William Byrd Festival 2024 Lecturers & Guests

Kerry McCarthy is a musician and author known for her work on the English Renaissance. Her new biography of the composer Thomas Tallis, published with Oxford University Press, was given the 2021 AMS award for early music book of the year. She is now working on her fourth book, an exploration of the lives of professional singers in Tudor England. Kerry discovered the delights of early music while in high school, joined Cantores in 1994, and has been part of the Byrd Festival since it began. She attended Reed College and Stanford University, and spent eleven years teaching music history at Duke University in North Carolina. She now lives in Portland, where she was born and raised. The 400th Byrd anniversary year has been a busy one for her so far, including various festivals in the UK and a five-day guest appearance on BBC Composer of the Week. 

William Mahrt grew up in Washington state; after attending Gonzaga University and the University of Washington, he completed a doctorate at Stanford University in 1969. He taught at Case Western Reserve University and the Eastman School of Music, and then returned to Stanford in 1972, where he continues to teach early music. Since 1964 he has directed the choir of St. Ann’s Chapel in Palo Alto, which sings Mass and Vespers in Gregorian chant on all the Sundays of the year, with masses in the polyphonic music of Renaissance masters for the holy days. He also directs the Stanford Early Music Singers; they have recently completed a cycle of masses of Josquin Dez Prez as well as a series of concerts in the form of historical Vespers services. Dr. Mahrt has published articles on the relation of music and liturgy, and music and poetry. He frequently leads workshops in the singing of Gregorian chant and the sacred music of the Renaissance. He is also president of the Church Music Association of America and editor of the distinguished periodical Sacred Music. 

Ross Duffin is Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music and Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. A native of London, Ontario, he received his graduate degrees from Stanford University where, as an advisee of William Mahrt, he specialized in the performance practice of early music. He came to Case Western Reserve in 1978 to direct the nationally recognized historical performance practice program, and retired from that position in 2018.

Among the general public of a certain age, Duffin is perhaps best known as the long-time host and producer of Micrologus: Exploring the World of Early Music (NPR, 1980–1998), whose episodes were recently made available online in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting. His scholarly publications include: an edition of DuFay chansons (Ogni Sorte, 1983) which won the Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society, an edition of Josquin motets (Oxford, 1998), A Performer’s Guide to Medieval Music (Indiana, 2000), Richard Davy: St. Matthew Passion (A-R Editions, 2011), Cantiones Sacrae:Madrigalian Motets from Jacobean England (A-R Editions, 2005), The Music Treatises of Thomas Ravenscroft (Ashgate, 2014), Shakespeare’s Songbook (Norton, 2004) which won the inaugural Claude V. Palisca Award from the AMS, and Some Other Note: The Lost Songs of English Renaissance Comedy (Oxford, 2018). Recent editions of vocal music include Gude and Godlie Ballatis Noted (A-R Editions, 2022), Psalmes, or Songs of Sion (1631): William Slatyer’s Scandalous Collection (A-R Editions, 2022), and A Musicall Banquet of Daintie Conceits: Anthony Munday’s 1588 Miscellany with Tunes (A-R Editions, 2023). His book, How Equal Temperament Ruined Harmony (and why you should care) (Norton, 2007) continues to make waves in music circles worldwide, with a Chinese translation appearing in 2019, and a French translation in 2022.
 

Besides overseeing the historical performance program at CWRU, Duffin sang with the small chorus attached to Apollo’s Fire from its inception in 1992, and was founding artistic director of the professional early music ensemble, Quire Cleveland (2008–2018).

Eugene S. Petrushansky (born in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia) studied harpsichord at the University of California with Davitt Moroney and Katherine Heater while pursuing a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering, with subsequent instruction in the form of masterclasses and private lessons with Arthur Haas, Alan Curtis, Jacques Ogg, James Johnstone, Bertrand Cuiller, and Ed Parmentier. Residing in Fremont, California, he has appeared around the San Francisco Bay Area in solo recitals and as continuo harpsichordist with professional ensembles. He serves as Organist at St Joseph of Arimathea Chapel in Berkeley and at St Francis of Assisi in Livermore and is a member of the board of directors for MusicSources (which provides early music performances, especially keyboard, to the Bay area). He also maintains an atelier for restoration of historical keyboard instruments. Mr. Perushansky's recital is co-sponsored by the Western Early Keyboard Association.