Concert: Sospiri di Lamento

Janna Kysilko

Janna Kysilko, soprano, co-founded Sospiri Early Music along with Spanish mezzo-soprano Nerea Berraondo, and now serves as its director. A graduate of Macalester College and the Eastman School of Music, she has undertaken a diverse array of musical projects over the years, from portraying operetta ingénues like Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance, to early opera roles such as Flerida in Cavalli’s Erismena, Amore in Gagliano’s La Dafne, and Euridice in Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Janna has given several song recitals for organizations such as the Schubert Club, Thursday Musical, and the Women in Music Festival in New York, as well as appeared as a soloist with ensembles like the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra and the Macalester Festival Chorale.

Awarded a McKnight grant in 2022, she was able to participate as a soloist in the Amherst Early Music Festival, as well as take part in the International Music Encounters baroque workshop with Roberta Invernizzi at Casa de Mateus in Portugal, and the Curso de Canto Histórico with Carlos Mena at the Universidad de Salamanca. Janna now resides in St. Paul, MN, where she is also a prominent trainer of dressage horses.

Joe Dolson

Joe Dolson is associate concertmaster of the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra. He has freelanced as a violinist within the Twin Cities since graduating from Macalester College in 2000, performing everything from high-concept performance art music with composer Franz Kamin, to classical and romantic string quartet music with the Elderberry String Quartet, to traditional English and Scottish Country Dance music. His forays into historical dance forms, in turn, led him to an interest in studying baroque performance practice with violinist Marc Levine.

Since developing an interest in baroque performance, Joe has studied baroque dance with Paige Whitley-Bauguess, and worked with Marc Destrubé, Ingrid Matthews, and Aisslinn Nosky studying baroque violin performance.

Joe also plays in a violin duo with MPO stand partner Catherine Himmerich. Together, they have worked extensively on sets of violin duos by diverse artists such as Violet Archer, Bela Bartok, Victoria Bond, Paul Hindemith, LeClair, and the Cure.

Phillip Rukavina

Phillip Rukavina performs as a lute and vihuela soloist and as a continuo lutenist. He’s appeared at many music festivals specializing in early music, including the Utrecht Early Music Festival (2013) and the Boston Early Music Festival (2015). In 2017, Phillip was invited to perform as a soloist at the European Lute Festival in Füssen, Germany (2017) and at the Lute Society of America’s 2017 WestFest held in Victoria, BC Canada.

Phillip is a founding member of the Venere Lute Quartet and has performed with many prominent ensembles, including the Newberry Consort, the Texas Early Music Project, the Rose Ensemble, the Bach Society MN and with renowned sopranos Emma Kirkby and Ellen Hargis. He has served on the faculty of the Lute Society of America’s LuteFest in Cleveland, OH and the Amherst and Vancouver Early Music Festivals. He has recorded on the Lyrichord, LSA, and Naxos labels. His fifth Studio395 solo release, Dutch Light: the Lute Music of Nicolas Vallet, was issued in winter of 2017.

Bruce Jacobs

Bruce Jacobs, (continuo organ, harpsichord), is heard frequently in the Twin Cities. Since his musical debut at First Avenue, he has performed with the Eglantine Consort, Waltham Abbey Singers, Ensemble Polaris, Bach Society of Minnesota, Lyra Baroque Orchestra, Elm Ensemble, Hymnus, The Rose Ensemble, Consortium Carissimi and the National Lutheran Choir.

He was a founding member of Banchetto Musicale, a leading baroque ensemble in Fargo-Moorhead. Jacobs studied pipe organ performance with Ruth Berge at Concordia College in Moorhead and continuo through the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. He retired as Chief Technologist at Twin Cities Public Television in 2022.

Mary Burke

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). 

Rocky Duval

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

Dick Hensold

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.

Ginna Watson

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.