H+H Orchestra + Chorus

The Handel and Haydn Society is internationally acclaimed for its performances of Baroque and Classical music, performed on period instruments with historically-informed techniques. Our performers—from concertmaster Aisslinn Nosky to every member of the orchestra and chorus—are leading experts at what they do.

We invite you to learn more about our players and their instruments, our singers and their voices, and the music they passionately share.


Artistic Director

Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen has forged a remarkable career as a conductor, cellist, and keyboardist. Known for his passion and commitment to chamber music, he is equally at home in such diverse activities as Baroque opera and the classical symphonic repertoire. He is the 15th Artistic Director of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, the oldest performing arts organization in the United States. Additionally, he is the artistic director of Arcangelo, music director of Les Violons du Roy, and artistic director of the Tetbury Festival.

Jonathan continues to have a strong presence on both sides of the Atlantic. In Europe, he guest conducts Budapest Festival Orchestra, Kammerorchester Basel, Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, Orchestre Philharmonique Royal de Liege, and Hessischer Rundfunk Sinfonieorhcester.

Jonathan founded Arcangelo in 2010 to create high-quality bespoke projects. The ensemble was the first named Baroque Ensemble in Residence at Wigmore Hall, where it enjoys a continuing close association, and has toured to exceptional halls and festivals including Philharmonie Berlin, Vienna Konzerthaus, Barbican Centre, Kölner Philharmonie, Salzburg Festival, MA Festival Bruges, with three appearances at the BBC Proms, including the premiere of Handel’s Theodora and a televised performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion.

Arcangelo’s founding commitment to the recording studio has produced 28 critically lauded albums, including Arias for Guadagni and Bach Cantatas with Iestyn Davies (Hyperion; Gramophone Award 2012 and 2017), Mozart Violin Concertos with Vilde Frang (Warner; ECHO Klassik Award 2015) C.P.E. Bach Cello Concertos with Nicolas Altstaedt (Hyperion; BBC Music Magazine Award 2017), Buxtehude Trio Sonatas Op.1 (Alpha Classics; Grammy nominee 2018), and Tiranno with Kate Lindsey (Alpha; Sunday Times Records of the Year 2021).

Arcangelo’s latest recordings include Sacroprofano with Tim Mead (Alpha; released 2023), Handel’s Theodora and Buxtehude’s Opus Posthumous (Alpha; releasing 2024), Handel’s Chandos Anthems (Alpha; releasing 2025), and a landmark project with Nicolas Altstaedt to make the first survey on period instruments of Boccherini’s Cello Concertos (Alpha).


Conductor Laureate

Harry Christophers, CBE

After 14 years as artistic director of the Handel and Haydn Society, Harry Christophers has assumed the role of Conductor Laureate. Since his appointment as artistic director, Mr. Christophers and H+H have enjoyed an ambitious artistic journey including showcases of works premiered in the United States by H+H since 1815, broad education programming, community partnerships, concerts at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and at Tanglewood, and a series of recordings on the CORO label. Between 2015 and 2016, Mr. Christophers and H+H celebrated the organization’s Bicentennial.

Mr. Christophers is known internationally as founder and conductor of the British choir and period-instrument ensemble The Sixteen, which he has directed throughout Europe, America, Australia, and Asia, gaining a distinguished reputation for his work in Renaissance, Baroque, and 20th- and 21st-century music. In 2000 he instituted The Choral Pilgrimage, a tour of British cathedrals from York to Canterbury.

He has recorded over 150 titles for which he has won numerous awards, including the coveted Gramophone Award for early music and the prestigious Classical Brit Award. His CD IKON was nominated for a 2007 Grammy and his second recording of Handel’s Messiah on The Sixteen’s label CORO won the prestigious MIDEM Classical Award. In 2009, he received one of classical music’s highest accolades, the Classic FM Gramophone Awards Artist of the Year Award, and The Sixteen won the Baroque Vocal Award for Handel Coronation Anthems, a CD which also received a 2010 Grammy Award nomination, as did Palestrina, Vol. 3, in 2014, and Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 in 2015. From 2007 he has featured with The Sixteen in the highly successful BBC television series Sacred Music, presented by actor Simon Russell Beale. The latest hour-long program, devoted to Monteverdi’s Vespers, screened in 2015.He recently collaborated with Sara Mohr-Pietsch to produce a book A New Heaven, published by Faber.  In 2021, he received the prestigious Michael Korn Founders Award for Development of the Professional Choral Art by Chorus America.

Mr. Christophers was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honors. He is an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and also of the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, and has Honorary Doctorates from the Universities of Leicester, Canterbury Christ Church, Northumbria and Kent. In 2020 he was made President of the Cathedral Music Trust.


CONCERTMASTER

AISSLINN NOSKY

Appointed Concertmaster of the Handel and Haydn Society in 2011, violinist Aisslinn Nosky captivates audiences in Boston and around the world with her innovative interpretations and impeccable technique. Her fierce passion for early music and skill as a soloist, director, and conductor has generated robust appreciation by press and audiences alike. Hailed as “superb” by The New York Times and “a fearsomely powerful musician” by The Toronto Star, widespread demand for Aisslinn’s artistry and leadership continues to grow.

Outside of her work with H+H, Aisslinn collaborates as guest director and soloist with orchestras across the globe, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, Charlotte Symphony, Utah Symphony and Holland Baroque. She was a member of Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra from 2005 to 2016 and served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Niagara Symphony from 2016 to 2019. Currently, Aisslinn is Guest Artist-in-Residence of the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra.

Aisslinn is a founding member of the Eybler Quartet, who explore repertoire from the early quartet literature on period instruments. Their most recent recording features Beethoven’s Op. 18 string quartets and was released in 2018 (CORO). Gramophone Magazine mused, “they make no bones about treating Beethoven as a radical. ...This set might delight you or it might infuriate you: either way, I suspect, Beethoven would have been more than happy.” With the Eybler Quartet, Aisslinn serves on the faculty of EQ: Evolution of the String Quartet at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. EQ is an intensive summer course for emerging artists which celebrates the lineage of the string quartet, both as a historical genre and as a freshly invigorated practice in the 21st century.

Born in Canada, Aisslinn began playing violin at age three and made her solo debut with the CBC Vancouver Orchestra at age eight. A passionate educator, she has served on the faculty of Amherst Early Music Festival and the International Baroque Institute of Longy, and her teaching/performing residencies include the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, the Rotterdam Conservatory, the Hanyang University College of Music, the Juilliard School, and the New England Conservatory of Music.

Photo: Liz Linder


Artistic Staff

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Ian Watson
Associate Conductor

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Scott Allen Jarrett
Resident Conductor, Chorus

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Anthony Trecek-King
Resident Conductor, Chorus

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Reginald Mobley
Programming Consultant


H+H ORCHESTRA

H+H CHORUS

VIOLIN

Aisslinn Nosky, concertmaster
Concertmaster Chair Funded in Perpetuity by Paul & Rhoda Joss
Christina Day Martinsonassociate concertmaster
Susanna Ogataassistant concertmaster
Karen Dekker
Keats Diefffenbach
Chloe Fedor
Lisa Goddard
Clayton Hoener
Fiona Hughes
Toma Iliev
Emily Dahl Irons

Jesse Irons
Nanae Iwata
Carmen Johnson-Pájaro

Abigail Karr
Natalie Kress
Julie Leven
Francis Liu
Kako Miura

Maureen Murchie
Rebecca Nelson
Jessica Park
Adriane Post
Krista Buckland Reisner
Amelia Sie
Amy Sims

Jane Starkman
Guiomar Turgeon
Katherine Winterstein

VIOLA

Anne Black
Nicole Divall
Jason Fisher

Stephen Goist
Joy Grimes
Kyle Miller

Lauren Nelson
Christopher Nunn
Jenny Stirling
Jessica Troy

CELLO

Guy Fishman*
Nancy & Richard Lubin Chair
Thomas Barth
Sarah Freiberg
Steven Laven
Colleen McGary-Smith
Ryan Murphy

VIOLA DA GAMBA

Beliang Zhu

BASS

Heather Miller Lardin*
Amelia Peabody Chair
Andrew Arceci
Peter Ferretti

Erik Higgins
Anthony Manzo
Peter Walsh
Sue Yelanjian

FLUTE

Emi Ferguson*
Joseph Monticello

Wendy Rolfe
Melanie Williams

RECORDER

Heloise Degrugilier

OBOE

Debra Nagy*
Principal Chair Funded in Part by Dr. Michael Fisher Sandler
David Dickey
Priscilla Herreid
Kathryn Montoya
Gaia Saetermoe-Howard

CLARINET

Eric Hoeprich*
Diane Heffner

BASSOON

Andrew Schwartz*
Stephanie Corwin
Nathan Helgeson

Kate van Orden

CONTRABASSOON

Dirk Wels

HORN

Todd Williams*
Grace & John Neises Chair
Nathanael Udell

TRUMPET

Jesse Levine*
Bruce Hall
Steven Marquardt

Paul Perfetti

Trombone

Greg Ingles
Brian Kay
Mack Ramsey
Erik Schmalz

Tuba

Phil Neuman

TIMPANI

Jonathan Hess*
Barbara Lee Chair, in memory of John Grimes

Percussion

Desiree Glazier-Nazro
Robert Schulz
Gregory Simonds

KEYBOARD

Ian Watson*
Organ Chair Funded in Perpetuity, in memory of Mary Scott Morton
Michael Beattie
Justin Blackwell

THEORBO

Adam Cockerham

TENOR

Jonas Budris
Colin Campbell
Marcio de Oliveira
Ethan DePuy
Eric Christopher Perry
Stefan Reed
Steven Soph
Gene Stenger

Patrick T. Waters
Steven Caldicott Wilson

BASS

Glenn Billingsley
Woodrow Bynum
Ryne Cherry
Jacob Cooper
Bradford Gleim
Scott Allen Jarrett
Craig Juricka
David McFerrin
Dana Whiteside

 

H+H Chorus is funded in perpetuity by Jane and Wat Tyler

H+H Chorus is supported in part by the Cabot Fund for Chorus Leadership, endowed in perpetuity in memory of Ned Cabot

* Principal