About Farallon
Farallon Recorder Quartet is a Bay Area and Seattle-based early music group that brings the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Modern Eras to today’s audiences with professional polish, verve, and precision. They employ a fascinating range of recorder sizes and period styles, ranging from 6 inches to 6 feet tall. Their most recent CD recording, From Albion’s Shores, has been described by Early Music America as “the sound one would get if one could turn honey into wood or stand underneath a caramel fountain.”
Farallon up to 2018 – from left to right:
Letitia Berlin, Louise Carslake, Annette Bauer, Frances Blaker
The Farallon Recorder Quartet was founded in 1996 to explore the vast and varied repertoire for four recorders. The quartet presents concerts, including family and school concerts, and also teaches one-day and week-long workshops for amateur and young professional recorder players.
The Farallon Recorder Quartet also offers a program with Jennifer Paulino, soprano and John Lenti, lute. The quartet was awarded a grant from the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music to develop this program. In May of 2013 the quartet received the maximum award of $3,000 from San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music to pursue a concert project with the Colombian recorder player Claudia Gantivar. The group developed a program featuring works by composers from Central and South America, and Spain. These projects were made possible through the Musical Grant Program, which is administered by the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, and supported by the Heller Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation and San Francisco Grants for the Arts. For more information about the SFFCM, now called InterSFMusic, please visit their website at www.sffcm.org
To make a tax-deductible donation to Farallon Recorder Quartet, please visit https://sffcm.giv.sh/ef6c
The Farallon Recorder Quartet has released two cd recordings:
From Albion’s Shore: Music of England from the Middle Ages to Purcell. Released in December, 2010.
Ludwig Senfl: Lieder, Motets and Instrumental Works. Released in January 2005.
Farallon’s history
In 1996 Tish and Frances, who were living in Atlanta at the time, were asked to put together a recorder quartet concert by Frances’ sister Barbara, who ran a concert series in Birmingham. We had to borrow a set of Renaissance recorders to do this! We asked Louise Carslake and Roxanne Layton to join us in this first venture. A few years later Hanneke van Proosdij replaced Roxanne. By this time we had started acquiring a beautiful set of Renaissance consort instruments made by the wonderful builder Adriana Breukink. In 2007 Annette Bauer joined Tish, Frances, and Louise and stayed until the Cirque du Soleil lured her away to adventures around the world. Our most recent change occurred when Louise and her husband John decided it was time to be closer to Louise’s family in England. In 2019 we started working with Miyo Aoki and Vicki Boeckman, two wonderful players living in Seattle and Bloomington (see photo above). It’s been a wonderful ride and we look forward to many great projects with Vicki and Miyo!
LETITIA BERLIN teaches privately and at workshops around the country, including the Amherst Early Music Festival, the Oregon Coast Recorder Society Winds and Waves workshop, and the Santa Barbara (CA) spring workshop. She directs the Hidden Valley Early Music RoadScholar program (Carmel Valley, CA) and for ten years was the Director of the San Francisco Early Music Society’ Music Discovery Workshop for children. In addition to the Farallon Recorder Quartet, Tish performs with the Bertamo Trio, the recorder duo Tibia, and Calextone, an ensemble dedicated to the performance of Medieval and early Renaissance music. She has performed with the San Francisco Symphony, the Carmel Bach Festival and the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra. Recordings include From Albion’s Shore and Motets, Lieder, and Instrumental Works of Ludwig Senfl with the Farallon Recorder Quartet, and Ladino love songs with Yatan Atan on the New Albion label. Tish has been awarded the Recorder Residency at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology four times. She received a master’s degree in early music performance practices from Case Western Reserve University and a Bachelor of Music in piano performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has studied recorder with Marion Verbruggen, Paul Leenhouts, Frances Blaker, and Sabine Evers. She served on the board of the American Recorder Society and was its President for two years. During the pandemic Tish jumped into online teaching immediately and has enjoyed the challenges and benefits of teaching on Zoom.
FRANCES BLAKER received her Music Pedagogical and Performance degrees in recorder from the Royal Danish Conservatory of Music in Copenhagen where she studied with Eva Legêne. She also studied with Marion Verbruggen in the Netherlands. Frances has performed as a soloist and with various ensembles in the United States, Denmark, England and the Netherlands. She is a member of Farallon Recorder Quartet and the Tibia Recorder Duo and of Ensemble Vermillian. She teaches privately and at workshops throughout the United States and is an assistant director of the Amherst Early Music Festival, Inc. and a recent board member of the American Recorder Society. Frances is the author of The Recorder Player’s Companion and the “Opening Measures” column in the American Recorder, and a collaborator and performer on the Disc Continuo series of recordings. She was awarded month-long residencies focusing on music composition at the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology in Otis, Oregon in April 2003 and 2006. Her compositions have been published by PRB Productions and Lost in Time Press.
She has recorded works by Ludwig Senfl with the Farallon Recorder Quartet, and two CDs of 17th century German chamber music centering around Buxtehude with Ensemble Vermillian – volume I: Stolen Jewels, and volume 2: Saphire and Topaz.
MIYO AOKI is a dedicated performer and teacher currently living in the Seattle area. She has performed in the US, Germany, and Poland, with groups including Salish Sea Players, Utopia Early Music, and Gamut Bach Ensemble, and at the Bloomington Early Music Festival and Whidbey Island Music Festival. She is a founding member of the Seattle-based chamber group sound|counterpointand helped to create the new chamber music series, Salmon Run Concerts. Performing music ranging from medieval to modern, she has premiered works by contemporary composers Natalie Williams and Agnes Dorwarth. In addition to performance, Miyo is an active teacher. As well as having taught at the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop, for the Seattle Early Music Guild’s Recorder Residency and privately, she also helps to plan and perform outreach programs throughout the school year. Miyo holds a KAZ Diplom (Artist Diploma) from theHochschule für KünsteinBremen, Germany, where she studied with Professor Han Tol, and degrees in both early music performance and mathematics from Indiana University, where she studied with Professor Eva Legêne.
VICKI BOECKMAN has been performing and teaching since the 1980s and is thrilled to be a member of the Farallon Recorder Quartet. Pre-pandemic she was an internationally acclaimed performing and recording artist who traveled all over the US and to many other countries to perform and teach. When the world went virtual she adapted to the challenges hesitantly, but now embraces the virtual platform with enthusiasm and awe, discovering formerly inconceivable possibilities reaching students all across the globe. Before settling in Seattle, Vicki resided in Denmark from 1981-2005 and had the opportunity to collaborate with some of the finest musicians and composers of the day. Jaap ter Linden, John Holloway, René Jacobs, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Pedro Memelsdorf, 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 working with contemporary composers in addition to doing 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, 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 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, and dearly hopes these organizations can bounce back in the months to come.
The Farallon Recorder Quartet is a fiscally-sponsored affiliate of InterMusic SF, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to small-ensemble music in the San Francisco Bay Area.
