La Bernardinia Baroque Ensemble

Rainer Beckmann plays recorder with a large variety of early music ensembles in the Philadelphia tri-state area. He is a member of New World Recorders and Vox Renaissance Consort. As featured soloist and guest musician, he has appeared with Tempesta di Mare, Piffaro, Mélomanie, Brandywine Baroque, Camerata Ama Deus, Philadelphia Bach Collegium, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania Sinfonia Orchestra, and others. Before moving to the United States, he performed in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Italy, Israel, and Brazil. Rainer is the music director of the Philadelphia Recorder Society. He is a graduate of the Utrecht Conservatory of Music (Netherlands), where he studied recorder with Heiko ter Schegget, Baldrick Deerenberg, and Marion Verbruggen.

Donna Fournier plays viola da gamba and baroque cello with Brandywine Baroque, The Sylvan Consort of Viols, La Fiocco, and Mélomanie and has been a guest artist with such groups as the Gamut Bach Ensemble, Philadelphia Bach Collegium, Opera Lafayette, Tempesta di Mare, The Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, and The Philadelphia Classical Symphony. The Philadelphia Inquirer acclaimed her solo work as "poised, soulful ... [and] played with particular depth."  Donna has recorded Buxtehude cantatas for PGM, Telemann trio sonatas for Lyrichord, Boismortier trio sonatas for A Casa Discos, Jaquet de La Guerre and Bousset cantatas for Plectra Music, and new music for baroque ensemble for Meyer-Music and Furious Artisans.

Marcia Kravis holds a Master of Music degree from New England Conservatory of Music where she studied with John Gibbons. She is a founding member of La Bernardinia Baroque Ensemble and Ensemble Sebastian. Marcia was the harpsichordist for the American Society of Ancient Instruments for over a decade and has accompanied master classes by Julianne Baird, Marion Verbruggen, Han Tol, Sandra Miller and Saskia Coolen. She teaches harpsichord and piano privately in the Fairmont neighborhood of Philadelphia. As a harpsichordist Marcia performs solo recitals, plays with La Bernardinia Baroque Ensemble, Ensemble Sebastian and other baroque groups in the Philadelphia and South Jersey areas. She is an occasional guest harpsichordist and coach with the Temple Preparatory Orchestra.

An exceptionally versatile musician, Amy Leonard has held positions with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, The New World Symphony, and as assistant principal violist with the National Symphony of Ireland, as well as the internationally recognized contemporary ensemble Nua Nos, or “New Noise”. Currently, Amy is a member of The Delaware Symphony, the contemporary music octet Relache, and the historically-informed ensembles Tempesta di Mare and Brandywine Baroque. Amy also performs frequently with the Pennsylvania Ballet Orchestra, Philly Pops, and was a founding member of the Pyxis Piano Quartet. Sought after as a guest artist, she has collaborated with groups such as the Copeland String Quartet, La Bernardinia, Melomanie, and the Elysian Camerata. A committed instructor, Amy maintains a large and lively studio at home and at The Shipley School in Bryn Mawr.

Amy has recorded for the Chandos, Plectra, NMC, Naxos, Meyer Media, and BMG Classics labels, as well as for PBS, NFL Films, and Irish Film Orchestras.

Corpus Christi, Texas native Edmond Chan, baroque violin, has performed with many early music ensembles and orchestras in the United States, Europe, and Hong Kong, some of which include Tempesta di Mare: Philadelphia Baroque Orchestra, the Dryden Ensemble, Holland Baroque, and the Early Music Society of Hong Kong. In 2019, Edmond completed his master’s degree in baroque violin at the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht: Utrechts Conservatorium in the Netherlands where he studied with Antoinette Lohmann. His master’s thesis entitled “The Fashionable Violinist: Fashion and How to Hold the Violin in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries” focused on exploring historical clothing and how the clothing of the 17th and 18th centuries can better inform historical musicians today on performance practice and historical musical techniques. Most recently he completed his Artist’s Certificate in baroque violin at the Koninklijk Conservatorium den Haag (the Royal Conservatory at the Hague) where he studied with Kati Debretzeni and Walter Reiter. In his free time, Edmond enjoys cooking, swimming, running, going on bike rides and playing board/card/computer games with friends and family.

​Qin Qian holds a BA in erhu performance from Guangxi Arts College, China.  She is the author of two books (My Dreams Fly with Music and A Musical Journey in America) and producer, performer and composer of a CD (A Romantic Musical Journey) and soloist in a concert with the Guangxi Symphony Orchestra in Nanning, China.  After moving to the United States, Qin Qian spread traditional Chinese music, partnering with many musicians from the US, UK and Australia.  Along with music for the erhu, her concerts have featured other Chinese instruments and present a variety of musical styles, including classical, jazz, opera and pop.  She is a sought-after teacher whose students have won many international awards.  Qin Qian's motto is, "There are no borders in music."

Paul Miller is a music theorist, pedagogue and performer specializing in music. Before joining the musicianship department of the Mary Pappert School of Music at Duquesne University in 2015, he served as a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University and on the faculties of the University of Colorado in Boulder and Temple University.

Paul has presented research at numerous national and regional conferences, and his work has been published in Perspectives of New Music, the American Music Research Center Journal, Twentieth-Century Music, Music and Letters and Opera Quarterly. Further work has appeared in Early Music and the MLA Association’s Notes. An expert on the remarkable music of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Paul studied with the composer for six summers and premiered his solo viola work "In Freundschaft" in Europe and the United States. Paul's research has centered on the unusual spatial dimension of Stockhausen's music as well as the phenomenon of metric complexity. In addition, he has extensively studied viola d’amore music in Bohemian and Moravian manuscripts.

As a performer, Paul has appeared at the Metropolitian Museum of Art in New York City, the Library of Congress, the National Cathedral in Washington D.C., the Darmstadt International Festival for New Music, the Bethlehem Bach Festival, the Hawai`i Performing Arts Festival and with ensembles such as El Mundo and Tempesta di Mare. He has collaborated in chamber music concerts with Richard Savino and Jory Vinikour, both Grammy® award nominees. During his tenure as a fellow at Cornell, Paul led the Baroque Orchestra there and studied with Neal Zaslaw, Christopher Hogwood and Malcolm Bilson. Paul also performs on a five-string electric violin built by the firm Zeta.

Since 2016, Paul has invested an extraordinary amount of time and effort into acquiring an impressive array of music technology skills. From assembling his own DIY synthesizer modules, to creating an interspecies interactive multimedia eco-sound installation using Max/MSP, to presenting a series of live demonstrations using modular synthesizers and Max/MSP/Jitter in Duquesne's biomedical engineering program, to creating innovative interactive pedagogical applications for in-class use using the Bach/Cage packages for Max/MSP, Paul has rapidly repositioned himself as a vital resource and innovator in the field of electronic music while breaking new ground by integrating cutting-edge technology into the classroom.

As a pedagogue with over 20 years of classroom experience, Paul enjoys teaching everything from fundamental skills such as solfege, voice-leading, counterpoint and harmony to more advanced topics such as Schenkerian analysis and post-tonal theory. His students hold full-time and tenured positions at James Madison University, the Pittsburgh Symphony, the San Francisco Conservatory and other top-tier institutions throughout the country. He holds a Ph.D. from the Eastman School of Music and a Master's in viola performance (Eastman). Paul's undergraduate studies were at Vassar College, New England Conservatory and Harvard University.