About Us

Sospiri is a baroque ensemble based out of St. Paul, Minnesota offering evocative performances that combine voices with period instruments in repertoire centered around the 17th century. Artists in the ensemble strive to use historically-informed practices, consulting treatises and musical editions of the period, and using ornamentation and improvisation when appropriate. Sospiri particularly aims to follow the baroque ideal of moving the affections by heightening emotional contrasts in the text and music, while also exploring the playful aspects of the baroque in its canzonettas, villanelles, and ciacconas.

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Musicians

Guest Artists

Julie Elhard
Viola da Gamba, Basse de Violon

Julie Elhard appears regularly as a soloist and chamber musician throughout the United States. She has made several appearances with the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, including J.S. Bach”s St. Matthew Passion under the direction of Nicholas McGegan. She has been a guest artist with Apollo’s Fire in Cleveland and is a founding member of Violes Egales and Glorious Revolution Baroque. Julie has been the recipient of an Artist’s Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, as well as a Jerome Foundation grant to study vielle and early string playing with Margriet Tindemans.

She also received a Performing Artist Certificate from the Royal Conservatory of Music in The Hague, Netherlands. She has taught at workshops in North America and at the Viola da Gamba Society of America’s national Conclaves. She currently teaches viola da gamba at Macalester College and also at the St. Paul Conservatory of Music, where she has developed a Suzuki-style approach for children to learn the viola da gamba. Julie has played cello and viola da gamba with Lyra for over 15 years. More information at www.julieelhard.com

Tulio Rondón
Baroque cello, piccolo cello

Cellist and gambist Tulio Rondon performs throughout the United States, Europe, Middle East, and North and South America as a soloist and chamber musician. Known for his vivid depth, passionate performances and strong leadership, he started his professional life early, as principal cellist of the Aragua Symphony Orchestra in Venezuela.

Tulio’s performance career has taken him all over the world, and he has shared the stage with internationally celebrated artists such as Gil Shaham, Paul Katz, James Tocco, the Hagen String Quartet, Pacifica String Quartet, and the Miro String Quartet. In demand as a chamber musician and early music specialist, Tulio has been on faculty as the viola da gamba instructor at the Whitewater Early Music Festival in Wisconsin since 2010.

In 2012 he joined the Vancouver Early Music Festival as faculty on viola da gamba and baroque cello alongside Jaap ter Linden. Born in La Victoria, Venezuela, Tulio began his cello studies through El Sistema, quickly moving up to the highest orchestra by age fifteen. He received his Bachelor of Music from the Simon Bolivar Conservatory, his Master of Music from Miami University in Ohio, and his Doctorate in Performance at the University of Arizona. Pursuing his strong interest in historic performance practice, he continued his studies in The Netherlands, doing post-graduate studies on baroque cello and viola da gamba with Jaap ter Linden and Rainer Zipperling at The Royal Conservatory in The Hague. Tulio is currently cello professor at the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire. More information at www.trcello.com

Jake Endres
Narrator, bass-baritone

Jake Endres (narrator, bass-baritone) lives in St. Paul, MN and splits his time between the musical and theatrical worlds, freelancing as a singer, actor, music director, and composer. He has appeared with many regional organizations, including: The Minnesota Orchestra, The Flying Foot Forum/Guthrie Theater, the Metropolitan Symphony (as a regular creative partner),
History Theatre, Schubert Club, The Children’s Theatre Company, The Rose Ensemble, Nautilus Music-Theater, Bach Society of MN, Park Square Theatre, Dakota Valley Symphony, Austin (MN) Symphony, Paul Bunyan Playhouse, Sapphire Chamber Consort, Skylark Opera, Frank Theatre, Open Eye Figure Theatre, G.R.E.A.T. Theatre, and Ten Thousand Things.

Since the pandemic began, Jake has produced an eclectic series of backyard concerts called Smoke House Stage. Out of that came a regular new feature of his life, as he now performs several different concerts of the music of Tom Waits. Jake sings regularly with Border CrosSing and serves on their Board of Directors, and is most proud to be the papa of Annabelle and Gavia.

Rocky Duval
Mezzo-soprano

New York based singer, performance poet, and writer Rocky Duval (she/her) has been performing professionally since the age of 11 and has appeared in opera, television, stage, concert, off-Broadway, and the TEDx stage.

Ms. Duval specializes in singing baroque and contemporary classical music, and has performed with many companies, including: The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Glimmerglass Festival, Festival Bach Montreal, Frequent Flyers Aerial Dance, The Colorado Music Festival, The Seattle Symphony, Opera Steamboat, Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Amherst Early Music, among many others.

Learn more about Rocky

Mary Burke
viola da gamba

Mary Burke, viola da gamba, has appeared as a soloist and chamber  musician across the US with numerous ensembles, including Consortium  Carissimi, the Rose Ensemble, Catacoustic Consort, Bach Society of  Minnesota, Ensemble Polaris, the Gregorian Singers, Duo Geminiani, and 

Camerata Pacifica Baroque, and has toured with the crossover group  Ensemble Galilei.  She has performed at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, the Boston Early Music Festival, and the Bach Festivals of  Baldwin-Wallace College and the University of Minnesota. Ms. Burke has 

recorded on Naxos, Sony Classical, Voces Novae, and treblehook records, and has been heard on Minnesota Public Radio, NPR, WNYC, and Concert FM (New Zealand). 

Ginna Watson
baroque violin, vielle, and rebec

Ginna Watson is a Minneapolis-based violinist who specializes in historically-informed performance. She plays baroque violin and viola with the Lyra Baroque Orchestra and medieval bowed strings and harp with The Rose Ensemble for Early Music. Ginna also performs with Consortium Carissimi and Sprezzatura, ensembles dedicated to performing 17th-century music on historic instruments.

Ginna has performed in concert series and festivals around the country, including the Boston Early Music Festival, the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix, and Princeton
University. She is concertmaster of the annual Early Music Montana festival. Internationally, she has performed throughout France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and Bolivia. Ginna frequently gives masterclasses on medieval and baroque performance practice, including Houston Baptist University, Colorado State University, Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and the Center for Jewish Culture and Creativity in Los Angeles. Ginna is the violin instructor at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Dick Hensold
bagpipes and recorders

Dick Hensold (B.M., Oberlin Conservatory) is a freelance musician specializing in early music, traditional music of Scotland, Northumberland, and Cape Breton Island, and Cambodian traditional music. He performs on Northumbrian small-pipes (a quiet bagpipe), Montgomery smallpipes (an historical smallpipe), recorder, medieval greatpipes, Swedish bagpipes, traditional Cambodian reed instruments, seljefløyte, and low whistle. He is currently the foremost Northumbrian smallpiper in North America, has performed in both Scotland and England, and has taught Northumbrian smallpipes at workshops in the United States, Canada, and Northumberland.

Hensold has regularly appeared as recorder soloist with the Twin Cities-based baroque orchestra Lyra Concert since 1986, also appearing with the Chicago Early Music Consort, Ex Machina, Circle of Sound, and the Minnesota Orchestra. His research interest in early Scottish music resulted in a lecture and concert appearance at the 1997 Lowland and Border Piper’s Society collogue in Peebles, Scotland. The proceedings of this conference, along with Hensold’s two other related papers, were published as “Out of the Flames” in 2004.

He is principal composer and arranger for the Celtic-oriented quartet Piper’s Crow, and also performs with several other folk groups and as part of a 4-piece traditional Cambodian ensemble. He released his solo CD, Big Music for Northumbrian Smallpipes, in August 2007. He is a 2006 Bush Artist Fellow.

Michelle Wenderlich
violone

Michelle Wenderlich (pronouns: they/them) has worked, toured and recorded with many of the top early music orchestras and conductors in Europe, such as Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, Leipziger Barockorchester and Die Kölner Akademie, as well as with innovative crossover groups like Solistenensemble Kaleidoskop and Pera Ensemble. They work locally with La Grande Bande, Bach Society of Minnesota, Consortium Carissimi, and Flying Forms. After studying with Joe Carver at Stony Brook University they moved to Europe for early music studies with Dane Roberts at the Frankfurt University of Music and Performing Arts.

They also have performance degrees from the Orchestra of the Enlightenment and the Formation Supérieure of the Abbaye aux Dames de Saintes, in cooperation with l’Orchestre de Champs-Elysées, specializing in period classical and romantic orchestra and chamber music. They have been featured as a soloist, especially for Viennese bass repertoire, at the Limberger Musiktage and Baroque Nights in the Frankfurt area. They received the Edith Salvo Music Prize at Stony Brook and were supported by a Postgraduate Fellowship from the Heinrich Böll Foundation for musical studies in Germany. Michelle moved back to the US for doctoral studies and is currently completing a Ph.D. in human geography while remaining an active performer. 

Maria Jette
Soprano

Maria Jette, soprano, has appeared with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra: the Symphonies of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Charlotte, Santa Rosa and Buffalo; Vocalessence (formerly The Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota), the Handel Choir of Baltimore, Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, and Los Angeles Master Chorale; and with original instrument ensembles Angelica Cantanti, Portland Baroque Orchestra and The Lyra Baroque Orchestra. She has been a regular guest at the Oregon Bach, Victoria Bach and San Luis Obispo Mozart Festivals, the Oregon Festival of American Music, and on Public Radio International’s A Prairie Home Companion. With conductor Helmuth Rilling, she has sung Bach, Mozart and Monteverdi in Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada, as well as in Minneapolis, New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. In a 20+ year association with conductor Philip Brunelle, she first appeared as the coloratura dog, Fido, in Britten’s Paul Bunyan; and has gone on to sing everything from fully-staged operas by Mozart opera and Virgil Thomson through oratorios by Handel, William Bolcom and Francis Grier, and most recently, Dominick Argento’s glorious Evensong (2009).

Her 45+ operatic roles range from Monteverdi’s Poppea and Handel’s Cleopatra through Mozart’s Pamina, Countess and Fiordiligi, many of them with the late, lamented Ex Machina Antique Music Theatre in the Twin Cities. With The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, she starred as the Mrs. in the May 2002 premiere of Garrison Keillor’s operatic excursion, Mr. and Mrs. Olson. She has performed her own production of Seuss/Kapilow’s Green Eggs & Ham for more than 50,000 kids, with symphonies and music festivals around the USA.