Old music. New ears.
Originally from Paris, France, Pauline Kempf is now based in San Francisco where she studied baroque violin with Elizabeth Blumenstock at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. In June 2022, Pauline was selected to participate in EMA’s Emerging Artists Showcase and performed an all 17th-century program during the Berkeley Festival and Exhibition in Berkeley. She was recently invited by the Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado and the Oregon Bach Festival to perform the “Spring” Season by Vivaldi as a soloist. She is a co-founder of Ensemble Affect and frequently performs with several other period instrument ensembles such as Third Coast Baroque, Haymarket Opera Company, Baroque Chamber Orchestra of Colorado, and Lumedia Musicworks. Pauline holds musical degrees from the Music Universities of Geneva and Vienna and received her Doctor of Music degree from Northwestern University.
Violist Seth van Embden enjoys a multifaceted career of orchestral, chamber, and historical playing. He is currently a member of the New World Symphony.
Seth is an enthusiastic proponent for historical performance and has attended the Dartington Baroque festival, the Berwick Academy of the Oregon Bach Festival, and most recently the Valley of the Moon Festival in Sonoma, California, where he performed Mozart’s Kegelstatt trio with acclaimed clarinetist Eric Hoeprich and fortepianist Eric Zivian. He is a founding member of Ensemble Affect, a non-profit dedicated to making period performance practice accessible and approachable. In 2019 he was the recipient of Bourbon Baroque’s Nicolas Fortin scholarship, which has led to many happy collaborations with the Louisville-based group since.
Phoebe Gelzer-Govatos has a particular love of early music, and has received instruction in historical performance through festivals and workshops such as the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute, Oberlin College’s Baroque Performance Institute, the International Baroque Institute at Longy, and the Berwick Academy of the Oregon Bach Festival, including studies with Marilyn McDonald, Julie Andrijeski, and Marc Destrubé.
Recent performances include programs with the Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, the Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Louisville's Bourbon Baroque, and vocal ensemble Audivi. Phoebe is also a core member of period-instrument ensembles l’Invenzione, the Michigan Bach Collective, and Ensemble Affect. She is a frequent guest artist with the baroque orchestras of the University of Michigan and Grand Valley State University, and has been invited to lead workshops in baroque style and technique at Bowling Green and Youngstown State Universities.
When performing early music, Phoebe plays an anonymous 18th-century Bavarian violin patterned after Amati, with bows by Andrew Dipper and Ken Millard.
Octavio Mujica is a Venezuelan-American cellist with an extensive background in performance and teaching. Recently awarded a Master's Degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Octavio has garnered numerous accolades including the Latin Grammy Foundation Scholarship, the Cervantes Talent Award, the Blair Scholarship, the Barron String Orchestral Scholarship, and the William E. Duckwitz Talent Scholarship.
Sun Chang is a pianist and harpsichordist in Chicago. In addition to teaching at North Park University, she freelances on various keyboard instruments. Currently Sun is working on a project to record all of Jacquet de La Guerre’s suites on a tempered piano, and with Ensemble Vitelotte, performing Emilie Mayers works for violin and piano.
Kiyoe Matsuura plays baroque violin and baroque viola in many of the Midwest’s finest period instrument ensembles, including Haymarket Opera Company, Ars Music Chicago, The Bach and Beethoven Experience, Callipygian Players, Madison Bach Musicians, Third Coast Baroque, Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra, and the Newberry Consort. In collaboration with keyboardist Sun Chang, Kiyoe co-founded Ensemble Vitelotte, a duo committed to exploring lesser-known works by historical women composers. Kiyoe received her master’s degree from DePaul University and studied historically-informed performance at ‘Juilliard at the Piccola Accadamia’, Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute, Amherst Early Music Festival, and American Bach Soloists Academy. As an educator, Ms. Matsuura manages a private studio of students ranging in age from 4 to 70, and her online violin pedagogy content reaches students around the world. https://kiyoematsuuraviolin.com
Chea Kang is a Korean soprano, who has recently graduated from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music with a Master’s degree. Ms. Kang has been studying voice since she was 12 years old, and is currently continuing her studies with César Ulloa. She graduated from The Juilliard School in 2021 with a Bachelor’s degree, and she was a recipient of the John Erskin Prize. While she was studying at The Juilliard School, she performed as a soloist in the 2020 production of New York Festival of Songs “Cubans in Paris,” led by Steven Blier at the Peter J. Sharp theater in New York City. At the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Ms. Kang has performed leading roles in operas, including Servilia in La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart, Cleopatra in Giulio Cesare by Händel, Emilia in Flavio by Händel, and La Princesse in L'enfant et les sortilèges by Ravel. She has also appeared in Dialogues of the Carmelites by Poulenc at the San Francisco Opera as Sister Catherine in October 2022.
Luke Elmer, countertenor, was born and raised in Flower Mound, Texas. Luke earned his undergraduate degree in Vocal Performance from Brigham Young University.
Luke first joined Ensemble Affect on tour to Whitman College in Walla Walla, WA and Burlingame, CA in March 2024.
In August 2024, Luke joined the Grammy-award winning vocal ensemble Chanticleer, and now tours with them full-time.
Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for his “unforgettable display of virtuosity,” trumpeter Dominic Favia performs with baroque ensembles across the country like the American Bach Soloists, Musica Angelica, Voices of Music, Ars Minerva, Cantata Collective, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, and was a finalist-laureate in the inaugural Indianapolis International Baroque Competition in 2016. He plays second trumpet with the Carmel Bach Festival and is a member of the Marin Symphony.
Dominic also leads a second life building harpsichords at John Phillips Harpsichords in Berkeley, California, and recently completed his first instrument in his own workshop, a single-manual harpsichord based on the surviving 1635 Joannes Ruckers.
Originally from Vienna, Virginia, he holds degrees in trumpet performance from the Cleveland Institute of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. Dominic is an avid proponent of historically-informed trumpet playing using historically accurate copies of instruments without vent-holes.