Hello friends, on behalf of the Board of the Portland Recorder Society, I would like to announce the faculty line-up for the 2024 Columbia Gorge Early Music Retreat.

Coming to us from Amsterdam, Netherlands, Sarah Jeffrey. Also, returning to us after a brief hiatus, Seattle’s best, Vicki Boeckman, and what would CGEMR be without Portland favorites, Gayle Neuman and Phil Neuman. I will be rounding out this stellar faculty with bagpipes in hand!

We have made a huge change in partnering with Menucha Retreat Center, but nothing changes about how great the workshop will be. Same great place. Same great workshop. Same amazing faculty. Same amount of fun!

Check your calendars for the dates: Thursday – Sunday, March 21—24, 2024.

Registration opens: November 1st, 2023. 10:00 am

Feel free to reach out to Portland Recorder Society if you have questions.

Laura Kuhlman

Laura Kuhlman is a recent transplant to Portland, OR from Chicago, Illinois, where she spent many years as a freelance musician. From Bach to Broadway, Laura has enjoyed partnerships with several early music ensembles including the Burgundian Ensemble, Masqued Phoenix, and the Too Early Consort. In 2011, Laura performed with members of Lizodes in Ecuador and in 2012 with members of Piffaro for the Washington DC Revels and in December 2016 with the Portland Revels. Laura has performed with theater orchestras in the Chicago area, including Pheasant Run, Oak Park & River Forest Stage Productions. Laura will share the stage once again with Piffaro in the Washington, DC Revels this coming December 2018.

Laura is the music director for the Portland Recorder Society and the Recorder Orchestra of Oregon, in addition to CGEMR. She is the recent past President of the national American Recorder Society. Along with Juan Carlos Arango and Robert Wiemken, Laura organized the Indiana Early Double Reed Workshop, now in its 18th season and has taught at the Kalamazoo Recorder Workshop in Kalamzoo, MI, the San Francisco Recorder Workshop in California, Whitewater Early Music Festival in Wisconsin and recently the Vernon Proms Festival in Vernon, BC, Canada.

Laura performs with The Oregon Renaissance Band in Portland. She is the musician scheduler and performer for the English Country Dance community in Portland. She also teaches flute, saxophone, recorder, early double reeds and renaissance bagpipes both at workshops and in her private studio.

Phil Neuman

Phil Neuman, a performer on recorder, sackbutt, and various other wind and stringed instruments, co-founded and co-directs the Oregon Renaissance Band which has performed for the Regensburg Early Music Festival and recorded the CDs “Carnevale” and “Now make we joye”. He appears in the movie “Buddymoon”, and on the original soundtrack of the recent remake of Ben-Hur playing ancient Greek instruments. He has played for audiences on three continents, including performances at ancient theater sites in Greece. He teaches regularly at several early music workshops, and conducts Advanced Recorder, Renaissance Winds, and Loud Band classes at the Community Music Center in Portland. He also teaches the online Zoom Consort Class with Gayle Neuman and Laura Kuhlman. Phil has performed with the American Bach Soloists, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, the Mercury Baroque Orchestra, and the Handel & Haydn Society Orchestra. He wrote “Fantasia on Faithless Nancy Dawson” for the Play-the-Recorder Month 2019 featured selection of the American Recorder Society. He has composed, arranged and transcribed over a thousand works for recorder ensemble, brass ensemble, and symphonic wind ensemble, including “Theme and Variations” that won first place in the San Francisco Recorder Composition Competition. With his wife Gayle, he has built over 450 early wind and stringed instruments including krummhorns, cornamusen, douçaines, and racketts.

Gayle Neuman

Gayle Neuman, a performer on violin, recorder, sackbutt, and many other instruments, is also a vocalist who has received international acclaim for her renditions of the “Song of Seikilos,” the “Chorus from Orestes,” and others upon the release of Ensemble De Organographia’s CD Music of the Ancient Greeks. Several of the tracks from that recording have also appeared in the Norton Scores Recorded Anthology of Western Music, and numerous films and television programs. She appears as herself in the award-winning film “Buddymoon” and recorded music for the recent remake of Ben-Hur. She composed and arranged music for the production of “Mary Stuart” directed by Elizabeth Huffman for Northwest Classical Theatre. She has performed for audiences in the U.S., Japan, Israel, Turkey, Greece, Canada, Norway, Germany, and for members of the royal family in Jordan. She co-founded and co-directs the Oregon Renaissance Band, and has played under the baton of Monica Huggett and Ton Koopman. She teaches Recorder and Collegium Musicum classes at Portland’s Community Music Center, and has given workshops and presentations at many institutions including Oberlin Conservatory, Rice University, Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Getty Center. She has built with her husband Phil over 400 early wind and stringed instruments including krummhorns, cornamusen, racketts, and vielles.

 

Vicki Boeckman

Vicki Boeckman is a passionate musician who has been performing and teaching since the 1980s. Her career as a professional recorder player has been a highly rewarding journey which has taken her to many countries and given her the opportunity to record numerous CDs with incredible musicians in various ensemble settings. She is honored to be an integral part of Seattle’s vibrant early music community as well as being in demand as a teacher at workshops and seminars across the US and in British Columbia.

Before settling in Seattle, Vicki resided in Denmark from 1981-2005, first as a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Music, later collaborating with some of the finest musicians and composers of the day including Per Nørgård, Hans Abrahamsen, Ole Buck, and Markus Zahnhausen to name a few. Her Danish recorder trio Wood’N’Flutes had a fantastic 15-year run performing all over Europe and received government grants to work with contemporary composers in addition to children’s theater. She was an adjunct professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Music in Copenhagen for 12 years and taught at the Ishøj Municipal School of Music for 23 years. Many of those students are now professionals, performing and teaching in conservatories in Denmark and around Europe.

In the Pacific Northwest Vicki has been a featured soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, the Yakima Symphony, Portland Baroque Orchestra, The Oregon Symphony, Portland Opera, Medieval Women’s Choir, Gallery Concerts, Boise Philharmonic, Philharmonia Northwest Orchestra, and the Skagit Symphony. She is currently a member of the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Music director for the Seattle Recorder Society, co-director for the Recorder Orchestra of Puget Sound (ROPS), and Artistic Director for the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop. She adores teaching children as well as adults, and has been on the faculty at Music Center of the Northwest since 2005 in addition to having a thriving home and Zoom studio. Vicki is a two-time recipient of the recorder residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Oregon, and a two-time recipient of the Jack Straw Artist Support Program.

Vicki embraces opportunities to laugh and appreciate friends and family, spend time outdoors, cook and eat good food, drink wine and single malts (responsibly), walk briskly, and make things grow in the garden. She is overjoyed (and relieved) to be returning to live, in-person concerts and workshops after the pandemic hiatus and eagerly looking forward to working with cherished colleagues at the Columbia Gorge Early Music Retreat.

Sarah Jeffery

Sarah Jeffery is one of the world’s foremost promoters of the recorder, and a passionate champion of contemporary music. She has commissioned and premiered dozens of contemporary works and is regularly found performing on stages and festivals all over the globe. Off-stage, she is recognized as an expert on the instrument, appearing on the BBC, as well as being a regular feature on radio and television. For her efforts, she has received praise for “standing out from the established repertoire” and “fresh, surprising, and explosive” performances from Dutch NRC newspaper, and “the height of sonic and soundtrack cool, out there at the edges of compositional innovation and performatice possiblity” from BBC Radio 3. In 2022 she was appointed ‘Recorder Professor Specialising in Contmporary Music’ at the Royal College of Music in London.


Recent accolades include Best of Classical Music 2020 in the NRC for the production While We Live, which also gathered 25 awards and nominations at international film festivals worldwide. She was recently appointed Honorary Vice President of the Society of Recorder Players in the UK, for her services to the music community. Off-stage, she is recognized as an expert on the instrument and a consummate professional presenter whether on Radio 3, discussing music education with Jeremy Vine on Radio 2,  or producing books for major publishers. She is regularly asked for appointments in Hollywood, whether recording the soundtrack to Bob’s Burgers or producing content for Netflix. 


She has gained significant notoriety over the years, with a full suite of past performances including contemporary stages such as Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, Venice Biennale, Berlin festspiele, the Gaudeamus Festival NL, Sonorities festival Belfast,  and NEU/NOW festival Glasgow. Early music podia include the London International Festival of Early Music, the Utrecht Early Music Festival, and Korkyra Baroque Festival in Croatia. Audiences recognize Jeffery as the only recorder player invited to join Splendor, the award-winning Amsterdam-based music collective, as of 2016.


Competition successes include 1st prize and the contemporary music prize at the Nordhorn International Recorder Competition, contemporary music prize at the ORDA recorder competition, and the Talent Boven Water prize at the Grachtenfestival.


Recent career highlights include a guest star appearance on BBC children’s programme ‘YolanDa’s Band Jam’, recent travels to Singapore to act as musical director for the film ‘Recorder Rewrite’, which was screened at the Venice Biennale. Jeffery’s debut album, Constellations was released in 2018, for which Jeffery attained rare permission to arrange and perform Steve Reich’s “Vermont Counterpoint.”  She has performed in venues globally from New Zealand to Brazil, and throughout Europe from Romania to Finland. 

In addition to her solo career, Ms. Jeffery performs regularly with a number of her own projects, ranging from experimental pop band Jerboah, to recorder trio aXolot, to Renaissance recorder consort The Royal Wind Music, and much more. Other notable ensembles Sarah has worked with include the Nieuw Ensemble, Het Zuidelijk Toneel, s t a r g a z e orchestra, Psallentes choir, Amsterdam Cello Octet, Jeugdtheater Sonnevanck, PRIME recorder ensemble, the Veenfabriek, Resonate Productions, Atlas Ensemble, and the White Noise Orchestra.

In an effort to maximize her reach, Ms. Jeffery has cultivated an educational presence both on and offline. Online, she posts weekly instructional tutorials on technique, improvisation, repertoire, and much more on her YouTube channel, Team Recorder. One of the most recognizable resources for recorder, the channel has amassed over 170,000 loyal subscribers. Her channel has worked in partnership with global brands such as Netflix, Yamaha, and ABRSM. In response to Covid Sarah developed two online courses at different levels, and these regularly sell out.


Outside YouTube, Ms. Jeffery not only has teaching experience from age five to the professional level, but also conducted improvisation and composition workshops in the SoundLAB of the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ for eleven years. She has taught more specialized recorder courses across Europe and in Brazil and New Zealand, including at the Birmingham Conservatoire, Dartington Summer School, Conservatorium van Amsterdam, FolkWorld Summer School, and Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.


Outside pedagogy, Ms. Jeffery co-ordinates the biannual ORDA Teachers Conference in Amsterdam, and can be found giving lectures at a range of education conferences, including MERYC and the Utrecht Early Music Festival. She also has written for music publications such as Tempo, Primephonic, and Blokfluitist magazine, where she long formed part of the editorial team.

Originally from Derbyshire in the United Kingdom, Sarah Jeffery is currently based in Amsterdam. She holds both a Master of Music cum laude and Bachelor of Music diploma from the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where she completed a thesis on the relationship between clog dancing and contemporary music theatre, and also holds a first class Bachelor of Music degree from the Birmingham Conservatoire. She is grateful to her masterful pedagogues, who include Jorge Isaac, Walter van Hauwe and Annabel Knight.