Accademia dAmore - Singers

She holds a First Class Honors Degree in Dance and Education from Bedford College, U.K., and an M.F.A in Choreography and Performance from Mills College, CA, USA. Ms. Mansbridge has been teaching and performing early European Court dance (16th-18th centuries) since 1990.

Active as an educator and coach, he teaches classes in Renaissance music and 17th century continuo song at Mannes College of Music in New York, and directs the New York Continuo Collective. He has both created and directed many early music theater shows, including the 17th century “Il Caffe d’Amore”, the 15th century “Holly and Ivy: A Midwinter Feast of Fools” and the 14th century “Guillaume de Machaut and the Fountain of Love”, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of medieval and early Renaissance music with the group Ex Umbris.

She has been a featured artist at the York Early Music Festival (England), the Boston Early Music Festival, the Berkeley Early Music Festival, the National Music Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the San Francisco Early Music Society series. Other notable engagements include the world premiere recording of Philip Glass’s Concerto for Harpsichord and Chamber Orchestra with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra. A recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Solo Recitalists grant, Dupree has also taught at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, the University of Washington, and the University of Michigan.

Tindemans was a founding member of the German ensemble Sequentia and the Huelgas Ensemble of Belgium. As a player of early stringed instruments, such as medieval fiddle, rebec, and harp, she performs and records with Medieval Strings. On viola da gamba she performs as a soloist, is a member of the Gallery Baroque Players, and is a frequently invited guest with the Folger Consort of Washington, D.C., the Newberry Consort of Chicago and other leading early music ensembles in North America and Europe. On Renaissance and Baroque viola she performs and records with the King’s Noyse and with the Seattle Baroque Orchestra. She directs the Medieval Women’s Choir of Seattle. In addition she has been a much sought after teacher at many workshops including the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop, the Pacific Northwest Viols Workshop, the Seattle Medieval Workshop, Viols West, and the Accademia d’Amore.

She has made many recordings, including Handel’s Harp concerto with Tafelmusik, and Sonata al Pizzico (duos for harp and baroque guitar with Stephen Stubbs). She has just completed recording Handel’s Harp, released on ATMA in 2009, with all of Handel’s obligato music written for the harp, including his famous harp concerto, which she has also recorded with Tafelmusik (A Baroque Feast, Analekta, 2002).

She has sung with the leading period instrument orchestras and ensembles of North America and with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of conductors Ton Koopman, Andrew Parrott, Gustav Leonhardt, and Jeffrey Thomas. She has also appeared at major festivals including Versailles, Berlin, Anchorage, Vancouver, San Luis Obispo, and Berkeley. A founding member of both Seattle Pro Musica and Choral Arts, she has been a soloist at St. James Cathedral, with the Northwest Chamber Orchestra, Gallery Concerts, and numerous other ensembles throughout the Pacific Northwest. Her performances have been broadcast on Minnesota Public Radio, National Public Radio, and in the Netherlands and Germany. As a teacher and clinician, Zylstra has been in great demand. She has been on the faculty of Oberlin Conservatory’s Baroque Performance Institute since 1979 and is currently a faculty member of the Seattle Academy of Opera. She has given masterclasses at Swarthmore College, University of Toronto, Willamette University, Reed College, for the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and The Voice Foundation, among many others. She is a member of The Voice Foundation, Northwest Voice Foundation, NATS, and Early Music America; she also served on the board of Early Music America for many years, and is currently on the advisory board for the Seattle Girls Choir. Zylstra can be heard on the Erato, Wildboar, and Koch labels.

In the summer 2000, he directed an acclaimed Monteverdi L’Orfeo with Stephen Stubbs at the Vancouver Festival, and in 2003 he co-directed Monteverdi’s L’Incoronazione di Poppea there. He has directed at the Accademia d’Amore in Bremen for the past 8 years.

From 1980 until 2006 Stubbs served as professor for lute and performance practices at the Hochschule für Künste, Bremen. With his direction of Stefano Landi’s La Morte d’Orfeo at the 1987 Bruges festival, Stubbs launched his career as an opera director and simultaneously founded the ensemble Tragicomedia, which has since recorded numerous CDs and completed tours of Europe, North America and Japan. Stubbs has been invited to direct opera productions in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and Scandinavia. Most recently he directed Monteverdi’s Poppea in Vancouver, Mattheson’s Boris Goudenow in Boston, Gluck’s Orfeo in Bilbao, and Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Murcia. In 2006 Stubbs returned to his native Seattle to found and serve as Artistic Director of Pacific Operaworks, an opera company dedicated to staging new productions of seldom performed works from the Baroque and contemporary opera repertoire. Since 1997 Stubbs has also co–directed the biennial Boston Early Music Festival opera. This has resulted in Grammy–nominated recordings of Conradi’s Ariadne in 2005 and of Lully’s Thesee in 2007. Stubbs’ solo lute recordings include the music of J.S. Bach, S.L. Weiss, David Kellner and the Belgian lutenist Jaques St. Luc, and with baroque harpist Maxine Eilander Sonate al Pizzico on the ATMA label. His performances can also be heard on the Vanguard Classics and ECM labels.