Conductors
OCRS enjoys many fine professional conductors with a variety of musical interests and teaching styles. To find out who is conducting when, check our Calendar.
Here you will find short bios for the following conductors:
Tom Axworthy
Mr. Axworthy currently teaches the Collegium Musicum and Recorder Workshop for Rio Hondo College and has directed the Collegium for the Claremont Graduate School. He teaches regularly for the early music workshops presented by the San Diego Early Music Society, the Southern California Recorder Society, the San Francisco Early Music Society and the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts (ISOMATA). He directs his own annual SCEMC Workshop in Renaissance Reed Instruments and is co-director for the Canto Antiguo Workshop in Early Music and Dance .
Mr. Axworthy is the founder-director of the Southern California Early Music Consort and a member of the Renaissance Players, Harmonia Baroque and is a co-founder of Canto Antiguo. He also directs several other chamber ensembles in a wide range of musical styles. Mr. Axworthy has appeared as a recorder/shawm soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic as well as an oboe soloist with many local orchestras. He records for the Musical Heritage Society, Nonesuch, Dargason and Word Records. His early instruments and the SCEMC have been heard in numerous film and TV soundtracks.
Janet Beazley
Originally from Bakersfield but now living in San Juan Capistrano, California, Janet Beazley is an accomplished performer on recorders and historical flutes, as well as a songwriter, singer, and banjo player. On historical winds she performs with the Los Angeles Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica, Los Angeles Musica Viva, Les Folies, and with her own early music/roots fusion group, Accenti. Dr. Beazley received a Doctorate in Early Music Performance from the University of Southern California and now teaches there as an instructor of recorders and historical flutes, and as a lecturer on early music performance practices. She is the Director of the Collegium Musicum at the University of California at Riverside and also teaches recorder and flute at Claremont Graduate University. As a banjoist, vocalist and songwriter, Janet is a member of the renowned band Chris Stuart & Backcountry. She has taught at bluegrass workshops throughout the United States, Canada and the UK, and her solo bluegrass/Americana album, 5 South, was released last summer. www.backcountrymusic.com
Ricardo Berón
Born in Santa Fe, Argentina, Ricardo Berón was a registered nurse for over ten years before moving to Los Angeles. He holds a degree in music from Los Angeles Valley College where he was the recipient of the Arts Council Showcase Award for Instrumental Music for 2003-2004 and a finalist for 2004-2005. He is a former student of Lia Levin and is currently a player with the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra (LARO) conducted by Tom Axworthy.
Marika Frankl
Marika Frankl graduated from the Budapest Conservatory of Music with a major in voice and a minor in piano. She studied recorder with Betty Zuehlke and Anne Young and took numerous master classes with Marion Verbrueggen and Eva Legene. She founded the Harmonia Baroque Players in 1984. Besides performing with the ensemble, Marika also teaches recorder privately.
Inga Funck
Ms. Funck was born in Hamburg, Germany, where she grew up in a musical family and played recorder from early childhood. She studied historical recorders and flutes with Peter Holtslag at the Hochschule fur Music und Theater in Hamburg, and participated in many workshops throughout Europe.
She has been featured in solo performances and period instrument ensembles in Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, and the Netherlands. After coming to Los Angeles on scholarship to begin her graduate studies at U.S.C., she was awarded a teaching assistantship in music history and completed her Master's degree in Early Music Performance.
She is an adjunct faculty member of the California Institute of the Arts, concertizes with Musica Angelica, L.A. Baroque Orchestra, L.A. Musica Viva, Southwest Chamber Music Society, and L.A. Chamber Orchestra, and can be heard on recordings with the Ensemble de Medici.
Adam Gilbert
Adam Gilbert is director of the Early Music Program at the USC Thornton School of Music. He teaches music history, performs on recorder and historical double reeds, and is one of the premiere international players of the Renaissance shawm. He grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. The first graduate of the Early Music program at the Mannes College of Music in New York City, he has performed as a member of New York's Ensemble for Early Music, the Waverly Consort and Piffaro, the Renaissance Band. He has appeared with ensembles such as Calliope, ARTEK, New York Cornet and Sackbut Ensemble. The Court Dance Company of New York, the Folger Consort, Concert Royal, The Bach Ensemble, Chatham Baroque, Newberry Consort, Canto (Colombia) and La Caccia Alta (Belgium) among others. He is also a founding member of ensemble Ciaramella, which performs concerts of fifteenth-century music in The United States, Israel and Belgium, and has recorded on the Naxos label. Adam studied recorder at Rotterdam's Conservatorium and studied in Leuven, Belgium from 1998 to 2000 as a recipient of the Fulbright and Belgian American Education Foundation Grants working on his dissertation "Elaboration in Heinrich Isaac's Three-Voice Mass Sections and Untexted Compositions." He completed his PhD at Case Western Reserve University in 2003, and taught for two years as a visiting assistant professor at Stanford University. Adam can be heard on Dorian, Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana and Lyrichord labels. His research specialties include allusion in fifteenth-century song and Mass, pastourelles and their symbolism, improvisation, compositional processes and embellishment from 1400-1700. Adam won the prestigious Noah Greenberg Award in 2008 for his proposed book and multimedia resource on 15th-century counterpoint and improvisation.
Rotem Gilbert
Rotem Gilbert is a gifted recorder player and a founding member of Ciaramella. She is also a memeber of Piffaro and has appeared with ARTEK, Fala Musica (Netherlands), La Caccia Alta (Belgium), Chatham Baroque, Pittsburgh Camerata, King's Noyse, Newberry Consort, Capilla Flamenca, Pittsburgh Opera and the LA Opera. Rotem can be heard on the Deutsche Grammophon's Archiv, Passacaille, Musica Americana, Dorian and Naxos labels. She currently teaches Baroque and Renaissance performance practice courses at USC Thornton School of Music.
Richard Glenn
Richard Glenn has specialized in teaching and performing on plucked instruments (guitar, lute and cittern) for many years. He received his BM and MM degrees in Music from the University of Redlands. He has taught at UC, Irvine and UC, Riverside, and currently teaches at Orange Coast College and Concordia University. He performs regularly with the early music groups Harmonia Baroque Players and Musica Fortuna.
Stephan Haas
Stephan Haas is a recorder player, located in Los Angeles. In 1987, he was awarded the first prize in the All Japan Recorder Competition, and has been teaching and performing internationally throughout Europe, Japan and the United States. His musical interests span from early Italian composers to modern writers for the instrument. He is currently a member of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Southern California, where he also teaches physics and astronomy.
Dieneke Kalsbeek
Dieneke studied recorder at the Conservatory of Music in Utrecht, the Netherlands, with Marion Verbruggen and Heiko ter Schegget. She finished her studies with the “performing Musician” exam. After teaching recorder at different music schools in the Netherlands and Germany, she moved to Germany and taught recorder for ten years at the music school of Buende in North Rhine-Westphalia. She performed with several ancient music chamber ensembles and baroque orchestras throughout Europe. In April 2006, she moved to the United States, where she married and became the mother of Sarah. Dieneke is a member of the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra and was its featured soloist in September, 2006.
Lee Lassetter
Lee Lassetter, a member of OCRS, is a multi-talented, multi-faceted musician. She is organist at Manhattan Beach Community Church, and has accompanied the Senior Choir there on four European concert tours. Her work with older adults is in the North Orange County Community College District, where she teaches a Tonechime Choir, a Senior Chorus, and a class for Alzheimer’s residents at an assisted living facility. She teaches individual piano lessons. She has sung in the Camerata Singers of Long Beach for 15 seasons and worked previously for nine years as its Administrative Coordinator. Lee also played second soprano in the Los Angeles Recorder Orchestra for two years. She says it is always great fun and a real pleasure to conduct OCRS meetings!
Carol Lisek was interested in music from a very early age and even conducted her kindergarten class in a performance in Baltimore, MD. While earning M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, Carol studied voice at the Peabody Institute with Serafina DiGiacomo.
Carol spent several years working in the chemical and pharmaceutical fields, including a postdoctoral fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, and research positions at Monsanto in St. Louis, MO, and at Searle Pharmaceutical in Skokie, IL. During this time, she studied voice and sang with the Rochester Symphony Chorale and the St. Louis Symphony Chorus, the latter under the passionate baton of Leonard Slatkin.
It was only a matter of time before Carol realized that her hobby needed to become her career. Thus, Carol left the pharmaceutical industry and moved to Los Angeles to begin studies toward an M.F.A. in Vocal Performance at the California Institute of the Arts where she studied with Jacqueline Bobak. She later earned a D.M.A. in Early Music Performance with a concentration in Voice from USC where she studied with Cynthia Munzer, Mary Rawcliffe, and James Tyler.
Carol served as Artistic Director of the Jouyssance Early Music Ensemble from 2005-2007, and directed Voce Angelicus, the El Camino College Women’s Chorus, in the spring of 2009. She has served on the faculty of the Canto Antiguo Early Music Workshop since 2005. Carol performs as a contralto soloist and as a chorus member in area choruses, including Vox Femina Los Angeles. Carol is an adjunct faculty member at El Camino College, Pasadena City College, and Claremont Graduate University where she teaches music appreciation, voice class, and private voice.
David Murphy
David studied under Forrest Clark – percussionist of the Los 
Angeles Philharmonic, Earl Hatch - studio mallet player and teacher, and Mitchell Peters – tympanist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and attended American University in Washington, D.C. and California State University at Los Angeles, where he majored in music education. David has played with the La Mirada, Huntington Park, Downey, Beach Cities, and Bellfower Symphony Orchestras. He currently plays with the South Coast and Rio Hondo Symphony Orchestras, Orange County’s Meistersingers, as well as with The Hour of Power Orchestra at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA, seen worldwide on the weekly Hour of Power television broadcast.
David’s early music experience began in 1970 when he joined Canto Antiguo – under the direction of Shirley Robbins - as their percussionist. He continues to perform with the Southern California Early Music Consort under the direction of Tom Axworthy. He also shares the drum chair of the Queen’s Band at the Renaissance Pleasure Faire, held six weekends annually in Southern California. He has taught percussion techniques for early music at several workshops
Alexandra Opsahl
Alexandra Opsahl began her musical studies in the junior department of the Barratt Due Institue in Oslo, Norway, before going on to study with Peter Holtslag and Daniel Bruggen at the Royal Academy of Music. Graduating with 1st Class Honors, she received a stipend to study cornetto in Italy with Bruce Dickey. She continued her studies at the Schola Cantorum in Basel. She is the winner of 2003 Moeck Solo Recorder Prize, and also won the Roya
l Academy of Music Early Music Prize two years running. She freelances both in Europe and in the US and has played with amongst others the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under Ton Koopman, the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Emmanuelle Haimand with Barokkanerne, with whom she recorded the Vivaldi c-minor recorder concerto. She has performed at Glyndebourne Opera, the Oslo Opera, Wigmore Hall, Purcell Room and the Royal Albert Hall. Future engagements include performances of the Monteverdi Vespers with the Amercan Bach Soloists, and a DVD recording of 'L'Incoronazione di Poppea' with the Oslo Opera.
Jody Pike
Jody Pike was a music history major at Stanford, got an MA at Occidental where she studied conducting with Howard Swan, and also studied conducting with Daniel Moe. She has taught choral music in high school and directed singing groups -- both mixed and women's voices. She began playing the recorder with Anne Young as her teacher, and became interested in the field of Early Music through attending workshops at Dominican College. Since then she has studied recorder primarily with Gloria Ramsey.
Beginning in 1990 she has taken choral groups to Europe, to study and to sing early music in the venues in which it was originally performed. (Members of OCRS have traveled to Spain and Siena on similar recorder workshops.)
Since 1992 she has directed Vox Feminae, a women's group that performs early music in the schools. It is an educational program of the history of music, beginning with chant through the early Renaissance, and it is performed with costumes, early instruments, and dance.
David Schnell
David sings Bass in the Los Angeles Opera Chorus and for over 25 years sang with the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He holds advanced degrees in conducting and in musicology from the University of Southern California. For five seasons he was the Principal Guest Conductor of the Alaska Chamber Symphony and Chorus, and has conducted ensembles in Arizona, Florida and Washington D.C. A musician for over 30 years in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, David is retired from the post of Director of Music, Organist-Choirmaster at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul in Los Angeles.
Ken Sherman
Mr. Sherman has more than fifty years of musical experience. Starting on the clarinet, he later added the saxophone, oboe, bassoon, flute, and recorder. Ken is a past president of the Southern California Recorder Society and for years directed their annual workshop. He is a freelance musician, directs and plays in several music groups, and also teaches privately.
Paul Sherman
Dr. Paul J. Sherman is Southern California’s leading baroque oboist. Paul is a graduate of CalArts and is holds a doctorate from USC’s Thornton School of Music. While many of us know him as the baroque oboist for Harmonia Baroque Players, he also plays baroque oboe in the newly-formed ensemble Jealous Nightingale Baroque, and appears as a soloist with Musica Angelica and the Corona Del Mar Baroque Orchestra. Later this year he will appear with Santa Fe Pro Musica. Paul is executive director of the contemporary music group ensembleGREEN, which will be premiering nine commissions this season.
In the jazz idiom he has performed and recorded with the Dutz Quintet, GO organic orchestra, the Vinny Gollia Large Ensemble, and Yusef Lateef. On modern oboe, he performs with many orchestras on the west coast. He teaches at USC, College of the Canyons, Glendale City College, Pasadena Conservatory of Music, Citrus Community College and the California Institute of the Arts. He is also conductor and associate music director of the Santa Clarita Valley Youth Orchestra.
Also meet our previous conductors...