Biographical Information
Members of Mélomanie

   Tracy Richardson, harpsichord, is a recipient of an Individual Artist Fellowship awarded by the Delaware Division of the Arts. After earning degrees from the Oberlin and New England Conservatories, she spent two years in Amsterdam as a special student at the Sweelinck Conservatorium. She is a co-founder of Mélomanie. She enjoys working with contemporary composers and has premiered works of composers Mark Hagerty, Chuck Holdeman, Curt Cacioppo and Sergio Roberto de Oliveira, among others. Ms. Richardson is a faculty member of Immaculata College and a Teaching Artist for the Delaware Institute for the Arts in Education. She appears frequently as concerto soloist with orchestras in the region and is a regular guest artist with Le Triomphe de l'Amour, the Delaware Symphony and numerous ensembles. Ms. Richardson has played solo recitals across the northeastern United States and The Netherlands, and recently performed an all-contemporary program in Rio de Janeiro. She can be heard on the Lyrichord label.

   Kimberly Reighley, Baroque & modern flute, is Assistant Professor of Flute at West Chester University and an active performer in the Delaware Valley. She pl ays principal flute with OperaDelaware and piccolo with the Delaware Symphony and the Reading Symphony. She also performs each summer at the Carmel Bach Festival in Carmel, California and is a substitute with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Having turned to the performance of early music on period instruments in 1990, Ms. Reighley co-founded the early music ensemble, Melomanie. In recent years, the group has broadened its mission commissioning new works for the ensemble for either period or modern instruments. Winner of the 1996 Delaware State Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, she has performed as a guest artist with Brandywine Baroque, Pro Musica Rara and Le Triomphe de l’Amour a nd has appeared as a soloist at the Carmel Bach Festival and with the Delaware Symphony and Reading Symphony. She can be heard on the Lyrichord label performing works of Telemann.

   Douglas McNames, cello, has become a favorite with audiences in concerts of music spanning three centuries. A regular substitute player with the Philadelphia Orchestra, Mr. McNames is Principal Cellist with the Carmel Bach Festival, the Delaware and Reading Symphony Orchestras, and the OperaDelaware Orchestra. Mr. McNames also enjoys a busy schedule of performing with such ensembles as Brandywine Baroque, Mélomanie, Arco Voce, and Pro Musica Rara. Awarded the 1995 Delaware State Arts Council Individual Artist Fellowship, Mr. McNames can be heard on the Spectrum, Ectetera, Centaur, Epiphany and Dorian labels, both on modern and original instruments. Recent recordings of sonatas by Jean-Baptiste Masse have been critically acclaimed both here and in European publications.

   Fran Berge, Baroque & modern violin, performs widely on both historical and modern instruments. In the Delaware Valley, she plays Baroque and Classical concerts with Tempesta di Mare, Ensemble Aurelio, Philomel, and Brandywine Baroque, as well as with Mélomanie. Playing modern violin, she performs frequently with the Fairmount String Quartet, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, The Opera Company of Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Ballet, and Orchestra 2001. Outside this area, she has enjoyed being part of the Washington Bach Consort and the Carmel Bach Festival and numerous chamber concerts in Spain, Italy and Greece. In New York, Ms. Berge has taught actors how to use early music in Commedia del’Arte and in Philadelphia, she teaches violin, ensemble techniques and Baroque performance practice.

   Donna Fournier, viola da gamba, is a member of Le Triomphe de l'Amour and Mélomanie. She has performed on gamba and Baroque cello with Tempesta di Mare, Philomel, Brandywine Baroque, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and The Philadelphia Classical Symphony. She specializes in repertoire from the French Baroque period as well as works featuring solo viola da gamba by J.S. Bach. She holds music degrees from Connecticut College and West Chester University. She studied privately with Laurence Dreyfus supplemented by master classes with John Hsu and Wieland Kuijken. Ms. Fournier is affiliate faculty at Temple University where she coaches viol players from the Early Music Ensemble. She has recorded Buxtehude cantatas on the PGM label, Telemann trio sonatas on the Lyrichord label, and Boismortier trio sonatas on the A Casa Discos label.

   Rainer Beckmann, recorder, is a graduate of the Utrecht School of the Arts, Netherlands, where he studied recorder with Heiko ter Schegget, Baldrick Deerenberg, and Marion Verbruggen. He is a first-prize winner at the Holland Open Recorder Festival Competition and the Performance Contest of the Dutch Concert Agency. As a founding member of Il Flauto Giocoso and the Landini Consort, he has performed in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, and Israel. In Brazil, he has taught recorder and music history at the State University of Ceará and collaborated with the ensembles Ad Libitum and Syntagma that specialize in Early Music, as well as Brazilian popular and traditional music.

Recent engagements include performances and recordings with Ensemble La Bernardinia, Tempesta di Mare, the Ridotto Ensemble, the New Amsterdam Recorder Trio, Early Music New York, Fuma Sacra, and the American Society of Ancient Instruments. Mr. Beckmann is the director of the Greater Philadelphia Area Recorder Academy and has been recently invited to join the performing faculty at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music.

Matt Bengtson, composer, is equally at home as a pianist, harpsichordist, and fortepianist. Mr. Bengtson runs the full gamut of styles from William Byrd all the way to contemporary music by Ligeti and Berio, and numerous composers of the Philadelphia area. As a Harvard undergraduate, he was introduced to historical performance practice and early keyboard instruments by Robert Levin. He went on to minor in harpsichord performance under Webb Wiggins at Peabody Conservatory, and to study fortepiano at Cornell University under Malcolm Bilson on a special one-year fellowship. At Peabody, he performed Mozart's Concerto K. 456 on fortepiano to a very enthusiastic audience.

He continues to perform on both modern and period instruments, including a solo harpsichord/fortepiano recital for the Tri-County Concert Association, and numerous performances of Bach's Goldberg Variations on harpsichord as well as piano. He is the fortepianist of the Ensemble Aurelio and has collaborated with sopranos Laurie Heimes and Julianne Baird. He is currently working on a multi-CD recording of the English instruments of the Charles West Wilson collection for Griffin Renaissance Records.

As a pianist, Mr. Bengtson is especially known as an expert on Scriabin and Szymanowski. The American Record Guide relates his recording of Six Scriabin Sonatas to performances by Horowitz and Richter, praising his “rich tonal colors and dazzling technique,” asking, “Has Scriabin ever been played better?” He was awarded the Stefan and Wanda Wilk Prize for Research in Polish Music for his paper The “Szymanowski Clash”: Methods of Harmonic Analysis in the Szymanowski Mazurkas. He has presented numerous all-Szymanowski programs with violinist Blanka Bednarz, most recently for the Kosciuszko Foundation of Philadelphia. Mr. Bengtson has played in Network for New Music, Orchestra 2001 and Tempesta di Mare and is happy to make his debut performance with Mélomanie as a harpsichordist. He is especially eager for the opportunity to return to musical composition, learning to write idiomatic new music for Baroque instruments.

Eve Friedman, flute, is actively involved in both contemporary and historical performance. In 2006, she became the first person ever awarded the Doctor of Music degree in Baroque Flute from Indiana University’s renowned Early Music Institute, where she also won the 2001 Baroque Orchestra Concerto Competition. Dr. Friedman was invited to perform at the 2004 National Flute Association convention in Nashville, where she was a finalist in the Baroque Artist Competition. Recently, she has performed with American Bach Soloists, Tafelmusik, the Washington Bach Consort, and Tempesta di Mare.

An experienced chamber musician, she spent the summer of 2003 performing with her husband, pianist-composer Roberto Pace, in Italy at the festival Incontri di Canna, and each summer performs and teaches in Maine at the SummerKeys festival. She has also been selected twice for a fellowship at the Hampden-Sydney Chamber Music Festival in Virginia.

Dr. Friedman received her Master of Music degree from Boston University, where she was a student of Doriot Anthony Dwyer, retired principal flutist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. At Ms. Dwyer’s invitation, she spent two summers at the Tanglewood Institute. Dr. Friedman has performed in master classes with James Galway, Julius Baker, and Bartold Kuijken, and studied historical flutes with Sandra Miller and Barbara Kallaur.

Linda Kistler, violin, maintains a busy concert schedule playing both modern and Baroque violin. She has appeared as soloist and concertmaster with the Bethlehem Bach Festival Orchestra and the Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra—in both of which she is a member—and with the former Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra. In addition, she plays with the Allentown Symphony Orchestra and Vox Amadeus Ensemble of Philadelphia, which performs many of concerts on period instruments.

Ms. Kistler has performed recent solo recitals at Moravian College and at the Bethlehem Pennsylvania Musikfest. Her chamber music engagements have included the Moravian String Quartet and frequent guest artist appearances with the Gabriel Ensemble of Schuylkill Co., Pennsylvania.

As a teacher, she has held positions with Lehigh University, Cedar Crest College, Kutztown University, and Lehigh Valley Charter School for the Performing Arts. She currently maintains a private studio, is an artist-lecturer at Moravian College, and is a faculty member of Allentown’s Community Music School. Ms. Kistler was trained at the Oberlin College Conservatory (Bachelor of Music) and at the Juilliard School (Master of Music), where her principal teachers were Andor Toth and Ivan Galamian.

Roberto Pace, composer, is a composer, music director and pianist who has performed throughout the United States, Europe, Canada and Japan. He studied at the New England Conservatory of Music with Pulitzer Prize–winning composer Donald Martino and holds a MFA in Composition from SUNY Purchase, where he was awarded the Anthony Newman award for artistic and academic excellence.

Mr. Pace has received commissions from American Opera Projects, The Greenwich Village Orchestra, the late pianist Rebecca Labrecque, and the Viola Society of Philadelphia, among others. Currently, he is working on commissions from Mélomanie chamber ensemble and the Elysian Camerata. He is also writing a new work for his own ensemble, the Halcyon Duo.

He has been Music Director of the Measured Breaths Opera Company and of performance artist John Kelly and Company as conductor and keyboardist in performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and on tour throughout the U.S. He was also Music Director of the Falcon (Fordham at Lincoln Center) series where he performed with cellist Christopher Finckel, the Atlantic String Quartet, violinist Galina Heifetz, soprano Judith Bettina and others. He has appeared as soloist and chamber musician at the Festival de Musique en Lorraine, Incontri di Canna, the Kanebo Festival, the Conductor’s Institute (as composer in residence), annually in Lubec, Maine at the Summerkeys Festival and in Chatham, Massachusetts.

A highly successful educator, Mr. Pace directed the music program of Fordham at Lincoln Center and lectured for the New York Philharmonic. He currently teaches theory and composition at the Settlement Music School in Philadelphia, where he holds the Robert Capanna distinguished faculty chair. He lives in South Philadelphia with his wife, flutist Eve Friedman.