Artistic Director Paul Flight leads the 30-voice choir with vocal soloists and an orchestra of period instruments, featuring some of the finest early music specialists in the Bay Area.
Vocal soloists Caroline Jou Armitage, soprano, and Sepp Hammer, baritone, will join the chorus for Schutz’s Weihnachtshistorie, with our own Paul Flight as The Narrator.
Caroline Jou Armitage, Soprano
Proud CBS chorister from 2011-2017, soprano Caroline Jou Armitage is known to Bay Area audiences for her “absolutely beautiful” solo performances sung with “pitch-perfect clarity and affecting intensity” (San Francisco Classical Voice). A frequent soloist with the California Bach Society, she has performed Handel’s Dixit Dominus, Bach’s Cantatas BWV 21 and 198, Bach’s Mass in G Major, Bach’s Mass in A Major, and Respighi’s Lauda per la Nativita (role of Angel). Caroline sang Handel opera arias and duets with contralto Karen Clark at the 2018 Berkeley Festival and Exhibition and appeared as a soloist with the Amherst Early Music Festival. Her operatic roles include Laetitia in Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, Lucy in Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera, the First Lady and Papagena from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and Norina in scenes from Donizetti’s Don Pasquale. She was the featured soloist in a concert of opera arias and choruses with Chora Nova where she sang arias from Purcell’s The Fairy Queen, Weber’s Der Freichütz, and Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. In March 2022, she will be performing Webern’s Dehmel lieder with pianist Janis Mercer. Caroline currently studies voice with Karen Clark and harpsichord with Tamara Loring Greene.
Sepp Hammer, Baritone
Sepp Hammer’s voice has been described as showing “warm baritone gravity” (The Boston Globe). His concert engagements in recent seasons include the role of Jesus in Bach’s St. Matthew Passion with California Bach Society, Eupolemus in Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus with Philharmonia Baroque, Bach's Schwingt freudig euch empor with Cantata Collective, Zelenka’s Gloria with Chora Nova, Vaughan Williams’ Five Mystical Songs with Contra Costa Chorale, and, with various ensembles, Charpentier Messe des Morts, Schütz Symphoniae Sacrae, Bach Magnificat, Bach B Minor Mass, Haydn Lord Nelson Mass, Schubert Mass in G Major, Brahms Requiem, Fauré Requiem, and Duruflé Requiem. On the opera stage, Sepp’s roles include Aeneas in Dido and Aeneas, the title role in Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro, the Speaker in The Magic Flute, and John Proctor in The Crucible. Sepp holds a master’s degree in vocal performance from New England Conservatory and is a member of the Philharmonia Baroque Chorale.
Orchestra
Lars Johannesson and Alissa Roedig, recorder
John Thomas, alto sackbut
Becca Burrington, tenor sackbut
David Deitch, bassoon
Christine Meals and Rachel Hurwitz, violin
Elizabeth Reed, treble viol
Daniel Deitch, treble viol
Farley Pearce, cello
Cheryl Ann Fulton, harp
Yuko Tanaka, organ