Bios

John Bradley, Artistic Director since 1994 was born and educated in the Midwest, holding degrees from Kalamazoo College, Western Michigan University and Case Western Reserve University. He also spent one post-graduate year at Mannes College of Music. He has worked in many roles in the world of historically informed performance, from directing and costuming to dance, and of course singing. He has been involved with fully staged productions of Carl Heinrich Graun's Montezuma with the Arcadia Players, Purcell's King Arthur with the Boston Early Music Festival, G.F. Handel's Alcina with Ex-Machina in Minneapolis and Handel's Dueling Sopranos with Julianne Baird and Beverly Hoch with the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra. As a singer his credits have included Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers with Artek and Bach's Saint John Passion with Artek and New Jersey Bach Festival. One of John's favorite gigs was as a baroque "chorus boy" in a tour of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas with Amherst Early Music, in which he was a singer as well as a featured dancer. John has enjoyed learning from some of the greatest artists in the field of early music most recently as a student of Drew Minter. His first and last love is small ensemble singing combined with research into the synthesis of music and liturgy. He has assembled several liturgical reconstructions including masses and vespers from Pre-Reformation England, 16th Century Spain and Imperial Germany. Since 2000, John has been actively researching and creating original editions of Renaissance choral masterworks for Polyhymnia, focusing on composers Clemens non Papa and Jacob Vaet. In 2005 John’s new edition of Vaet's Missa Ego flos campi was performed in Boston as a Boston Early Music Festival fringe event. In 2006, John completed Vaet’s Missa Tityre, tu patulae and a set of ceremonial motets for a recording with Polyhymnia that will be released late in 2007. He has just completed a new edition of Nicholas Gombert’s Missa Quam pulchra es et quam decora as well as Gombert's lavish 12-voice Regina Caeli which was performed in New York and Boston this past June. John has also edited some twenty Franco-Flemish, German and Italian motets for the ensemble. John and his partner Charles live in a 19th Century building "with a lot of potential" in Jersey City, NJ with their two over-fed cats, Moses and Abraham.

BIOS

home

Erik-Peter Mortensen, Alto/Baritone. First of his family to be born in the United States, Erik-Peter hails from New York and is a fourth-generation professional musician. At the age of nine, he began his professional singing career with the Men and Boys Choir of the Church of the Transfiguration and the Children's Choruses of both the Metropolitan and the City Opera. Driven by his exposure and passion for early music, Erik-Peter went on to pursue a Bachelor of Music degree at Columbia University. While still a sophomore there, he founded and directed the New York Madrigal Singers, who later went on to produce two CD's, appear on local radio and television shows and receive two positive reviews in the New York Times. Erik-Peter has amassed considerable experience both in directing and in singing in vocal chamber ensembles throughout the Tri-State area. He is currently a member of the choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch. As an emerging recording engineer, he hopes to establish a record label to expressively capture and promote a cappella repertoire as a living legacy of western culture. Erik-Peter has been a member of Polyhymnia since 1998.

Nancy Temple, Soprano, is a multifaceted talent who has been active in opera, theatre and of course early music. She was a founding member of the Light Opera of Manhattan (LOOM), an Off-Broadway repertory company with whom she performed some twenty leading roles. She was featured with that company on NBC's Today program as well as several times on WQXR's The Listening Room. Nancy is a charter member of The Open Book, New York's first professional reader's theatre company, portraying hundreds of characters created by writers such as William Shakespeare, Conrad Aiken, Edna Ferber, Bertrand Russell, Mario Fratti, Daniel Mannes Pinkwater, J.M. Barrie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Charles Dickens, and many others. Nancy has performed and recorded works by contemporary composers Charles Wuorinen, Stefan Wolpe, Morton Feldman, Vincent Persichetti, Iain Hamilton, Theodore Duffy, McNeil Robinson and Paul Michael Levy, among others. Nancy also sang in the choir of Saint Ignatius of Antioch, with whom she made three recordings. She plays the piano, organ and French horn and her resume also includes work in summer stock, dinner theatre, opera, synagogue choirs, big band singing and spoken word recording. In December she will be performing Off-Off-Broadway in The Open Book's adaptation of Marvin Kaye's novel, The Last Christmas of Ebenezer Scrooge. An alumna of Duke University and Manhattan School of Music, she has been a member of Polyhymnia since 2003.

Edward H. Willis, Bass, was born in 1960 in Saint Charles, Illinois. He spent his childhood and was schooled in Portage, Indiana. His first experience in vocal performance was gained at Portage High School as a member of the swing choir and a cast member in musicals. At Indiana University, in Bloomington, he earned a degree in Germanic Literature, spending his senior year at the University of Hamburg in Germany. Both in Bloomington and in Hamburg, Edward pursued his interest in choral music, and had the opportunity to work with Margaret Hillis and Jürgen Jürgens. In 1984, Edward enrolled at New York University, where he later earned a Master's degree in Comparative Literature. Before joining Polyhymnia, he spent many years in the bass sections of the Oratorio Society of New York and the Stonewall Chorale. Today, Edward edits the Germanic Literatures sections of the International Bibliography of Books and Articles on the Modern Languages and Literatures, which is published by the Modern Language Association of America. In addition to occasional freelance translation work, he enjoys singing each Sunday morning in the choir at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Chelsea. Edward has been a member of Polyhymnia since September 2000.

Marjorie Naughton, Alto, began her professional career in the sixth grade as the “low alto” in a local touring a cappella trio in Schuyler County, New York. At 13, she discovered the Renaissance repertoire, and continues today expanding her knowledge of the music of this period with the “Friday Night Group,” which she has directed since 1995. After spending a year teaching English in German secondary schools, Marjorie began musicology studies at NYU, studying with Gustave Reese. Marjorie has sung in a cappella ensembles under several notable conductors, including Iva Dee Hiatt, her mentor, Ruth Ring Harvie, Paul Boepple, Calvin Hampton, and David Hurd. Currently she sings regularly with the choir of St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn with Gregory Eaton. In 2004, she made her public conducting debut, directing an a cappella chorus as part of the “New York Early Music Celebration.” When not making music, Marjorie designs budgets, writes proposals, training curricula and reports for non-profit organizations as well as designing databases. Marjorie has been a guest singer with Polyhymnia on several occasions since 1997.

June Severino Feldman, Alto, joins Polyhymnia after several seasons singing with the New York Madrigal Ensemble. She is alto section leader and soloist for the Riverdale Presbyterian Church Chancel Choir and has composed, arranged and conducted for small instrumental and vocal ensembles at the church and has also conducted its Youth Choir. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Education and Music from SUNY Fredonia which she attended as a clarinet major. She sang with the Festival Chorus there, performing with the Pittsburgh Symphony under William Steinberg and the Buffalo Philharmonic under Michael Tilson Thomas. June studies voice with Marcia Young. June is a native New Yorker and lives on the upper west side with her husband and 2 children.

Wyatt Ford, Tenor, a native New Yorker, has been a member of the Church of the Transfiguration's Choir of Men and Boys since 1995. In 1999, he played Amahl in "Amahl and the Night Visitors" at Transfiguration. In subsequent performances there he has also played the role of the Page and Melchior. Wyatt graduated from Hunter College High School in 2005. He is currently a student at Columbia College, where he has sung with both the Columbia Collegium Musicum and the Barnard-Columbia Chorus. He is also a member of Music Divine, a new early music group that had its inaugural concert last November. This is Wyatt's third season with Polyhymnia.

Emma Hoyt, Alto, began singing when she joined her high school's madrigals. During that time she performed with the Bergen County Chorus, the North Jersey Regional Chorus, the New Jersey All-State Chorus, and at Carnegie Hall with the MENC All-Eastern Honors Ensemble. During her time at Columbia, from which she holds a Bachelor's Degree in Environmental Biology, she performed with the university's Glee Club and has continued to since graduating in 2004. Emma currently works as an apprentice farmer at Stone Barns in Westchester County. This is her second third year with Polyhymnia.

Rob Hollander, Bass-baritone. A self-trained vocalist, Rob has sung with Cappella Oratoriana, Fratres, Sacrum Convivium, The Friday Night Group, the Renaissance Street Singers, Amor Artis, the professional choir of St.Ignatius of Antioch and a variety of ad hoc quartets, trios and duos. Rob holds a Ph.D. in Linguistics (semantics&logic) from the Graduate Center and has taught linguistics there, at NYU and at Hunter College. He also writes on tenement architecture and is active with tenants organizations in preserving the character of funky ethnic New York neighborhoods from overdevelopment and gentrification.

Jeff Hindman, Tenor, began singing in the 5th grade in Huntsville, Alabama. He continued singing right through high school at Indian Springs School in Birmingham, where he sang under Dr. Tim Thomas in more than three school vocal ensembles and toured to the United Nations. While in college at Stanford, Jeff studied voice with Greg Waite and sang in the Stanford Chamber Chorale and the Stanford Fleet Street Singers, a nationally recognized male a cappella group. He sang with Fleet Street at the National Championship of College A Cappella in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in 1996. After college, he returned to Birmingham for medical school and joined the choir at First Presbyterian Church. Four years later Jeff began residency in internal medicine at Yale, where he sang in the Yale Camerata and Pro Musica. Since medicine drew too much time away from his real love, music, Jeff sought out greener pastures as a middle school chorus teacher in Queens. This is Jeff’s second year with Polyhymnia.

Aaron Lauber - Countertenor/Baritone is pleased to be joining Polyhymnia for a second season. Born and raised in Kansas (one of the squarish states in the middle of Flyover Country), Aaron moved to New York in 2005 to find himself. He’s still looking. Meanwhile, he is working as office manager for a small complementary and alternative medicine practice in Midtown, living in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, and performing as a freelance ensemble singer. In addition to Polyhymnia, Aaron is a member of the all-professional choir of the church of St. Ignatius of Antioch.

Rachel Bazaz - Soprano first performed and studied early music in the Rutgers University Collegium Musicum under the direction of Andrew Kirkman. During her studies in voice at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, she sang in the Kirkpatrick Choir under the direction of Patrick Gardner, performed with the Rutgers Opera Company in such roles as the First Lady in The Magic Flute, and studied voice with Brian McIntosh, Christopher Arneson, and Judith Nicosia. Rachel was a section leader at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Westfield, NJ for five years, and currently sings with the St. Joseph's Singers, the resident ensemble at St. Joseph's of Yorkville, the Collegiate Chorale, and the Riverside Choral Society, with whom she made her NY solo debut in their performance of the Schnittke Requiem. Originally from Bergen County, NJ, Rachel currently resides in Manhattan, and works as an associate at Exec|Comm, an executive communication skills consulting firm.

David Lee, (Tenor)

David Usdan - Tenor, a native New Yorker, has been singing with Cantori New York since 1993 under Dr. Mark Shapiro. While Cantori’s repertoire is eclectic and has sometimes included early music, they most often present works by living composers. While singing with Cantori, David was credited for discovering the “Usdan Effect,” when he noticed that singers slowed down whenever printed measures of music, even though in the same time signature, were wider than others on the page. David has wanted to delve more deeply into early music for some time, which makes joining Polyhymnia particularly exciting. David started out singing bass, but while attending a workshop with The Western Wind, Neil Farrell encouraged David to join the ranks of the tenors. He first sang in a chorus at age 9 at the Usdan (founded by a cousin) Center for the Creative and Performing Arts on Long Island, and continued to develop his love for choral music in the high school glee club at Horace Mann School under the musical direction of maestro Johannes Somary. He also sang with The New York Choral Society for two years. David holds a BS in Theatre from Northwestern University, an MS from Columbia University in Social Work, and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Adelphi University. David is currently a clinical psychologist specializing in children. He lives on the upper west side and has a son named Aaron.

Katie Barrett - Soprano

Louis Calvano - Countertenor