Community Concerts @ First Presents Bethany Blake

Sunday, September 24, 2023 @ 3 pm

Bethany Blake will present keyboard music on harpsichord and organ. The program will feature music by French and German composers, including Bach, Couperin, and Rameau.

Bethany Blake is a music historian and keyboardist committed to early music education and performance. She has performed at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, Weill Recital Hall, the Boston Early Music Festival, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, Amherst Early Music Festival, and Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute, and was a featured soloist with the Aulos Ensemble. In addition to her studies with Arthur Haas and Edward Parmentier on harpsichord, Penelope Crawford on fortepiano, Katherine Collier on piano, and Gregory Hand on organ, she has played in early music lessons, coachings, and masterclasses with Peter Sykes, Charlotte Mattax Moersch, Lisa Goode Crawford, Webb Wiggins, and Malcolm Bilson, and accompanied masterclasses for Julianne Baird, Sandra Miller, Jed Wentz, and Paul Leenhouts. Bethany has a Ph.D. and D.M.A. from SUNY Stony Brook and an M.M. from the University of Michigan. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Society for Eighteenth-Century Music and was president of the Ann Arbor Academy of Early Music. She is the founder and director of Early Music Day, a collaborative event that introduces period instruments and performance practices to both university and local communities. Bethany has been the music director and organist at FCCEJ since May 2022. She teaches music history and piano at UVM and accompanies the Vermont-based vocal ensemble Solaris.