Timothy Burris,
Raffael Scheck,
and Sylvia Schwartz

Timothy Burris, lutes
Sylvia Schwartz, baroque violin
Raffael Scheck, baroque cello

Timothy Burris has performed widely in Europe and the US, including many appearances with world-renowned early music specialists. Ciaccona, the most recent of his nine CD recordings includes his lute transcription of Bach’s monumental Ciaconna for solo violin. A Fulbright alum, Mr Burris is a graduate of The Hague’s Royal Conservatory and holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. A lute instructor at the Royal Flemish Conservatory of Music in Antwerp from 1990-96, he is currently on the faculties of the Portland Conservatory of Music and Colby College. He also tutors French and Spanish at Portland’s Waynflete School. La Semaine d’Anvers (Antwerp, Belgium) described a solo performance thus: “One perceives in him a distinguished musicality and a depth of artistry, which join with a solid and finely shaded technique to produce sonorities strongly evocative of the princely courts.”

Raffael Scheck comes from Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany) and is Gibson Professor of modern European history at Colby College, where he has taught since 1994. Before becoming a historian, he studied cello for several semesters with Claude Starck at the conservatory of Zürich (Switzerland). He has specialized in baroque cello and performed with many baroque groups in Maine, including the Colby Collegium, BOOM (Baroque Orchestra of Maine), Music’s Quill, St. Mary Schola, Harmonie Universelle, and Blue Hill Bach. With theorbo player Timothy Burris, Scheck is member of the ensemble ScheckMate, which performs baroque music on period cello and theorbo as well as more recent music for modern cello and guitar. Scheck has contributed many times to the Portland Early Music Festival and plays in the Colby Symphony Orchestra. Former New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn called him “an expert Baroque cello player.”

Deeply inspired by the relationship between music, movement, and dance, violinist and Dalcrozian Sylvia Schwartz is a passionate chamber musician in both modern and historical performance practices. The power of music to heal and to bring us together drives Sylvia to perform wherever she can, from the Scarborough COVID-19 vaccine clinic to Shostakovich Hall in St. Petersburg, Russia. Sylvia performs with several groups including Guts Baroque (which she co-founded), Baroque Orchestra of Maine, Portland Bach Experience, Classical Uprising, Newton Baroque, Arcadia Players, North Star Baroque, Portland Symphony Orchestra, and on the Noonday, Quietside, Bagaduce, Vigorous Tenderness, and BEMF Fringe concert series. Sylvia earned a M.Mus. in Violin Performance from Longy School of Music, and a B.S. in Engineering from Olin College. She enjoys nurturing vivid, healthy, historically-informed playing in her students of all ages at Portland Conservatory of Music and Palaver Music Center.

Run Time: 45 minutes, no intermission.