The Christmas Revels ~ A Celebration
of the Winter Solstice

The Hopkins Center for the Arts
at Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH

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Audiences at this year's Christmas Revels were  whisked away to England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I as the Queen visited her English subjects in the countryside on the eve of the winter solstice. 

 This musical adventure encompassed the Golden Age of Queen Elizabeth I. Queen Elizabeth was in attendance with all her court and pageantry as she visited the country folk in a shire town on the Solstice.  Wild antics ensued as the folk did their best to entertain her with Solstice fun.  Filled with period music, medieval carols, rounds and dances, highlights included St. George and the Dragon, a mummers play and the ancient and mysterious Abbots Bromley Horn Dance.  And, as in every Christmas Revels, the audience joined in the fun, singing rounds and carols and

dancing with the cast through the aisles for Lord of the Dance. 

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 Revels North welcomed guest ensemble Punk’s Delight !

 Members of this band, a quartet of acclaimed early-music multi-instrumentalists, have been entertaining audiences for over 30 years at Revels' performances in Cambridge, Hanover, New York and Washington. 

 Jay Rosenberg: singer, guitarist and actor, he studied music theory, composition and arranging at Berklee College of Music and at the Longy School of Music.  He studied the performance of early music with the Quadrivium, led by Marleen Montgomery. His proficiency as a vocalist and multi-instrumentalist (on lute, ‘ud, classical guitar, recorder, percussion and Renaissance winds) led to his joining, in 1978, the internationally acclaimed Sephardic music group Voice of the Turtle. He has been the Assistant Director of the Quadrivium as well as Chorus Master of Revels. Jay was for nine years the Director of Northern Harmony. He has recorded twelve albums of Sephardic music with Voice of the Turtle and he performs regularly in the New England schools with the trio Promised Land. He teaches recorder, guitar and percussion and is on the faculty of the Powers Music School and the Suzuki School of Newton. He also taught for ten years at the Pinewoods Camp Early Music Week, and presently teaches at the World Fellowship Center Early Music Week. When not making music, Jay enjoys photography, figure skating, kayaking and four-season hiking, with an especial love for the canyonlands of the American Southwest.

Lisle Kulbach: a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and a Bodky Award winner. She pursued additional studies in early music performance with Marleen Montgomery’s Quadrivium and has performed and taught medieval, Renaissance, baroque, classical and country dance music for over 30 years.  She is a co-founder of the Separdic music ensemble Voice of the Turtle and specializes in bowed strings (rebec, kamanja, violin, vielle, violas da gamba), recorders, shawms, keyboard, percussion and voice.  She appears on twelve recordings with Voice of the Turtle as well as several Revels albums.

Hildur Colot began playing early winds in 1969 as a student of Marleen Montgomery and performed extensively with the Quadrivium and Alexander’s Feast during the following decade.  A flute player by training, she immediately developed a passion for early double reeds, including bagpipes, and has recently taken up the bassoon.  She has appeared in many Revels productions in Cambridge, Hanover, and New York and can be heard on several Revels recordings.  Other credits include appearances in Hartland Community Arts productions and a recent concert of the Thetford Chamber Singers. Hildur has recently retired from her job as a researcher at Dartmouth Medical School.

Karen Hansen is a multi-instrumentalist, early musician, and theater composer. Her most recent collaboration is with Happenstance Theater in Look Out Below!, Cabaret Macabre, and Manifesto. They are currently working on a new show, Vanitas, that will premiere in 2012. From 1999-2011 she was an Associate Artist at Center Stage in Baltimore where she composed and performed many scores. She has toured several continents with Ex Umbris and New York’s Ensemble for Early Music. Karen has appeared in Revels in New York, Washington D.C., and Hanover. She has participated in many productions with Hartland Community Arts as well as a recent concert of the Thetford Chamber Singers. (http://www.karenhansenmusic.com)

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Revels  North welcomed the Heritage Brass

 to their 19th Christmas Revels!

Heritage Brass was formed for the 1990 Christmas Revels in Hanover, NH, and except for 1991 and 2001, has continued to perform with Revels each year. During the rest of the year the quintet plays in a variety of settings including outdoor park concerts, weddings, college commencements, and celebrations of all kinds. On most programs the quintet explores music from the American brass band and jazz eras as well as the standard quintet literature from Renaissance to Modern.

Daniel Farina, trumpet, is a graduate of Shenandoah College and Conservatory in Winchester, VA. He has free-lanced as a trumpeter for a multitude of orchestras, brass groups, jazz ensembles, recording studios, and as a soloist in the Northeast. He can be heard on composer Larry Siegel’s latest compilation CD “All Go Forward and Back!” as well as Disney’s DVD “Little Einsteins-Our Big Huge Adventure” (Dan recorded the trumpeting of character Quincy and the orchestral trumpet work). Currently he is principal trumpet with the NH Philharmonic Orchestra and Keene Chorale. He also performs with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra, New England Brass Ensemble, Hill’s Bandwagon, Monadnock Orchestra, and the Papermill Theater.

Jim Boccia is a Graduate of The New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, where he received his double major degree in Trumpet Performance and Music Education. He went on to earn his MALS at Stony Brook University in New York. Jim taught middle school and high school instrumental music for ten years in both Vermont and New York. He has also performed with many groups in the Boston, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire areas, including the Vermont Symphony, The Concert Pops of Long Island, The Long Island Philharmonic, The New Hampshire Philharmonic as well as many local College and Freelance groups. Jim is also currently the National Sales Manager for the fund raising division of The Yankee Candle Company, in South Deerfield, MA. Jim has been the Professor of Trumpet and the Director of the Brass Ensemble at Keene State College since the Fall of 2003.

Solo, improvisational and orchestral hornist Lydia Busler-Blais began her career performing at age 16 with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. She has performed with the New York City Ballet, Brooklyn Philharmonic, José Limón Dance Company, and Manhattan Chamber Orchestra, as well as holding the position of Solo Horn with the Rome Festival Opera. Also an ASCAP composer, Lydia's works are performed by artists around the world. In honor of the 2011 Year of the Vermont Composer, Lydia and her collaborator, playwright Lars Nielsen, received an award from the Consortium of Vermont Composers for their new work, One Way In.Lydia was also given an award by the International Horn Society Meir Rimon Commissioning Fund for Lanterns, written for the ZINKALI Trio. Lydia is a member of the LA Chapter of the international professional music fraternity Mu Phi Epsilon.

Robert Booth, trombone, is from Barre Vermont, and graduated from Spaulding High School in 2000. He has a degree in Music Education from The University of New Hampshire in Durham. At UNH he was exposed to a variety of music styles, studying trombone with Nic Orovich and Jazz with Dave Seiler. He performed in a number of different performing groups including Marching Band, Symphonic Band, Brass Choir, Trombone quartet and Brass Quintet. He was Principal chair in the Wind Symphony as well as lead trombone in the Jazz Ensemble for his entire college career. After graduating from UNH in 2004, Robert moved to Charleston South Carolina where he taught music at a fine arts elementary school. After six months of intense heat he decided to come back to Vermont and look for a teaching job there. He was ecstatic when he was told that a position would be opening up at Spaulding.

Robert E. Eliason, tuba, is a graduate of the University of Michigan (music education), Manhattan School of Music (performance), and the University of Missouri at Kansas City (musicology). His playing experience has included touring Europe with the 7th Army Symphony Orchestra, summer tours with the Henry Mancini Orchestra and 10 years as principal tubaist with the Kansas City Philharmonic. He has played with the Dartmouth Symphony Orchestra since 1988. Dr. Eliason was for many years Curator of Musical Instruments at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan and is widely known for his continuing research and publications about 19^th-century American musical instrument makers.

Joining the Brass will be timpanist Andrew Buchan who lives in Charlestown, New Hampshire, and enjoys drumming with a wide variety of bands and organizations, including the Newmont Military Band, Green Mountain Highlanders, Firehouse 6 Dixieland Band, and Heritage Brass Quintet especially enjoys playing traditional fife and drum music with his wife Lois on fife.

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