In the spring of 2022 the artistic direction of Baroque & Beyond passed to Stephanie Vial from its founder, Beverly Biggs.
Baroque & Beyond’s artistic director, Stephanie Vial, is a widely respected cellist, praised for her technical flair and expressive sense of phrasing. She is a co-director of The Vivaldi Project (based in Washington, DC) with whom she developed the recording series Discovering The Classical String Trio (MSR Classics) hailed by Gramophone as “captivating” and “highly recommended.” Additional recording can be found on the Dorian Label, Naxos, Hungaroton, and Centaur Records. She has traveled widely, giving solo and chamber music concerts, lectures, and master classes at numerous universities and institutions: The Shrine to Music Museum in South Dakota, The University of Virginia, Boston Conservatory, McGill University, and The Curtis Institute of Music. Vial holds a DMA in 18th-century performance practice from Cornell University where she studied with John Hsu. She is the author of The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical “Period,”published by the University of Rochester Press. She currently teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.
Founder of the series is freelance harpsichordist Beverly Biggs. Beverly earned her Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin Conservatory and a Master of Music degree from Southern Methodist University. Post-graduate study was done with harpsichordists Margaret Irwin-Brandon and Alan Curtis in the United States, and with Gustav Leonhardt in Amsterdam.
In late 2004, Beverly moved back home to North Carolina after spending many years in the Pacific Northwest. While based in Spokane, Washington, she performed, recorded, toured, and served as artistic director of two period music organizations, producing and performing an average of 60 concerts per season. A founding director of both Connoisseur Concerts and Allegro, Bev specializes in period music of the baroque era. Accomplishments include founding the Northwest Bach Festival, the Royal Fireworks Festival & Concert™, Allegro’s Viennese Ball, Music in Historic Homes, and Period Music at The Met.
Awards include the Washington State Governor’s Arts Award & the City of Spokane Arts Award for her organizations. Individual awards include the Pioneer Award, given to leaders in arts, medicine, government and other fields, to individuals who made ‘an indelible impact’ on the Inland Northwest over the past 125 years. Of her various recordings, Age of Elegance in the American West was named one of the best new albums of the year. Her musical ensemble was for many years the only classical duo on the WESTAF touring roster in the Western United States.
Bev’s primary performing instrument is a double-manual French harpsichord. Her collection also includes early pianos, an Italian virginal and a single-manual Flemish harpsichord.
For more complete information: www.beverlybiggsharpsichord.com