Taiwan).

Arceci received a B.Mus. in double bass, a B.Mus. in viola da gamba, and an academic concentration in art history from the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. He has completed a M.Mus. in historical performance from the Juilliard School and will begin a master of studies program in performance/musicology at the University of Oxford in October.

American harpsichordist John McKean encountered his instrument and the field of historical performance in his early youth. In addition to studies with Lisa Crawford and Webb Wiggins at Oberlin Conservatory and with Robert Hill at the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany, McKean has received instruction from some of the greatest modern masters of historic keyboards, including Skip Sempé, Mitzi Meyerson, and Gustav Leonhardt.

McKean has performed throughout Europe and North America as both a soloist and a member of numerous ensembles and baroque orchestras, including the Catacoustic Consort, the Camerata Vocale Freiburg, and Apollo’s Fire, and is a founding member of the Habsburger Camerata. His musical expertise extends beyond the realm of performance to encompass music typesetting, musicology, and instrument building; he regularly performs on his own reconstruction of a 17th-century Flemish harpsichord. McKean is currently researching the harpsichord works of Gaspard Le Roux and György Ligeti as part of graduate studies in musicology at the University of Cambridge.