BACH FESTIVAL 2024

Nancy Almquist, soprano, trained at North Park University, Chicago, (BM in Voice) and Indiana University (MM in Voice). She continued private study with Todd Duncan, Maurice Allison and Tom Reilly. She has studied acting at the Shakespeare Theatre, Studio Theatre and Theatre Lab and holds certification in Contemporary Commercial Music the LoVetri Method from Shenandoah Conservatory.

Nancy has soloed with the Washington Bach Consort, the Cathedral Choral Society, the Folger Consort, Hesperus, Annapolis Opera, the Other Opera Company, the Washington Savoyards and Interact Theater Company. In recital she has teamed with pianists Andrew Wells-Dang (Washington and Hanoi, Vietnam) Jaewon Lee (Washington and the Washington Conservatory) Jeffery Watson (The American Church in Paris, Chicago, and Washington) and Cheryl Branham (California). She has performed with violist/violinist JoAnna Cochenet, guitarist Erik Grimm and choreographer Sandra Atkinson (Light Switch Dance Theatre). Nancy enjoys occasionally guesting with the indie band Prinze George, most recently on their live “Car Bar” program on Instagram; previously at the Washington Cathedral (SoFar Sounds) Howard Theatre, Firefly Festival (Dover, DE) and on tour in Montreal, Canada.

A versatile sacred musician, she has served as cantor, conductor and music director in a variety of church settings. During the covid pandemic she offered unaccompanied song for meditation on Fridays in the Grotto of Gethsemane on the lower grounds of the Franciscan Monastery in northeast Washington. Most recently Nancy served as cantor in the professional quartet for St. Luke’s Parish at the Historic St. Ignatius Church in Fort Washington, MD.

Nancy is an experienced voice teacher and clinician, having served on the music faculties of the Washington Conservatory of Music, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Northern Virginia Community College and currently Northwestern High School’s Visual and Performing Arts Program. She has taught and performed as a singing artist/consultant for the Ignatian Legacy Fellows Program and has led voice clinics for the vocal music teachers of Prince Georges County. She maintains a private home studio in Mount Rainier, MD and online.

Ms. Chudacoff is the former concertmaster of the U.S. Marine Band’s White House Chamber Orchestra. Following her military retirement in 2015, she joined the National Symphony Orchestra as a full-time violin section member for three years. Since then, she has continued her work as concertmaster of the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra and the National Gallery Orchestra and has also added responsibilities as concertmaster of the Wolf Trap Opera Orchestra and the Apollo Orchestra. She also continues to perform for the National Symphony, the Kennedy Center Opera House Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Buffalo Philharmonic. Prior to moving to Washington, DC, Ms. Chudacoff was the Assistant Concertmaster of the Louisville Orchestra. Ms. Chudacoff has appeared several times as a soloist with the Marine Chamber Orchestra, the National Gallery Orchestra, and the Alexandria Symphony, as well as with the Louisville Orchestra, the Concert Artists of Baltimore, the Londontowne Symphony Orchestra, the Louisville Ballet, the Toledo Symphony, and the Ann Arbor Symphony.

Ms. Chudacoff is a member of both the Sunrise Quartet and the National Gallery Quartet, and has performed regularly on several area chamber series, including the Embassy Series, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, National Musical Arts, the Contemporary Music Forum, and with the Fessenden Ensemble. She was the Principal Musician with Chamber Dance Project for ten years, and recently participated with the Sunrise Quartet in the International Festival of Sacred Music in Quito, Ecuador. She also appeared in a broadcast for West Virginia Public Television featuring the quartet. She can be heard on many recordings and radio broadcasts, including several appearances on National Public Radio’s Performance Today program.

Ms. Chudacoff helped to found the College Park Youth Orchestra in 2006 and is the director of its Chamber Ensemble. She also coaches chamber music for the Maryland Classic Youth Orchestra program, the NSO’s Youth Fellowship Program and the Summer Music Institute at the Kennedy Center. Ensembles she coaches have regularly been selected for the live rounds of the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition, and in 2021 won the Junior Division Bronze Medal. Ms. Chudacoff has served on the faculty of the University of Louisville, Indiana University (Southeast Campus), the DC Youth Orchestra Program and the Northern Virginia Youth Symphony Association. She was also a teaching assistant to Sylvia Rosenberg while at the Eastman School of Music, where she earned both her Bachelor and Master of Music degrees. Her primary teachers were Michael Avsharian in Ann Arbor, and Sylvia Rosenberg and
Zvi Zeitlin at Eastman.

Calvin Chrisfield, from Riverdale, MD, has been playing violin since before he started school. As a member of the DC Youth Orchestra, he has performed at venues around the world, including the Lisbon Music Festival in Lisbon, Portugal; the Gibralfaro Castle in Málaga, Spain; the CajaGRANADA Cultural Center in Granada, Spain; and the Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington, DC. His repertoire extends beyond his orchestral work, and he was a recurring soloist at Sandy Spring Friends student coffeehouse events. Calvin currently attends the University of Maryland, where he is pursuing his bachelor’s degree in Public Policy.

Praised for her “beautifully expressive” playing, cellist Kerry Van Laanen has performed with the Washington, DC area’s top ensembles since 1985. As an opera musician, she plays regularly with the Washington National Opera (including for the complete 2016 Ring cycle), the Wolf Trap Opera and the Maryland Lyric Opera. As a symphonic musician, she appears with the National Philharmonic, National Gallery Orchestra, PostClassical Ensemble, and National Symphony Orchestra.

A highly sought-after chamber musician, she has performed at the Spoleto Festival in Italy and at the Mendocino Festival, as well as at the Kennedy Center and Strathmore. She spent several seasons presenting the entire Beethoven and Bartok string quartets with the Beethoven Cycle Quartet. With the tango ensemble QuinTango, she recorded and toured across the United States. She is a founding member of the Columbia String Quartet, which recently gave recitals at the Lyceum and Smithsonian and participated in the National Symphony Orchestra’s In Your Neighborhood program. She has also performed several times at the Kennedy Center’s Millineum Stage, most recently with the Prism Piano Trio of which she is a founding member.

As a soloist, Ms. Van Laanen has appeared with the Oklahoma Symphony, the Catholic University Orchestra and the National Philharmonic.

Ms. Van Laanen has been on the faculty at Cello Speak and the National Philharmonic’s Summer String Institute. She maintains an active private teaching studio in Rockville, Maryland.

Dr. Francine Máté has been Organist/Choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church, Georgetown since October, 1998, and Director of the Bach Festival at Grace Church since December, 1999. She has performed both Organ and/or Harpsichord on 22 of the 23 Bach Festivals for which she has been the Director.

Since 2003, she has traveled to Germany five times to study and play many of the same organs on which JS Bach performed and/or was part of the design and construction. Dr. Máté published an article about her study in the American Organist’s magazine, The Diapason. The 1981 A. David Moore organ at Grace Church, Georgetown was built using many of the same methods used by the organ builders of organs on which JS
Bach played.

Dr. Máté, a native of Houston, Texas, received her Bachelor’s Degree in Music/Organ Performance (cum laude) where she was an organ student under Dr. Robert Jones with whom she had studied since age 16. She went on to attend The University of Michigan, earning both the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts Degrees (Organ Performance) with organ study under the internationally renowned organist, Dr. Marilyn Mason.

She has performed solo organ recitals throughout The United States, including The Washington National Cathedral, St. John’s Lafayette Square, National City Christian Church, the University of Houston, and Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg, Virginia. In 1983 she was the only American Organist invited to perform in the International Solo Organ Recital Series at St. Davids Cathedral in Dyfed, Wales.
Dr. Máté is a member of both the District of Columbia and European Chapters of the American Guild of Organists. She has served on the Board of the DC Chapter many times.

Dr. Máté had a twelve-year tenure as Organist/Choirmaster at St. Clare of Assisi Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan prior to moving to Washington, DC. Her first position as Organist was at the age of thirteen at Clark Memorial Methodist Church in Houston, Texas.

Ms. Evans has been the Director of Music and the Director of the Annual Washington, D.C., Bach Marathon at Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church, Chevy Chase, District of Columbia, from October 2007 to present.

James Kibbie maintains a full schedule of concert, recording, and festival engagements throughout North America and Europe, including appearances at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, Royal Festival Hall in London, Dvořak Hall in Prague, and Lincoln Center in New York. During his month-long concert tour of the Soviet Union in 1991, the newspaper Pravda hailed him as “a marvelous organist, a brilliant interpreter.” A frequent jury member of international organ competitions, he has himself been awarded the Grand Prix d’Interprétation at the prestigious International Organ Competition of Chartres, France, and is also the only American to have won the International Organ Competition of the Prague Spring Festival in the former Czechoslovakia.

James Kibbie’s performances have been broadcast on radio and television in the USA, Canada and Europe. His extensive discography includes “Merrily on Hill,” performed on the famed Skinner organ in Hill Auditorium, Ann Arbor, works of Dieterich Buxtehude recorded on the historic 1687 Schnitger organ of Norden, Germany, and discs of music by Bach, Franck, Alain, Tournemire, Sowande, Buck, Morrison, and contemporary Czech composers. Dr. Kibbie’s “audio holiday cards,” recorded on the Létourneau organ in his residence and issued as free internet downloads, are a popular annual tradition.

James Kibbie is internationally renowned as an authority on the organ music of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has performed the complete cycle of Bach organ works in a series of eighteen recitals and is in constant demand as a Bach recitalist and clinician. His recordings of the complete Bach works on historic baroque organs in Germany have been welcomed with enthusiastic critical and audience acclaim. Thanks to generous support from Dr. Barbara Furin Sloat in honor of J. Barry Sloat, the University of Michigan is offering Dr. Kibbie’s recordings of all 274 Bach works as free internet downloads at www.blockmrecords.org/bach.

James Kibbie is Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where his 42-year tenure included service as University Organist and Chair of the Organ Department. His former students hold key positions in college teaching and church music nationally. Among the honors he has received, he is particularly proud of the James Kibbie Scholarship, endowed in perpetuity by the University of Michigan to support students majoring in organ performance and sacred music.