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 Sarah Pillowhas built a unique career by drawing on her equal expertise in jazz, classical, and early music repertoire. Her recent appearances are a testament to her flexibility and innovation as a singer. In addition to her work with Perpetual Motion, Sarah performed in Mumbai with the Paranjoti Academy Chorus and Symphony Orchestra of India; was hailed as “splendid” by Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times for her portrayal of The Queen in The Play of Daniel, a 12th-century musical play; and can be heard on Sony BMG’s recent release of Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Allegro.
Sarah’s New York City performance credits include several avant-garde projects at The Kitchen and Knitting Factory, The Marian Vespers of 1610 with The New York Collegium, and Sweeney Todd at Lincoln Center with the New York Philharmonic. Sarah has toured over 30 cities in the United States with both her jazz quartet and her crossover project, Nuove Musiche. Her work in Baroque music is extensive, with performances and recordings for the BBC and ASV Records of composer Giovanni Felice Sances, a contemporary of Monteverdi. Galileo’s Daughters, her Baroque music ensemble, combines operatic drama, musical scholarship, and Sarah’s professional jazz background to bring freshness and immediacy to the performance of early Baroque repertoire. Sarah is co-founder with her husband Marc Wagnon of Buckyball Music, Inc., a record label and music production company that strives to forge a stronger relationship between science and the arts, which is something that was taken for granted in the 17th-century. Sarah holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin Conservatory, teaches voice privately and volunteers as director of the Youth Chorus at The Mercy Center in The Bronx. More information about Sarah can be found at buckyballmusic.com.
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 Mary Anne Ballard,
viola da gamba, is a founding member of Galileo’s Daughters, and also performs and tours with the Baltimore Consort and Brio. With these ensembles, as well as the Oberlin Consort of Viols, she has made about twenty recordings on the Gasparo, Classic Masters, and Dorian labels of early and traditional repertory 1500-1700. She also performs Baroque music either with chamber ensembles or in recital, and has appeared with the Smithsonian Chamber Players, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, the Bach Festival of Philadelphia, the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, the Baroque Soloists of New Jersey, Piccolo Spoleto, Pomerium Musices, et al. In her earlier career, she was a member of The New World Consort, a group which toured the US with productions of medieval music and drama, including Le Jeu de Robin et Marion. This season, Ms. Ballard was the Music Director of the critically acclaimed 50th-Anniversary commemorative production of the Play of Daniel at The Cloisters.
Active in teaching and directing early music, Ms. Ballard founded the University of Pennsylvania Collegium Musicum, an ensemble, which for fourteen years explored the music of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, including the several medieval music-dramas, which she edited and produced. She also directed Music Alta of Princeton University, and from 1981-89 taught viola da gamba and Baroque chamber music at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore. During summers, she teaches at the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute.
Ms. Ballard is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds an M.A. in Musicology from the University of Pennsylvania. Her viola da gamba studies were chiefly with August Wenzinger and Catharina Meints. She divides her time between New York City and South Bend, Indiana where her husband, Alexander Blachly teaches and conducts at the University of Notre Dame.
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