The VdGSA is administered by an all-volunteer Board of Directors who work hard to run the many programs we offer. You can read about our current Board members below. For more information about how the Society works, please see our bylaws.
Officers
President
Chrissy Spencer
Atlanta, GA
Chrissy, singer and gambist, helps organize the southeastern regional early music workshops Mountain Collegium and Music on the Mountain. She served on the VdGSA Conclave management team for six years (2013–2018). She is on faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology, advocates for alternative transportation, and keeps chickens in her backyard.
Vice-President
Zoe Weiss
Denver, CO
Zoe has spent most of her professional life playing and teaching the viol as well as thinking about its players and repertories. She has served on the VdGSA Board (2015–2021) and taught at several Conclaves. Zoe is a musicology professor at the University of Denver where she also runs a viol consort. Her current research project is about amateur viol playing.
Past President
John Moran
Arlington, VA
Few things do not interest John. He has played the viol since his days as a cello major at Oberlin and has taught baroque cello and gamba at Peabody for over twenty years. He stays busy at home and on the road, performing, teaching, and writing, and loves to hear from other viol players.
Treasurer
Tracy Hoover
Wichita, KS
Tracy has been an active viol player since her undergraduate days at Wellesley in the 1980s. She and her husband Curt Gridley are the founders of Groover Labs, a tech-focused, nonprofit coworking and makerspace in Wichita. Tracy is also a skilled knitter. She and Curt have two adult children, Henry and Fiona.
Executive Secretary
Sara Blake
Toronto, ON
Sara has enjoyed playing viol consorts at Conclave over the last 20 years. She lives in Toronto and performs with the Cardinal Consort of Viols. She is a retired Barrister, having litigated cases for 35 years, initially representing the Ontario Securities Commission, then the Attorney General for Ontario.
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Membership Secretary
Nancy Washer
Brockport, NY
Nancy lives two blocks from the historic Erie Canal. In addition to her duties on the Board of the national Society, she serves as the Area Coordinator for Western New York, including the Rochester and Buffalo metropolitan areas. After playing the violin for years, she started on the bass viol in graduate school and attended her first Conclave in Boulder, CO after playing for only a few months. She’s been hooked ever since.
Elected Members
Appointed Members
Ex Officio Members
Francis Beaulieu
Montréal, QC
Elected in 2020
Francis has been active as a viol maker for over fifteen years and aspires to someday become a decent player. He enjoys solitude, reading, and walking on cold beaches.
Sarah Cunningham
Haverford, PA
Elected in 2021
Sarah has been playing and teaching the viol all over the world for over fifty years, and it is still her passion to communicate through music across the centuries, with composers, colleagues, students, friends, audiences, and players of all levels. She teaches at Juilliard and Princeton.
Amy Domingues
Washington, DC
Elected in 2019
Amy enjoys a varied musical career performing and teaching cello and viola da gamba. When not doing those things, she is cooking vegan food, entertaining cats, or playing a mean game of Scrabble.
John Phillips
Berkeley, CA
Elected in 2021
A native of Southern California, John holds a BA in German Literature and Music from UC Santa Cruz and an MA in Musicology from UC Berkeley. His professional career has been as a harpsichord maker. He took up the viola da gamba in the new century and now avidly plays it in several sizes.
Gilbert Ritchie
Greenville, SC
Elected in 2022
Gilbert retired from a career in health-care administration, and more recently, medical software development. His interest in early music began with recorder in college, and expanded to the viol while playing in an early music group in the 1980s. He is also a founding board member of SC Bach, a non-profit committed to producing performances of the music of JS Bach and his contemporaries.
Anne Duranceau
Vancouver, BC
Elected in 2021
A former ballet dancer and current double bass player, Anne long ago discovered the viol, and instantly started longing to play. It took two decades before she could borrow her first viol, and longer still to acquire her own instrument. She now plays a few sizes of viols, violone, and lirone in various ensembles in British Columbia, including the Historical Performance Ensemble and Vancouver Viols.
Lindsey Macchiarella
El Paso, TX
Elected in 2020
​​Lindsey is a musicologist on the faculty of the University of Texas at El Paso, where she teaches music history and directs the UTEP early music ensemble. She regularly performs locally on both recorder and viola da gamba with her early music quartet, Sprezzatura. Her research specialties are early modern music in France and Russia, especially the work of Aleksandr Skryabin.
Patricia Ann Neely
New York, NY
Elected in 2019
Pat is a viol player and music teacher. She holds degrees from Vassar and Sarah Lawrence Colleges and has performed with many early music ensembles, including Sequentia, Tempesta di Mare, Washington Bach Consort, Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, Rheinische Kantorei Köln. She directs Abendmusik, New York’s early music string band and chairs Early Music America's Equity and Diversity Task Force.
Alice Robbins
Amherst, MA
Elected in 2023
Alice teaches in the Five College Early Music Program at Mount Holyoke and Smith Colleges. A graduate of Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum of Basel, Switzerland, she has performed widely on both baroque cello and viola da gamba. Having fallen in love with the viol at age 9, she began playing in college and joined the VdGSA in 1972. She is also president of the New England chapter.
Parliamentarian
Ken Perlow
Cerrillos, NM
Policy and Compliance Advisor
Ann Barclay Rovner
Maui, HI
Ann has been playing viol since the late 1980s and has studied with Julie Elhard. She helped start the North Star Viols–Minnesota chapter after attending her first Conclave in Northfield, Minnesota. After moving to Maui several years ago, she was thrilled to find other gamba players there. She is the chapter representative for both Minnesota and Hawaii.
Young Players' Representative
David Hunt
Charleston, SC
Conclave Music Director
Sarah Mead
Natick, MA
Sarah loves polyphony, and is happiest when sharing that love through performing, teaching, or writing. She was Conclave Music Director from 2010 to 2016. For forty years she taught early music performance and history at Brandeis University, and was lucky enough to travel far and wide to perform and teach. When she's not making music or talking about it, you're likely to find her in the garden thinking about it.
Conclave Manager
Haley Moore
Plano, TX
Conclave Manager
Pedro Funes
Houston, TX
Pedro is a member of Team Spork (Conclave Management). He currently is the Assistant Orchestra Director at Woodcreek MS in Humble ISD and Director of Viols of the Creek (Woodcreek MS/Summer Creek HS Viol Ensemble), founding member of Les Touches and president of Viols of Houston. He has two cats named Marais and Elsa with husband Kallop.
Conclave Manager
Marie Ridolfo
Greenville, SC
Marie Ridolfo has held diverse positions in non-profit and arts administration, including recording studios, concert halls, booking agencies, and churches. She currently serves as founder and director of the Music at Saint Andrew’s concert series in Greenville, SC. Recently, her focus has been singing while accompanying herself on viol, as well as mastering the Italian language.
Newsletter Co-Editor
Jane Furth
New York, NY
Jane first touched a viol ca. 1979, attended Conclave regularly starting in 1997, led the Greater New York chapter of the VdGSA for twelve years, and joined the newsletter staff when she was first elected to the Board in 2013. Her real life has included teaching English in a New York City public school and reporting, writing, and editing for Life and Fortune magazines.
Newsletter Co-Editor
Randolph Miles
Bergen, Norway
Randolph became involved with the VdGSA in 2008 when he designed the current logo, and continues to support the Society with graphic design, working on the design of the previous and current websites. Randolph is an architect in Bergen, Norway, and is an amateur bass gamba player.
Website Committee Chair
Tobi Szuts
Oakland, CA
In college, Tobi fell for the euphoria of a well-tuned consort that can spontaneously play quietly. He studied with Jane Hershey in Boston and loves playing Senfl from original manuscripts. Being head of the Website Committee is half-way between consort music and his day job as a data scientist.
Rental Program Coordinator
Kathleen Merfeld
Key Largo, FL
Kathleen has administered the VdGSA’s Rental Program for the past ten years. She has also served on the committees for the Consort Loan Program, the instrument donations, Chapters, and the Circuit Rider Program. She plays in the Tropical Viols Consort based in Miami.
After listening to early music for decades, Haley finally took up the viol at the ripe age of 43, and her first Conclave confirmed that she had found her instrument and her people! She plays for fun with a group in Dallas, where she is a high-school librarian with an unwieldy number of side-interests and a mountainous pile of books still to be read.
David Hunt was born and raised in Seneca, SC. He began playing the viol in 2007 and has studied with Gail Ann Schroeder and Jane Hershey. He currently lives in Charleston, SC where he is the Cantor at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and plays with The Spartina Consort.
Ken Perlow is a retired computer engineer living in New Mexico who served as treasurer of the VdGSA from 1996 to 2014. He is a founding director and treasurer of the Santa Fe based early music consortium Severall Friends. He was manager of Chicago’s Newberry Consort from 2004 to 2010 and Interim Director of Early Music America from 2001 to 2002. He is an avid student of Renaissance neo-Platonism.