Grant Herreid began his professional career in his native Portland, Ore, as a classical and jazz trumpet player. An early music specialist for many years, he performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings, percussion and voice with Piffaro, Hesperus, ARTEK, Elm City Consort, and many other early music groups. He was fortunate to study the lute with Pat O’Brien while earning a Masters in Early Music Performance at Sarah Lawrence College. A noted teacher and educator, he has led the New York Continuo Collective for many years, and was the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education. Grant appeared on Broadway playing hurdy gurdy, lute, theorbo, cittern, and percussion in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard III, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. On the faculty at Yale University, he directs the Yale Collegium Musicum (founded in the 1940s by Paul Hindemith), and is Artistic and Music Director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project (YBOP, founded in 2007 by Ellen Rosand and Richard Lalli), where he is currently creating a prologue for their production of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas. Grant often sings (mostly) early music in churches, including the Latin mass, and he devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric and unwritten traditions of early (and late) Renaissance music.
Richard Kolb has performed extensively in North America and Europe as a soloist and continuo player with a wide range of baroque and renaissance ensembles. He has recorded CD’s of music from Robert Ballard’s Premier Livre de Luth (Centaur CRC 3747), and songs from Barbara Strozzi’s Opus 8 with soprano Elissa Edwards (“Vago Desio,”Acis APL90277). His recently recorded CD of lute music by Michelangelo Galilei is scheduled for release on the Acis label in the spring of 2024. Kolb has combined performance with scholarship since completing a Ph.D. in musicology at Case-Western Reserve University in 2010, with a specialty in Roman vocal chamber music of the 17th century. He edited the complete works of Barbara Strozzi, published in eight volumes by Cor Donato Editions (2014-19), and his edition of Francesca Caccini’s Primo libro delle musiche is nearing completion. Prior to joining the faculty of the NY Continuo Collective, he held teaching positions at the University of Toronto, the Royal Conservatory of Music (Toronto), Cleveland State University, and Case-Western Reserve University.
Paul Shipper has been coaching voice and continuo with The New York Continuo Collective since its inception. He also serves as the stage director and gestique for our stage productions. He has had an active performing, recording and teaching career for fifty years.