2024-2025 Season Artists

Sylvia Berry

Fortepiano

Sylvia Berry is one of North America's leading exponents of historical keyboard instruments. A Philadelphia native based in the Boston area, she’s spent twenty-five years specializing in Viennese music of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Her recording of Haydn's "London Sonatas" on an 1806 Broadwood & Son grand (Acis) drew critical acclaim. Early Music America declared her “a complete master of rhetoric, whether in driving passagework or in cantabile adagios,” while a review in Fanfare stated, “To say that Berry plays these works with vim, vigor, verve, and vitality, is actually a bit of an understatement."

Berry’s concertizing has also garnered notice. Her concerto appearances with acclaimed period instrument orchestra Bach Collegium San Diego led reviewers from the San Diego Union-Tribune to laud her as “a subtle powerhouse who coaxes great force out of what might seem like a smaller instrument,” and to proclaim: “Berry was everywhere at once, showing how this instrument, with such an ensemble, can be more powerful than a modern piano.” Of her chamber playing with the period ensemble Les Délices, Cleveland Classical enthused: “Her splendid playing took her up and down the keyboard in lightning-fast scales and passagework, and her thrilling full-voiced chords allowed the fortepiano to assert itself as a real solo instrument.” Her work on a production of Mozart’s La Clemenza di Tito with Opera Boston led Lloyd Schwartz to write: "Special applause for continuo fortepianist Sylvia Berry, [who played] as if she were one of the actors" in the Boston Phoenix.

Berry is known not only for her exciting performances but for the engaging commentary she provides about the music and instruments she plays. As a scholar she 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’s held masterclasses at The Academy of Fortepiano Performance (Hunter, NY), Longy School of Music of Bard College, Case Western Reserve University, and Baldwin Wallace Conservatory, and presented lectures and lecture recitals at The Center for Beethoven Research (The College of Fine Arts, and the School of Music at Boston University), Simmons University, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. She currently coaches chamber music at Harvard University’s Mather House. As a soloist and as a chamber musician she’s appeared at The Museum of Fine Arts, The Princeton University Art Museum, Monadnock Music, Museum Concerts of Rhode Island, the Portland Early Music Festival, Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque, Cambridge Society of Early Music, Oberlin Conservatory, Emmanuel Music, Baldwin-Wallace College Conservatory, Utrecht Early Music Festival, and Fenton House in London, among others.

sarah cunningham

viola da gamba

Sarah Cunningham is recognized as one of the foremost viola da gambists worldwide. She trained at Harvard University, the Longy School of Music (where she also studied harpsichord with Lisa Crawford) and the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Holland with Wieland Kuijken. She was co-founder, with Monica Huggett, of Trio Sonnerie, with whom she recorded most of the important chamber music for violin and viol, and toured on four continents between 1982 and 1997. She was invited by Sir James Galway to collaborate on his CDs of Bach's flute music, and toured with him in Europe and the USA. Her solo CDs were released on ASV and EMI/Virgin Classics, and she has appeared as recitalist from Helsinki to Vancouver. As concerto soloist she has recorded works by Telemann with The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Monica Huggett.

 Her recording of J.S. Bach’s viola da gamba and harpsichord sonatas, with Richard Egarr, was recently released on Avie Records. She has initiated an extended project recording videos of music by Marin Marais, her interpretation based on rare handwritten markings from the 18th century, found in the University of Rochester’s Sibley Library.

 Since 2010 she has been on the faculty of The Juilliard School's newly created Historical Performance Department, and since fall of 2018 she also teaches at Princeton University.

 Her long-time fascination with improvisation has led to collaborations with dancers Tara Brandel (Ireland) and Leah Stein (Philadelphia), and with percussionist Kyle Struve, as well as with poets and story-tellers here and abroad. Her 2016 degree from Bryn Mawr College, in Interdisciplinary Arts and Performance, brought together visual art, creative writing, dance, and performance art as well as music.

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