The Toot is fortunate to present some of the best teachers and players in the Early Music world. This year our distinguished faculty includes (in alphabetical order):

Becky Baxter (Early Harps)

Ms. Baxter's resume as a professional in the field of early harp includes performances of harp literature from the 12th through 18th centuries on a wide variety of historical harps. Becky has performed at events such as: the National Harp Society Convention, Houston Grand Opera's productions of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and L'Incoronazione di Poppea (including subsequent broadcasts on NPR), the Boston Early Music Festival, the Round Top Early Music Festival, the Texas Early Music Festival, the Amherst Early Music Festival, and the Historical Harp Society Conference/Workshops.

In addition to her full-time career in church music as Associate Director of music and organist at Clear Lake Presbyterian Church in Houston, Texas and as a pedal harp performer and teacher, Ms. Baxter currently serves on the faculty of the Amherst Early Music Festival and the Texas Early Music Festival. Her first recording on the Dorian label is titled O Lux Beata, Renaissance Harp Music (DOR 93193.) She also appears as a guest artist with Chatham Baroque on another Dorian CD, Españoleta (DOR 90284.) Both recordings went up in the shuttle with astronaut Bill McArthur in Fall of 2000.

Frances Blaker (Recorders)

Frances Blaker performs on recorders of all types and sizes with the Farallon Recorder Quartet and Tibia Recorder Duo. As a member of Ensemble Vermillian she explores, transcribes and performs chamber music of the 17th and 18th centuries. She has performed as soloist with the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Ensemble Vita Nova, and numerous other groups in the US, Denmark, England, France, Italy and the Netherlands.

Frances is conductor and music director of BABO (Bay Area Baroque Orchestra), a community orchestra for accomplished amateur players. As co-director of Tibia Adventures in Music, she organizes workshops for small groups of adult students in the US and abroad. She teaches private recorder lessons both in person and long distance via Skype and is a sought after instructor at workshops all around the US.

Ms. Blaker is the author of The Recorder Player's Companion and the "Opening Measures" column in the American Recorder magazine, and a collaborator and performer on the Disc Continuo series of play-along recordings.

Her compositions have been published by PRB Productions and Lost in Time Press. Ms. Blaker can be heard on Ensemble Vermillian's two-volume survey of German 17th century chamber music centering around Buxtehude's opus 1, Stolen Jewels and Buried Treasure. The Farallon Recorder Quartet's recordings include the works of Ludwig Senfl and newly released recording of music from England, From Albion's Shores.

Bruce Brogdon (Lutes)

Bruce Brogdon studied classical guitar at the University of St. Thomas. His interest in early music led him to take up the lute, and he has studied privately and in masterclasses with Paul O'Dette and Pat O'Brien. Bruce has performed with the Texas Baroque Ensemble, the Green Mountain Consort, the Houston Baroque Ensemble, the Texas Early Music Project, La Follia Austin Baroque, Ars Lyrica Houston (based at University of Houston), and Aquinas, the resident ensemble of the University of St. Thomas.

Bruce leads his own group, Canzonetta, which specializes in plucked string continuo (lutes, guitars, and harp), and features music of the 16th and 17th centuries.

Karen Burciaga (Viols and Violin)

Karen Burciaga discovered early music while a student at Vanderbilt University. In 2004, she earned a Master of Music in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, studying violin with Dana Maiben and viol with Jane Hershey. As a soloist and chamber musician, she has performed with the King's Noyse, Seven Times Salt, Harvard Baroque Chamber Orchestra, Saltarello, Voices Rising, the Arcadia Players, and other period ensembles including appearances at the Boston, Bloomington, and Amherst Early Music Festivals.

Karen is on the string faculty of the Texas Toot in Austin, TX, where she also leads The Killer Bees, a baroque ensemble. Other musical interests include traditional Scottish fiddle and dance, American shape-note singing, and Italian Renaissance dance.

Barbara Coeyman (Viols)

Barbara Coeyman has been a player, teacher, coach, and editor of music for the viol since the mid-1970s. She performed in Collegia at University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, New York University, and the University of Texas, and has studied viol with Mary Springfels and John Hsu, among others. As a music professor, she directed the Collegium of West Virginia University, and also led the Darlington Consort of Pittsburgh. She has published a variety of articles on the French Baroque viol and current performs with the Texas Early Music Project.

Therese Honey (Harps)

Therese Honey has been performing, studying, researching and teaching harp in the Houston area since 1968. She performs early music with the Texas Early Music Project and La Follia Austin Baroque and more, and performs Celtic music at the North Texas Irish Festival, Milwaukee Irish Festival, and more, in addition to nationally broadcast PBS Christmas Specials. She has presented concerts and workshops throughout the United States and Canada. Ms. Honey has published several books of arrangements of Celtic and Early Music for Celtic harp and has recorded 4 solo CDs.

Jan Jackson (Recorders)

Jan Jackson, director of Passing Measures, has been directing and performing with professional and educational Early Music ensembles in Central Texas for over 20 years. She has participated in various Early Music festivals and Renaissance faires around the country and in numerous workshops, including those at Amherst College and the Professional Recorder Program at Indiana University.

Ms. Jackson performs with the Texas Early Music Project, in addition to directing and performing with Passing Measures (medieval, renaissance, and baroque repertoire) and Timely Treasures (harp/recorder duo with early music and celtic repertoire).

She has served on the National Board of Directors for the American Recorder Society and on the Educational Committee for that organization. A registered Suzuki recorder instructor, she is a charter member of the American Recorder Teachers Association, a member of its board of directors and the chair person for ARTA's Scholarship Committee. She is a faculty member for the Armstrong Community Music School (South Austin), and the Texas TOOT (formerly Texas Early Music Festival). She teaches in students' homes, at workshops, at the the First Baptist Church in Blanco, Texas, and privately at her studio, the Academie of Musick (North Central Austin).

Danny Johnson (Voice, Workshop Director)

Award-winning director, international performer, and recording artist Daniel Johnson has been the artistic director of the Texas Early Music Project since its inception in 1987. Johnson has performed and toured both as a soloist and ensemble member in such groups as the New York Ensemble for Early Music, Sotto Voce (San Francisco), and Musa Iberica. He can be heard on various recordings for Koch International, Foné Records (Rome), Amherst Festival Productions, and the Texas Early Music Project label.

Johnson was the director of the UT Early Music Ensemble, one of the largest and most active in the U.S., from 1986-2003. In 1998, he was awarded Early Music America's Thomas Binkley Award for university ensemble directors. He is also the recipient of the 1997 Quattelbaum Award at the College of Charleston. Johnson teaches master classes in performance practice and also serves on the faculty, staff, and the Executive Advisory Board of the Amherst Early Music Festival. He has been on the faculty of the Texas Toot since 1994.

Judith Overcash (Voice and Ensemble)

Judith Overcash has spent several years specializing in the performance of music from the Medieval through the early Classical period and the 20th century, and has received repeated critical acclaim across the country. Judith was recently named as a finalist in the International Bodky Award Competition, the only vocalist ever to receive such a distinction.

Judith is currently part-time music history, vocal pedagogy and voice faculty at both Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio, and is ever-active as guest faculty and lecturer for special events, including most recently the International Historical Harp Conference, the Southeast Medieval Association International Conference in New Orleans, and the Amherst Early Music Festival and Workshop. Judith can be heard on commercial recordings and public radio broadcasts with the Texas Early Music Project, the Columbus Bach Ensemble, the Dayton Bach Society, the Warren Philharmonic, Amherst Early Music, Inc., and the Charleston Pro Musica. Please visit her website at www.judithovercash.com.

Dr. Frank Shirley (Recorders)

Dr. Frank Shirley holds a Master of Music degree in musicology from the University of Texas, where as a Ph.D. in mathematics he teaches courses in math for non-math majors. He has performed in early music ensembles in Ithaca NY, Dallas, and Austin, and has taught for several years at the Fall and Summer Toots. He has studied recorder in workshops with Saskia Coolen, Reine-Marie Verhagen, and Aldo Abreu. In addition, Dr. Shirley has performed as a bass chorister in the UT Early Music Ensemble, the Austin Civic Chorus, the Victoria Bach Festival, and the Dallas area Renaissance Polyphony Weekend.

Dale Taylor (Winds)

Dale Taylor has been working in early music and living in the past for almost 40 years now. He studied with Arnold Grayson, Phil Levin and Bernard Krainis and built instruments with Levin Historical Instruments. He worked at Colonial Williamsburg and San Augustin Antinguo and was a featured guest for Southstreet Seaport Museum's Music Makers of South Street, highlighting the old instrument making district in New York.

He performs on recorder and baroque bassoon with the baroque ensemble Muse and leads the Renaissance alta band Jornada, where he plays cornetto, shawms, sackbut, dulcian and recorders. He owns Taylor Historic Music, where he repairs early instruments, and is currently developing a line of sackbuts and slide trumpets.

Tom Zajac (Recorders and Reeds)

Tom Zajac is a multi-instrumentalist widely praised for his versatility,

"and sacbut player Tom Zajac...was particularly versatile, also playing a bagpipe, flutes and recorders and, in some numbers, fingering a recorder with his right hand while he played a drum with his left." [Washington Post, October 14th, 2002]

"The art of improvisation, long before the jazz era, was explored in a bagpipe solo dashingly played by Tom Zajac." [Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 5th, 2002]

Tom is a member of Piffaro, the Philadelphia-based renaissance wind band, and the musical/theatrical group Ex Umbris. He's a regular guest artist with the Folger Consort, of Washington, DC, and has also appeared with other leading ensembles in the US including the King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, Violins of Lafayette, Waverly Consort, Concert Royal, and New York's Ensemble for Early Music.

Tom can be heard on over 30 recordings, ranging from Medieval dances and baroque opera, to contemporary folk-rock for Dorian, Deutsche Gramophon, Angel EMI, Virgin Veritas, Harmonia Mundi, Lyrichord, Windham Hill, and others. With his group Ex Umbris, he performed at the 5th Millennium Council event in the East Room of the Clinton White House. He played serpent in a work by Peter Schickele for the nationally broadcast radio show "A Prairie Home Companion", hurdy gurdy for an American Ballet Theater Company performance of a work choreographed by Twyla Tharp, bagpipe for an internationally broadcast sports beverage commercial, and percussion for a 16th-century equestrian ballet at the Berkeley Early Music Festival in California. The sound of his bagpipe also awoke the astronauts every morning on a recent space shuttle mission.