About Circe's Consort
Circe's Consort is an innovative venture in early music, delving into the rich sounds of the 16th and 17th centuries. We focus on early Baroque aesthetics, showcasing the profound influence of music from Italy, France, Spain, and the Americas on the evolution of Western music. Our exploration highlights how these musical traditions contributed to the birth of opera, particularly following the seminal gathering of the Florentine Camerata in 1573—a meeting of humanist scholars from various disciplines that forever changed the landscape of music.
While the baroque guitar, theorbo and harps form the core of the group, a wonderful cast of singers, rising stars all, rotates through several programs depending on their availability when not on tour and when in the country! We also seek out our audiences in performance venues outside of the traditional staid concert hall, everywhere from cafés, house concerts, and of course church and library series. The result is a fresh approach.
Our launching concert was music by Barbara Strozzi, performed at that venerable free-thinkers venue, the Cornelia Street Cafe in Greenwich Village, with tenor Bradley J. King. Programs followed for the Seabury Academy Mid-Day Music "Music of Baroque Spain" with tenor Jorge Prego, excerpts from "Luz Y Norte" by RIbayez, with baroque harpist Richard Spendio at historic Willow Hall in NJ, and a duet with soprano Rachel Elezi in Reston, VA. in 2025, expanding now to Santa Fe, Circe's Consort offers two concerts of "Music from 16th & 17th Europe and the New World" in the gorgeous Canyon Road art district.
We will keep you posted on upcoming concerts. Please refer to the Performance Calendar on the homepage of this website.
Circe's Consort - Core Artists
Richard Spendio - Harp
Richard Spendio attended SUNY at Geneseo (music and theater history) and the University of Pisa, Italy(Renaissance Studies) as an undergraduate, and then continued graduate studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, in these disciplines as well as studying pedal harp. Moving to New York to continue harp study, he began performing professionally on pedal harp in 1976, as a musician In Off-Broadway theatre productions, and soon, in many other solo and group settings.
By the early 1980’s he began a series of long term steady solo pedal harp engagements playing classical and popular music at prestigious venues : the Peninsula Hotel, the Terrace (Butler Hall), the Hilton(Short Hills) and frequently at the Plaza Hotel. Keeping a longtime an interest in early harps, he was a charter member of the Historical Harp Society at its founding (1984).
Here, the friendships he developed with historical harp pioneers Judy Kadar (Berlin), Mara Galassi (Milan) and particularly Cheryl Ann Fulton(California) provided invaluable insights and exchanges for the methods of adapting and transforming modern harp techniques into ones suited to single and double row harps of the 16th and 17th centuries. While continuing to perform on the modern Pedal Harp, he has been avidly pursuing the Renaissance and Baroque instruments, and since 2015, has been a member of the New York Continuo Collective, where playing with lutes, theorbos, and baroque guitars provides a great opportunity for study and performance.
Annalisa Ewald - Baroque Guitar and Theorbo
Annalisa Ewald was mentored from the age of 13 by Sophocles Papas, a close colleague of the legendary classical guitarist Andrés Segovia. She studied with Papas until leaving for St. John's College in Annapolis, known for its Great Books curriculum.
After her time at St. John's, she decided to focus on music rather than pursue an academic path; she studied privately with the virtuosi Karl Herreshoff and Turan-Mirza Kamal and attended the San Francisco Conservatory before earning a B.A.
in Classical Guitar Performance from Bard College.
At Bard, she met Patrick O’Brien, a leading expert in early music and performance injury rehabilitation. O’Brien was the Head of the Juilliard Historical Plucked Strings Department and founder of the New York Continuo Collective. He introduced her to the baroque guitar and theorbo, guiding her development as a musician for nearly 20 years. She became a longtime member of the Collective, participating for over a decade in its renowned Baroque performance workshops.
She went on to win multiple grants for concert series from the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA), initiated the Cosmos Club concert series on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C., and has been a featured performer for numerous societies and festivals on both coasts.
Her live debut solo classical guitar album, which received critical acclaim, reached No. 8 on the Billboard Traditional Classical chart.
In addition to her solo performances Ewald recently founded Circe’s Consort alongside New York-based harpist Richard Spendio. The ensemble specializes in exploring 16th- and 17th-century European and Latin American music on historical instruments. She lives in Santa Fe.
Circe's Consort - Visiting Artists
