Desert Baroque

Arcadia Players Founder and Artistic Director Emerita, Margaret Irwin-Brandon, a specialist in early keyboard instruments, is a concert recitalist in the Americas and Europe. Her harpsichord performances of J.S. Bach’s Well Tempered Clavier in Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall were received with critical acclaim. She has been a soloist in European and American festivals and has performed in national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. As founding artistic director of the Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra, Chorus and Chamber Ensembles, she produced “Arcadia Players – a Baroque Celebration,” presented by WGBY TV in 1992. She also produced and directed Arcadia Players’ first fully staged Baroqueopera, Montezuma, premiered Richard Einhorn’s score, Voices of Light, for the classic film, La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc and directed over 250 diverse programs of Baroque music.

 

As a Fulbright Scholar in Germany, Ms. Irwin-Brandon studied organ with Karl Richter, and continued harpsichord studies with Gustav Leonhardt in Holland. She is an associate fellow at Davenport College, Yale University and has served on the faculties of the Oberlin College Conservatory, the University of Oregon, Portland State University, and Mount Holyoke College, and is a member of the Board of Advisors to the Boston Clavichord Society. She holds the B.A. degree from Pacific Lutheran University, and the M.M. degree from the New England Conservatory, Boston, MA. In November, 2017 she will lead her eighth cultural/organ tour in Italy, this tour focusing on organs of Rome and Sicily.