B i o g r a p h i e s
Hailed as “a fine, flexible ensemble” by The New York Times, Ensemble Origo is an early music organization founded in 2011 and directed by Connecticut-based musicologist and conductor Eric Rice. Its aim is to present vibrant performances of early music (from the Middle Ages through the baroque) that reflect the context in which the repertory was originally produced and heard; “Origo” is Latin for “earliest beginning,” “lineage,” or “origin.” The ensemble draws on a roster of professional musicians from Connecticut, Boston, and New York. Its debut recording, released on the Naxos label in 2021, is “Orlande de Lassus – Le nozze in Baviera: Music for the 1568 Wedding of Wilhelm V of Bavaria and Renate of Lorraine." It includes Lasso’s moresche — settings of texts uttered in Neapolitan dialect by enslaved Africans from the Bornu Empire. Another recording still in post-production is "Luther's Deutsche Messe" a reconstruction of a mass as it might have been performed in Martin Luther's orbit ca. 1530, which grew out of a concert program commemorating the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation in 2017. A third recording project in post-production is “The Last Imperial Coronation – Music for the 1530 Coronation of Charles V in Bologna”; a collaboration with Digital Media colleagues at the University of Connecticut on a multi-modal virtual reality presentation published on the Meta-Quest platform. The ensemble completed a recording of "Us sarao de la Chacona — Tracing the African and Mesoamerican Origins of the Sarabande and the Chaconne," now also in post-production, in May 2025.
Artists for Fall 2025 Concert – Saravanda! Dances of New Spain
MICHAEL BARRETT, tenor, is a Boston-based conductor, singer, multi-instrumentalist, and teacher. He serves as music director of The Boston Cecilia. Barrett is also an Assistant Professor at the Berklee College of Music, where he teaches courses in conducting and European music history, and until recently served as Interim Director of the Five College Early Music Program. Michael has performed with many professional early music ensembles, including Blue Heron, the Boston Camerata, the Huelgas Ensemble, Vox Luminis, the Handel & Haydn Society, Nederlandse Bachvereniging (Netherlands Bach Society), Seven Times Salt, Schola Cantorum of Boston, Ensemble Origo, and Nota Bene, and can be heard on the harmonia mundi, Blue Heron, Coro, Naxos, and Toccata Classics record labels. He holds degrees in music (AB, Harvard University), voice (First Phase Diploma, Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands), and choral conducting (MM, Indiana University; DMA, Boston University).
CAROLINE COPELAND is the Associate Director of the New York Baroque Dance Company, appearing with the troupe at the Drottningholm Theater, the International HändelFestspiele Göttingen, Guggenheim Museum, and Potsdam Sanssouci Music Festival. She is a dancer and choreographer at the Boston Early Music Festival where choreographic credits include Campra's Le Carnaval de Venise, Handel’s Almira, Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in Patria, and Steffani’s Niobe. As a soloist, Caroline has collaborated with many groups around the US and Europe including Nordic Baroque Dancers, The New Dutch Academy, Juilliard415, Cantata Profana, and Mertz Trio. Her choreography has been presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, The Kennedy Center, The Public Theater, and the Philipszaal in The Hague. She is on the dance faculties of Hofstra University and SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance and a guest lecturer for Juilliard’s Historical Performance program. She holds a BA in Dance/Goucher College and MFA in Dance/Sarah Lawrence College.
SARAH MEAD is a sought-after teacher of viol and Renaissance performance practice who has performed throughout the U.S. and overseas as far afield as New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Brazil, and the UK. In this country she has performed with ARTEK, Tenet, Emmanuel Music, the Handel & Haydn Society, Pegasus Baroque, Schola Cantorum, and Ensemble Origo. She has served as Music Director of the annual Conclave of the Viola da Gamba Society of America and plans to return to that role in 2025. Her performing editions of historical and original works for viols have been published by PRB Productions, and she edits a quadrennial publication of little-known works for viols for the VdGSA. In 2007, she received the Thomas Binkley Award from Early Music America for outstanding achievement in performance and scholarship for her work with the Early Music Ensembles at Brandeis University, from which she recently retired as Professor of the Practice of Music. Mead is a founding member and musical director of the viol consort Nota Bene, whose recording Pietro Vinci: Quattordeci Sonetti Spirituali was released by Toccata Classics (London) in 2020.
A versatile multi-instrumentalist, DAN MEYERS is an enthusiastic performer of both classical and folk music; his credits range from contemporary chamber music, to the Newport Folk Festival, to playing Renaissance instruments on Broadway for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre Company. He is a founding member of the early music/folk crossover group Seven Times Salt, and in recent seasons he has performed with the The Folger Consort, The Newberry Consort, Hesperus, The Henry PurcellSociety of Boston, Early Music New York, Amherst Early Music, The 21st Century Consort, and In Stile Moderno. He enjoys playing traditional Irish music with the bands Ulster Landing and Ishna, and eclectic fusion from around the Mediterranean with the US/Italy-based group Zafarán. He has taught historical wind instruments for the Five Colleges Early Music Program in Massachusetts, at Tufts University, and at workshops around the US. Dan holds a Master of Music degree from the Longy School of Music.
Musicologist and conductor ERIC RICE is Professor of Music at the University of Connecticut, where he teaches music history and directs the Collegium Musicum. He is the 2019 recipient of Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award for excellence in performance and scholarship by the director of a university early music ensemble. He also directs Ensemble Origo, praised by the Boston Musical Intelligencer as “aesthetically…top-notch” with “immaculate execution”; and by The New York Times as “a fine, flexible ensemble,” presenting concerts and making recordings reflecting the context in which early repertory was originally heard. He was previously Artistic Director of the Connecticut Early Music Festival and music director of the Boston-based ensemble Exsultemus. His scholarly focus is medieval and Renaissance liturgy and its relationship to architecture, politics, and secular music, and also representations of non-Western cultures in Western music. His books are Music and Ritual at Charlemagne’s Marienkirche in Aachen and Young Choristers, 650-1700 (co-edited with Susan Boynton), the first scholarly volume dedicated to the history of professional child singers. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, and he has received fellowships to pursue archival research in Germany and France. Raised in Brooklyn, New York, Rice discovered early music at Bowdoin College. After four years as a schooner captain at the South Street Seaport Museum, he earned a PhD in Musicology and a Certificate in Medieval and Renaissance studies from Columbia University. He taught at Brandeis University for two years before joining UConn’s faculty in 2003.
Violinist SHELBY YAMIN is a sought-after chamber musician, recitalist, and soloist. Recent season highlights include appearances as soloist with the Albany Symphony (NY), Blue Hill Bach Festival (ME), Oregon Bach Festival (OR), Philharmonia Baroque Chamber Players (CA), New York Baroque Incorporated (NY), House of Time (NY), and Voices of Music (CA), and as guest violinist with the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society’s Axelrod String Quartet (D.C.). Shelby has been a core member of Les Délices (Cleveland, OH) since 2022, and is the associate producer for the ensemble’s award-winning early music webseries and podcast, SalonEra. Shelby holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and The Juilliard School, where she won the historical-performance concerto competition.
Lutenist DANI ZANUTTINI-FRANK has appeared as a soloist and chamber musician in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. He has performed with Twelfth Night, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, A Far Cry, and Tiny Glass Tavern. He most recently completed a Graduate Diploma in Historical Performance at Juilliard, studying with Charles Weaver and Daniel Swenberg. He completed his Bachelor's and Master's at Yale, where he studied classical guitar and music theory. Outside of performance, Dani teaches and researches historical music theory. He is particularly interested in historical pedagogical methods, such as solfeggio and partimento, and their spread across musical cultures.