William Byrd Festival Lecturers

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. 

  March 9, 1939–January 1, 2025

Requiescat in Pace

https://churchmusicassociation.org/mahrt-obituary/

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.