Artists
Hailed as a “bright new gamba star” (The Strad Magazine), Canadian cellist and viol player Caroline Nicolas enjoys an international career performing repertoire spanning the Middle Ages to the 21st century. She appears regularly with leading ensembles across Europe and North America, including The English Concert, Philharmonia Baroque, Kammerorchester Basel, Ars Lyrica Houston, Pacific MusicWorks, and New World Symphony. She recently completed her tenure as Music Director of New Baroque Orchestra and now serves as Artistic Director of Ars Poetica.
Caroline has performed at major festivals including the Boston Early Music Festival, Bach Festival Leipzig, and Styriarte, and at venues such as the Berliner Philharmonie, KKL Luzern, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and Benaroya Hall.
Her debut solo album, Pièces en solitude, was praised by Gramophone for its “understated beauty,” noting that her performances “judge the music's elasticity of form and tempo to perfection.” The recording was also featured in The Strad, Strings Magazine, and Early Music America.
A Fellow of The English Concert in America and winner of The Juilliard School's Historical Performance Concerto Competition, Caroline is also a dedicated educator. She has taught at Yale University, the Peabody Conservatory, the University of Victoria, and the University of Washington, and has presented workshops throughout North America.
A native of Winnipeg, Canada, Caroline studied at The Juilliard School and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. She now lives in New York City with her husband, lutenist Kevin Payne. More information is available at www.carolinenicolas.com.
Lutenist Kevin Payne is active as a recitalist, accompanist, and continuo player. Recent ensemble work includes performances with Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, Blue Heron, Handel and Haydn Society, and Bach Collegium San Diego. Festival appearances include Caramoor, Tanglewood, Spoleto, and Newport Classical. Performance venues include Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., the National Concert Hall in Taipei, Taiwan, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, and the Festspielhaus in Baden-Baden, Germany. His playing has been broadcast on a number of nationally syndicated radio programs including Sunday Baroque and Performance Today.
When not performing, Kevin enjoys cooking, reading, watching Star Trek (P’Tach!) and attempting to delay the inevitable (and often imminent) demise of the houseplants he shares with his wife, cellist Caroline Nicolas.
Violinist and viola da gamba player Ryan Cheng has performed widely across the United States, Europe and Asia. Ryan has performed at the Boston Early Music Festival, with the Smithsonian Viol Consort, at MAFestival Brugge with Juilliard415, with ARTEK Early Music, House of Time, Nuova Pratica, and A Golden Wire. He has won the Juilliard Historical Performance Concerto Competition. Ryan is currently interested in composition in historical styles. When not playing the violin, Ryan can be found playing Go.
Originally from Long Island, New York, Nicholas Kleinman spent seven years studying and performing throughout Europe. After studying violone, double bass, and viola da gamba at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, he completed a second master's degree at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg.
Nicholas is a co-founding member of the Salzburg-based ensemble The Van Swietens. The orchestra has performed at venues including Shakespeare Salzburg and the Festival de musique de La Chaise-Dieu. He was a co-recipient of the Mozarteum Ensemble Scholarship with the ensemble Il Gioismo for musicological research on the Salzburg-associated composers Michael Haydn, Johann Ernst Eberlin, and Sigismund Neukomm.
Nicholas regularly performs with ensembles including the Smithsonian Academy Orchestra and the Academy of Sacred Drama. At the 2026 Salzburger Festspiele, he performed as viola da gamba soloist with The Van Swietens.
Nicholas currently serves as President of the New York Chapter of the Viola da Gamba society, where he teaches, organizes events, and helps cultivate a vibrant early music community in New York.
Sarah Stone is drawn to cello and viola da gamba through a curiosity in the cultural history of the music she plays and how it intersects with the stories we tell today. She performs with Apollo’s Fire, Tafelmusik, the Sebastians, Gallery Concerts, True Concord, the Staunton Music Festival, Bach Charlotte, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra. At home in New York City, Sarah is Executive Director of Repast Baroque, an ensemble that finds new contexts for early music through storytelling and multimedia, including silent film and visual art. Sarah is also the Artistic Director of Bitterroot Baroque, a community baroque orchestra in Hamilton, Montana, helping bring in period ensembles and musicians to perform, coach, and lead workshops with local musicians. Through a Circuit Rider Grant from the Viola da Gamba Society of America, she started viol playdates in Western Montana, helping local musicians get started on viol and hosting regular consort reading sessions. Sarah holds Masters degrees from the Juilliard School and San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and a Bachelors from Rice University. She loves gardening, animation, long walks, deep-dives into digitized collections, and her cats Nyx and Erebus.
Gold medalist and first-ever American laureate of the International Bach-Abel Competition (2018) Arnie Tanimoto is recognized as one of the foremost viol players in the United States. He has performed and recorded in leading venues across North America and Europe with artists and ensembles including Barthold Kuijken, Enrico Gatti, the Boston Early Music Festival Ensemble, and the Smithsonian Consort of Viols. Arnie is a member of Artek, Mountainside Baroque, and a founding member of the Academy of Sacred Drama. His principal teachers include Paolo Pandolfo, Sarah Cunningham, Christel Thielmann, and Catharina Meints. Arnie serves on faculty at The Juilliard School and Princeton University.
Hailed as “ravishing” (New York Times) and possessing “sheer vocal proficiency, a bright, flexible voice, big but controlled, shaded with plentiful color” (Boston Globe), soprano Linda Tsatsanis enjoys a career that spans the concert hall, opera stage, movies, and television.
Ms. Tsatsanis’ concert performance ranges from oratorio to renaissance song to world premier performances. Her versatility has made for a distinguished career taking her across the United States, Canada and Europe performing with groups such as the Tallis Scholars, Toronto Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Mark Morris Dance Group, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, English Concert, Pacific MusicWorks, Seattle Philharmonic, and Seattle Opera. Holding a Master’s degree from Indiana University specializing in Historical Performance, she has collaborated with the country’s most prominent Early Music chamber ensembles being presented by Pacific Baroque Festival, Indianapolis Early Music Festival, San Francisco Early Music Society, Early Music in Columbus, Renaissance and Baroque Society (Pittsburg), Early Music Now (Milwaukee), Magnolia Baroque Festival, Bloomington Early Music Festival, Dumbarton Oaks, and the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art. Mixing studied knowledge of this era along with her unique artistry Ms. Tsatsanis has been praised for breathing a new life into this ancient repertoire.
Her debut solo album with Origin Classical, And I Remain: Three Love Stories, was described as a “seductive recital of the darker sides of 17th-century love” by Gramophone Magazine. Her past collaboration with the Mark Morris Dance Group was the inspiration for Beethoven alla Britannia with Centaur Records released in 2016. She can be heard on the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary When Seattle Invented the Future, various recordings by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Naxos.
In 2015, Ms. Tsatsanis was named a Visiting Scholar at the University of Washington. Ms. Tsatsanis resides in New York City with her husband, cellist Nathan Whittaker, and their sweet dog Julep.