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.

 

Lisette Kielson

Based in Central Illinois Lisette Kielson performs as soloist, chamber musician, and orchestral player throughout the Midwest. Past president of the American Recorder Society, Lisette relishes teaching on the faculty of the Whitewater Early Music Festival, directing the ARS Chicago Chapter, and maintaining her active schedule of Zoom lessons and workshops across the country. She holds Bachelor and Master Degrees from Indiana University and a post-master’s Diploma from The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, Netherlands. She has released recordings of Bach and Boismortier with Centaur Records as well as CDs under her own label. Lisette is excited to return to and collaborate with everyone at the Gorge!

Glen Shannon

Glen Shannon is a composer and recorder enthusiast living in El Cerrito, CA where he a member of the East Bay (CA) Recorder Society and newly appointed Co-Director of the Barbary Coast Recorder Orchestra. His love of straight forward, approachable music for the recorder has garnered him several prizes in composition contests since 1997, including the Chicago and Washington, DC Recorder Societies, the ARS and the former Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet. Members of the former Flanders Recorder Quartet, Tom Beets and Joris Van Goethem, have commissioned works from him for their advanced-level “AirForce” workshops in the UK and Northern Europe, and they most recently commissioned a Bass-Contrabass duet that they recorded for their first CD, as the duo FR2. Glen publishes his music under his own name at http://www.glenshannonmusic.com, and has also had works published by Moeck Verlag, PRB Productions, Loux Music Publishing Company, the European recorder magazines, “Recorder”in the UK and “Blokfluitist” in the Netherlands, and the American Recorder Society. Performances of some of his works can be found on YouTube at www.youtube.com/glenshannon. Glen is active in the American Recorder Society as editor of the quarterly Members’ Library Editions, a series introducing new recorder music to the worldwide membership, and he is the editor of the annual ARS Play-the-Recorder-Month piece that appears with the Winter edition of the American Recorder magazine. In October 2021 Glen received the ARS Presidential Special Honor Award, recognizing a person who has had a significant positive impact on the recorder community in North America.