Made in the Valley: 19th Century Music for Viols and Voices from the Connecticut River Valley
Saturday, October 18, 2025 at 7:00 pm
Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
220 Main Street, Northampton, MA 01060
220 Main Street, Northampton, MA 01060
A concert featuring voices and viols of the Early Republic period featuring musicians
Tim Eriksen, Loren Ludwig, Alice Robbins, Allison Monroe, and Nate Steele.
Tim Eriksen, Loren Ludwig, Alice Robbins, Allison Monroe, and Nate Steele.
Sliding Scale Admission - General Seating
$15: Discounted Ticket for those on restricted incomes
$15: Discounted Ticket for those on restricted incomes
$25: Regular Ticket
$50: Stretch Ticket for those who wish to support the full cost of this program
$0: Mass Cultural Council Card to Culture Program for EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare cardholders
Tim Eriksen is a musician, ethnomusicologist and instructor. He was a consultant and performer for the soundtrack of the film Cold Mountain and was enlisted to teach Sacred Harp singing to the cast.
His PhD dissertation Old Folks' Concerts: The Meaning and Mushrooming of an Antiquarian Music Craze, 1853-1856, was inspired by the annotated music book of Northampton resident Amelia Clark (1850-1944). His essay, "Old Folk's Singing and Utopia: How Abolitionist Musical Antiquarianism and Calvinist Eschatology Gave Birth to Science Fiction on the banks of the Connecticut River" was published in the Massachusetts Review in 2016. Eriksen has taught college courses including American Balladry, Global Sounds, Film Music from Hollywood to Bollywood, American Music, and Songwriting at Smith College, as well as at Amherst College, Hampshire College, Dartmouth College, The University of Minnesota and Wesleyan University. He has also taught in Poland and The Czech Republic and has conducted extensive research on traditional Yugoslavian music. The former frontman of the prophetic groups Cordelia's Dad (folk-noise), Northampton Harmony (shape-note quartet) and Žabe i Babe (Bosnian folk and pop), Eriksen is the only musician to have shared the stage with both Kurt Cobain and Doc Watson, and his media appearances have ranged from Prairie Home Companion to the Academy Awards. Having graduated from early shows at punk mecca CBGB, Tim's performances have included his Carnegie Hall debut as a soloist in Even Chambers' symphonic work "The Old Burying Ground" and two week-long stints at the Blue Note Jazz Club with Omar Sosa. In the studio, he has worked with legendary producers and engineers including Joe Boyd, T-Bone Burnett and Steve Albini. |
Loren Ludwig is a musician and music researcher based in Baltimore, MD. Loren grew up in Amherst, MA, a beneficiary of terrific public school music education and a diverse, creative and generous local community.
He studied viola da gamba at Oberlin Conservatory and received a PhD in historical musicology from the University of Virginia. Loren’s research explores connections between the materiality of musical instruments, performance practices, and emergent cultural meanings. His work on the “early music activism” of Civil Rights luminary Bayard Rustin was recently made into a Sunday Feature by BBC3 and his various projects have been supported by the US Fulbright Program, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for Arts, and others. Loren is currently writing a monograph on a lost tradition of stringed instrument building and playing in Colonial and Early Republic New England, “Ingenious Mechanisms”: New England Viols and Vernacular Luthiery in the Early Republic. Loren records and performs across the country and internationally on the viola da gamba and other historical stringed instruments. He is a co-founder of LeStrange Viols and contemporary/experimental music ensemble Science Ficta and is a founding member of the seventeenth-century string band ACRONYM. Loren serves as faculty in Johns Hopkins' Medicine, Science, and Humanities major and is the Program Coordinator for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine's Program in Arts, Humanities, & Health. |
Allison Monroe specializes in historical musical repertoires on bowed strings and voice. As the Director of the Five College Early Music Program in western MA (2023-present), she coaches ensembles, teaches courses, coordinates the Program’s activities and faculty, and oversees the Loeb Instrument Collection. She formerly taught at Case Western Reserve University (2018-2023), where she also earned a DMA in Historical Performance Practice. Her performing credits include the Boston Camerata, Blue Heron, Alkemie, Piffaro, Newberry Consort, Ensemble L’Harmonie des saisons, Les Délices, Apollo’s Fire, and Indianapolis Baroque Orchestra. Allison is also Cofounder and Artistic Director of medieval band Trobár. She can be heard on Trobár’s first album Il Dit / Elle Dit, as well as The Queen’s Rebels’ Fair and Princely Branches (for which she was also Artistic Director), and Les Délices’ Noel, Noel and The Highland Lassie.
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Alice Robbins has performed widely on baroque cello, viola da gamba and vielle in numerous chamber ensembles, including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Smithsonian Chamber Players, Boston Camerata, Opera Lafayette, the Folger Consort and the Oberlin Consort of Viols. She is a founding member of Arcadia Players, performing with them for over 30 years and was also a founding member of Concerto Castello, an international quintet specializing in the music of the early 17th century. Robbins earned her degrees at Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she was a student of Hannelore Mueller. She has recorded for Telefunken, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian and Gasparo records, as well as for many radio productions and recently retired from the Five College Early Music faculty at Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges.
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Nate Steele is a musician and researcher based in Boston. Born and raised in Western Mass, Nate began his cello studies with Anne Werry at the Northampton Community Music Center, and enjoyed many summers at Greenwood Music Camp. In middle and high school, he spent his weekends commuting to Boston to play in the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, and to participate in the New England Conservatory’s Prep Program, where he studied with Emmanuel Feldman. He went on to complete his undergraduate degree at Harvard, majoring in Social Studies and Music. During this time, he also pursued additional studies in cello performance with Lluis Claret at the New England Conservatory and Phoebe Carrai at the Longy School of Music.
Nowadays, Nate can be found at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he works full-time in the Musical Instrument Collection, caring for and researching historic musical instruments. For this performance, he will be playing on an American bass viol made by Charles P. Kellogg in Belchertown, c. 1835.
Nate is particularly passionate about collaborative music-making, and has performed with a host of orchestras and chamber groups including the Albany Symphony, Apollo Ensemble, Cape Ann Symphony, and Mercury Orchestra. He has participated in international tours to Korea, Hong Kong, Spain, Peru, and Argentina, and performed at festivals including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Orford Musique, and Mostly Modern.
Nowadays, Nate can be found at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston where he works full-time in the Musical Instrument Collection, caring for and researching historic musical instruments. For this performance, he will be playing on an American bass viol made by Charles P. Kellogg in Belchertown, c. 1835.
Nate is particularly passionate about collaborative music-making, and has performed with a host of orchestras and chamber groups including the Albany Symphony, Apollo Ensemble, Cape Ann Symphony, and Mercury Orchestra. He has participated in international tours to Korea, Hong Kong, Spain, Peru, and Argentina, and performed at festivals including the Bowdoin International Music Festival, Orford Musique, and Mostly Modern.
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Daphne Lamothe is a literary and cultural studies scholar with research and teaching interests in African American, Afro-Caribbean and Black migration and transnational literatures. She holds a doctorate in English literature from UC Berkeley and a bachelor's degree in English literature from Yale University. In addition to an appointment in Africana studies, she also is a member of Smith’s programs in American studies and the Study of Women and Gender. She serves on the executive board of Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism. Before joining the Smith faculty in 2004, she taught at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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Gian Lyman Silbiger Grant of the Viola da Gamba Society of New England
This concert is made possible in part by the Gian Lyman Silbiger Grant of the Viola da Gamba Society of New England. This award fosters the performance of music for viols and voices around New England and encourages further exploration of the viol and its music.
Major Sponsors
Smith College ~ Daily Hampshire Gazette ~ Whalen Insurance ~ Northeast Solar ~ PeoplesBank
Smith College ~ Daily Hampshire Gazette ~ Whalen Insurance ~ Northeast Solar ~ PeoplesBank
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In Partnership with the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
and the David Ruggles Center for History and Education
and the David Ruggles Center for History and Education
