The USF School of Music will feature a faculty/guest recital by the Bay Baroque Ensemble, the leading Baroque ensemble in the Tampa Bay area.  Organized by long-time USF faculty member Dr. John Robison, the concert will feature USF professor Kyoung Cho (soprano), USF adjunct professor Anne Marie Scotto (harpsichord), and guest artists Patrick Baran (violin) and Theresa Villani (viola da gamba); John Robison will perform on several instruments, including Baroque oboe, recorder, and viola da gamba.  The faculty/guest event will feature music by some of the finest Baroque composers from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, including Johann Sebastian Bach, George Philipp Telemann, and Johann Joachim Quantz.  Included on the program will be a trio sonata for recorder and violin by Johann Adolph Hasse, a trio sonata by Quantz for oboe, viola da gamba and continuo, a set of variations by French composer Marin Marais, a sacred cantata by Telemann from his cycle of sacred cantatas known as Der harmonische Gottesdienst, and one of Bach’s finest secular cantatas, cantata no. 202 (“Weichet nur, betrübte schatten”) for soprano, oboe, strings and continuo.  The Bay Baroque Ensemble, which is the only group in the Tampa Bay area to consistently play on replicas of historical instruments at one of the most common Baroque pitches (A = 409), performs on replicas of the early eighteenth-century two-keyed oboe, the recorder, viola da gamba, and an Italian-style harpsichord. 

The performers for the event include John Robison (Baroque oboe, recorder, viola da gamba), is an Associate Professor of Musicology and Director of early music ensembles at USF.  He received his Doctorate in Early Music from Stanford University in 1975, and has been a faculty member in the USF School of Music since 1977.  An internationally-known scholar and performer, he is one of the few early music specialists in the United States who performs on plucked string, bowed string, and woodwind instruments.  One of the first musicians in the United States to specialize in the Baroque oboe and other historical instruments, he has performed throughout North America, in England, Spain, Portugal, Egypt, and at the leading universities in South Korea on fourteen occasions.  Soprano Kyoung Cho, who joined the USF music faculty in 2007, has performed concerts at Carnegie Hall in New York City, the Kennedy Centre in Washington D. C., and other prestigious venues in Canada, Germany, France, Luxembourg, Austria, Czech Republic, Israel, and her native Korea.  She is currently an assistant professor of voice at University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida and a teacher at Nei Stëmmen International Vocal Institute in Luxembourg.  Adjunct professor Anne Marie Scotto (harpsichord) has been an active collaborative recitalist, choral accompanist and teacher since earning her doctorate from the University of Washington in Seattle. Scotto has lived, studied, and performed frequently in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Rochester, and now Tampa.  Guest artist Patrick Baran (violin) is the orchestra director at Adams Middle School in Tampa, where he is responsible for one of the largest and best string programs in the Tampa area.  He has been teaching string instruments and orchestra in the Pinellas and Hillsborough County school systems for more than twenty years, and is a graduate of the University of Alabama.  Guest artist Theresa Villani (viola da gamba) is well-known in the Tampa Bay area through her frequent performances as on viola da gamba, Baroque cello and modern cello.  Her work embraces all periods of music, including the 21st Century.  A participant in the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin College, she can be heard on numerous CDs, including a three-CD series of chamber music by Cincinnati-based contemporary composer Rick Sowash.