The Vivaldi Project seeks to educate audiences while sharing its enthusiasm for early music and the instruments on which it was played. Innovative programs, including beloved masterworks alongside neglected and forgotten gems, combine scholarship and performance to provide different glimpses into important moments of music history. Program notes and remarks from the stage guide the audience through the story being told at each concert. The Vivaldi Project welcomes communication with its audience and strives to build relationships with local arts organizations to bring a deeper appreciation for our classical music heritage to diverse metropolitan, rural, and under-served communities.
Vivaldi Project co-directors, Elizabeth Field and Stephanie Vial also feel passionately abut the need to to make the study of early music more widely available to performers, and especially those who are not able, or who do not necessarily wish to work with period instruments. As a violin and cello team Field and Vial have been working together for over a decade, inspiring players with the drama, passion, and exuberance of 17th and 18th-century musical expressions, from talented young Curtis students, Suzuki teachers and their pupils, to seasoned professional orchestral and freelance players.
The Institute for Early Music on Modern Instruments (EMMI) offers professional string players and students of varying levels the opportunity to study historical performance practices using their own modern instruments. In today’s performance world, a player who can travel easily from the language of the 17th and 18th century to that of the late 19th will be far ahead of the game both as a performer and a teacher. Without compromising the capabilities of modern string instruments, the focus of EMMI is to help players find ways to add to their expressive palette, and to explore ideas about sound production, phrasing, articulation, and intonation. Learning to read the notation of baroque and classical music is a key ingredient in this study, along with the understanding that ultimately it is the player, not an historical instrument or any set of rules, who must bring this extraordinary music to life.
The EMMI course can be brought to your university, summer program, and music school. We offer an array of flexible sessions which can be adapted according to your needs, from week-long programs, one- or two-day workshops, individual sessions, to repeat visits throughout the school year. All sessions can also be adapted for work with students on modern or period instruments.
Course Offerings
Technique Clinics
From basic to more advance, focusing on a rang of issues including, but not limited to:
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Bowing Techniques
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The Interpretation of Slur and "Staccato" Articulations
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Applications of Vibrato and Ornamentation
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The Principles of Phrase Structure
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Musical Grammar and Rhetoric
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Baroque Dance Rhythms and Gestures
Exercises are drawn from period repertoire and treatises.
Sessions are held in chamber orchestra format or with upper and lower strings separate.
Seminars and Lecture/Demonstrations
The scholarship behind the techniques and interpretive choices is explained and demonstrated.
Bring EMMI to your institution, festival, and music program
Modern Instruments
Institute for Early Music on
Chamber music and solo repertoire sessions
Individual lessons and/or "master class" format
Continuo Focus
Exploring repertoire from the bass line. Designed specifically for bass and cello players, but also for those playing solo lines to learn what to listen for and ask from their continuo players.
Preparation of a performance
Chamber music and/or orchestral repertoire
Dance Classes (with Paige Whitley-Bauguess)
Participants are introduced to the basic baroque dance step patterns and their relationship to the music.
With more than one dance class, participants will have the opportunity to play as their colleagues dance and visa versa.
Annual Institute
Institute for Early Music on Modern Instruments (2008-2014, 2018)
Three to four day intensive workshop for professional string players
Held at Franklin & Marshall College in 2018 and previously at
George Washington University, George Mason University, and the Potomac Arts Center
Sample Schedules
2012 4-Day schedule
2014 3-Day schedule, focus on chamber music
Workshops for professional players
and college/conservatory students
Emerson Avenue Salon (5/22)
Part 2, Demystifying Baroque Performance style
Lebanon Valley College (4/22)
Orchestral Workshop and peformance
Duke University (5/21)
Master Class on the Cello Suites of J.S. Bach for students of Caroline Stinson
Hayes School of Music, Appalachian State University (3/21)
Master Class for Graduate performance practice seminar
University of North Carolina at Greensboro (2/20)
Workshop and Master Class for Graduate performance practice seminar
Furman University (10/18/19)
Greenville, SC
Workshop with String Orchestra
Performance Practice techniques and Handel's Messiah
Elisabeth Wright, Harpsichord (12/18)
St. George's Episcopal Church | Arlington, VA
Masterclass on solo works and the art of basso-continuo playing
for college students and adult professionals
Blair School of Muic, Vanderbilt University (10/18)
Belmont University
Lecture: Performance Practice and The History of the String Trio
Techniques class/Master Class for string players
Tallis Chamber Orchestra Landfall Grant Concert (4/18)
Coaching and concerto performances with chamber orchestra
Sweet Briar College (1/18)
Post Concert Lecture on the String Trio and Performance Practice
Lecture/Discussion with College Music Students on Performance Practice
and our experience as women artists in the music world
Two-day workshop at Appalachian State University (2/16)
Dance workshop for dance department with Paige Whitley-Bauguess
Dance workshop for music department with Paige Whitley-Bauguess
Techniques class and master class on modern instruments
Chamber music coaching with collegium musicum (period instruments)
Three-day residency at The University of Virginia (9/15)
Lecture/Demonstration, Reading between the lines: Baroque Performance Practice on Modern Instruments
Baroque Orchestra Coaching with UVA collegium musicum
Vivaldi Project Concert
Boston Conservatory of Music (10/15)
Two-hour lecture/techniques class for all undergraduate and graduate string players
Longy School of Music (10/15)
Graduate Seminar on bowed-continuo playing (period instruments)
The Curtis Institute of Music (9/14)
Introduction to Baroque Performance Practice
Intensive one-day course with wind faculty
technique classes, faculty/student chamber orchestra performance
The Curtis Institute of Music (2011-ongoing)
techniques classes, upper and lower strings together and separate
chamber music master classes
individual lessons
UNC Chapel Hill (9/10)
Orchestra coaching for University Baroque Orchestra
Wake Forest University (9/10)
Orchestral coaching on modern instruments
Workshops for Teachers and Conductors
ASTA National Conference, Salt Lake City (3/15)
Baroque Performance Practice for Modern String Players
lecture/demonstration
George Mason University (4/13)
Baroque Performance Practice for Conductors
seminar, lecture/demo
Maryland State Music Teachers Association, University of Maryland (1/13)
Introduction to Baroque Performance Practice for String Teachers
American String Teachers Association, MD/DC chapter, George Washington University (1/11)
Historical Performance Practice for String Teachers, focus on Suzuki literature
lecture/demo
techniques clinic
Workshops for Young Students and Adult Amateurs
The Cello Cammerata (3/21)
Online Master Class on the cello suites of J.S. Bach
Summertrios | Virtual (6/20)
4 online sessions, introducing historical performance practice techniques to a
diverse group of string, wind, and keyboard players.
Greencastle Summer Enrichment Camp | Greencastle Indiana (6/19)
Performance/question and answer for a group of at risk children
Landfall Grant with the Tallis Chamber Orchestra (4/18)
Workshops with two Wilmington area Public High Schools
Master Class and workshop with local private music students
Duke University String School (2/18)
Baroque performance practice workshops with the Intermediate, Concert and Youth Orchestras of the Duke String School.
Pieces then performed as part of their Winter Concert
McLean Public High School Orchestra (10/17)
Multiple coaching sessions with McLean High School's three orchestras:
Concert Orchestra, Symphonic and Sinfonia Orchestras, and Philharmonic Orchestra.
Select students performed for The Vivaldi Project's 10th Anniversary Celebration
Lebanon Valley College (3/17)
orchestral and chamber music coaching, private lessons
West Jordan High School, Salt Lake City (3/15, Skype lesson 3/17)
orchestral coaching on modern instruments
North Carolina HIP Festival (2/13)
Introduction to Baroque Perfrormance Practice
Lecture/demo, techniques class
Shippensburg University (Fall, 2012)
Coaching and performance (as soloists) with community/university orchestra
Lecture/demo for Music Appreciation course
Vivaldi Project Concert
Washington DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities small projects grant (9/10)
Pre-concert lecture/demo for DC area K-12 public school children
C.P.E. Bach String Symphony Concert, National Presbyterian Church, Washington, DC