2022 AFP Guest Faculty and Lecturers
Pierre Goy is returning to AFP following his successful Chopin concert and lecture in the 2018 Academy. Mr. Goy has become known as one of the most versatile and thoughtful performers on historical keyboard instruments. Having studied with a number of prominent European teachers, he is equally at home playing Romantic virtuoso repertoire as 18th century music for the harpsichord and clavichord. His discography includes piano music by Chopin, Liszt, and Mozart, as well as harpsichord music by A.L. Couperin. He is the founder and artistic director of the biannual Rencontres Internationales Harmoniques in his native Lausanne, Switzerland. Since 2002 the festival has brought together musicians, musicologists, instrument builders, and museum curators for an exchange of knowledge regarding period instruments.
Sylvia Berry is one of North America's leading exponents of historical keyboard instruments. A Philadelphia native based in the Boston area, she has played countless types of fortepianos, harpsichords, organs, and clavichords, including many noteworthy antiques. Her recording of Haydn's "London Sonatas” on an 1806 Broadwood & Son grand (#3448, restored by Dale Munschy) drew wide critical acclaim. Though primarily a fortepianist, Berry’s engagement with a wide variety of keyboard instruments and repertoire has informed her musicianship and understanding of historical performance practices for 25 years. She has performed with ensembles such as Les Délices, Ars Antiqua, and the Chamber Orchestra of Boston. Her own period instrument ensemble, The Berry Collective, has appeared at The Museum of Fine Arts, The Princeton University Art Museum, Monadnock Music, and Museum Concerts of Rhode Island. In May 2022 she will appear as a concerto soloist with Bach Collegium San Diego.
Berry is also a published scholar who has written and lectured on the performance practices and keyboard instruments of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, as well as the sociological phenomena surrounding the music of this period. She has also taught masterclasses and given lectures at universities and conservatories throughout the U.S. She attended the New England Conservatory, Oberlin Conservatory, and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. She counts David Breitman, Lisa Goode Crawford, David Boe, Malcolm Bilson, Stanley Hoogland, and Bart van Oort among her teachers and mentors. She currently coaches chamber music at Harvard University’s Mather House.
John Mortensen is a leader in the international revival of historic improvisation. Appearing frequently as concert artist and masterclass teacher at colleges and universities in America and Europe, he is noted for his ability to improvise entire concerts in historic styles, including complex compositions such as Baroque fugues.
He is the author of The Pianist’s Guide to Historic Improvisation (Oxford University Press, 2020), the world’s best-selling book in the field of historic keyboard improvisation, now in use as a course text at many leading conservatories.
Mortensen is a Steinway Artist and an Ohio Artist on Tour. In 2017 he was selected as a Fulbright Specialist by the U.S. Department of State to serve as an international artistic ambassador on behalf of the American people. In 2018 he toured Europe for three months, performing and teaching improvised music at conservatories across the continent. In 2019 the State Department named him a Fulbright Global Scholar in Historic Improvisation, leading to performances and teaching at the national conservatories of Lithuania, Latvia, The United Kingdom, Denmark, and Canada.
He is the creator of Improv Planet, an online school of historic improvisation, where his students include concert artists and conservatory faculty from across the world.
He serves as professor of piano at Cedarville University. In 2016 he was named Faculty Scholar of the Year, that institution’s highest award.
Visit his website at johnmortensen.com.
Harpsichordist Thérèse de Goede specializes in basso continuo and historical performance practice. She has been teaching since 1994 at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (formerly the Sweelinck Conservatorium) and has been a guest lecturer at the Universität der Künste Berlin since 2007. She frequently contributes to symposia and conferences in Europe and North America and is regularly invited to give seminars and masterclasses at international music academies and universities.
Thérèse de Goede studied at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Anneke Uittenbosch, Gustav Leonhardt, and Ton Koopman and received her Soloist Diploma in 1976. She performed with renowned Early Music soloists, worked with various ensembles and orchestras, and played continuo in several opera productions. In 2015, guided by Peter Holman, she completed her doctoral thesis: “Del sonare sopra ‘l basso”: The Theory and Practice of Basso Continuo Accompaniment in the Seventeenth Century.
Her research concerns the theory and playing styles of 17th-century basso continuo and, more currently, on 18th-century thoroughbass practices of the Galant style. It covers the development from modal to tonal harmony, in particular with regard to the realization of unfigured basses and the differences in harmonic language and characteristic national/regional styles. A specific point of interest is the improvisation of diminutions and ornaments in different style idioms both in continuo realization and in the performance of vocal and instrumental solo parts.
From 2005 to 2013, Thérèse de Goede was head of the Early Music department of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. She initiated and designed Basso continuo Specialization as a Bachelor/Master study (the Conservatorium van Amsterdam was the first institute in the world to offer this program) and designed a special course on historical harmony, improvisation, and ornamentation for singers. In 2006 she initiated The Early Music Summer School of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. This annual event attracts students from all over the world.