Summer 2025 - Texas Toot

Jennifer Carpenter

Recorder player and music historian Jennifer Carpenter’s love for early music and recorders began while earning her Bachelor of Music in clarinet performance at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. Her pursuit of early music studies brought her to study at the University of North Texas where she received a Master of Music degree in musicology with an emphasis in early music performance and is ABD (all but dissertation) for her PhD in the same field from UNT.

As a recorder player, Jennifer performs regularly as a soloist in early music ensembles and baroque orchestras in both Texas and Colorado. She is a member of Parish House Baroque, Colorado Springs’ early music ensemble, and Vientos y Cuerdas, her Spanish-music-based chamber group with viola da gamba and historical plucked instruments. She frequently collaborates with other musicians along the Front Range to create dynamic concerts featuring both early and modern repertoire for her instrument.

Jennifer enjoys teaching as much as performing. In addition to teaching private lessons and coaching ensembles, both virtually and in person, Jennifer has been on the faculty of early music workshops all over the country. Her enthusiasm for working with amateur recorder players led her to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Recorder Society, whom she now serves as their Marketing Director. She was the music director of the Dallas Recorder Society from 2009-2014 and is the current music director of the Denver Recorder Society. She continues to mentor and coach ARS chapters across the country. Happily a resident of Colorado Springs, CO, she is enjoying being a part of the early music scene on the Front Range.

Carol Deihl

Viol

Carol Deihl discovered the viol at the Fall Toot’s beginning viol class many years ago, and was immediately smitten. She was a founding member of the Dallas Consort of Viols and the piano player for Martha’s Maggot English Country Dance Band before moving to the rather remote mountains of Ouray, Colorado with her reclusive husband and fellow viol player Kim Shrier.

Carol develops software to support her music habit. Carol also plays recorder, keyboards, and various other instruments, has an unused degree in physics, and thinks that most of the good music was composed before 1750.

Therese Honey

Harp

Therese Honey has been performing, studying, researching and teaching harp in the Houston area since 1968. She performs early music with the Texas Early Music Project and La Follia Austin Baroque and more, and performs Celtic music at the North Texas Irish Festival, Milwaukee Irish Festival, and more, in addition to nationally broadcast PBS Christmas Specials.

She has presented concerts and workshops throughout the United States and Canada. Ms. Honey has published several books of arrangements of Celtic and Early Music for Celtic harp, and has recorded 4 solo CDs.

Jan Jackson

Recorder

Jan Jackson, director of Worthy Waites of Whimsey, has been directing and performing with professional and educational Early Music ensembles in Central Texas for over 45 years. She has participated in various Early Music festivals and Renaissance faires around the country and in numerous workshops.

Ms. Jackson has performed with the Texas Early Music Project, in addition to directing and performing with Passing Measures (medieval, renaissance, and baroque repertoire), Timely Treasures (harp/recorder).

She has served on the National Board of Directors for the American Recorder Society and on its Educational Committee. A registered Suzuki recorder instructor, she is a charter member of the American Recorder Teachers Association, was a member of its board of directors and the chair person for ARTA’s Scholarship Committee. She has served on the faculty of the Armstrong Community Music School, Lifetime Learning Institute, and the Texas TOOT. She teaches in students’ homes, at workshops, and privately at her studio, the Academie of Musik.

Danny Johnson

Director, Voice

Award-winning director, international performer, and recording artist Daniel Johnson has been the artistic director of the Texas Early Music Project since its inception in 1987. Johnson has performed and toured both as a soloist and ensemble member in such groups as the New York Ensemble for Early Music, Sotto Voce (San Francisco), and Musa Iberica. He can be heard on various recordings for Koch International, Foné Records (Rome), Amherst Festival Productions, and the Texas Early Music Project label.

Johnson was the director of the UT Early Music Ensemble, one of the largest and most active in the U.S., from 1986-2003. In 1998, he was awarded Early Music America’s Thomas Binkley Award for university ensemble directors. He is also the recipient of the 1997 Quattelbaum Award at the College of Charleston. Johnson teaches master classes in performance practice and also serves on the faculty, staff, and the Executive Advisory Board of the Amherst Early Music Festival. He has been on the faculty of the Texas Toot since 1994.

Joan Kimball

Loud band, Recorder

Joan Kimball is the former artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. She has concertized with the ensemble throughout the U.S., Europe, and South America and has performed with many of the leading early music artists and ensembles in this country. With Piffaro she has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv Produktion, Dorian Recordings and PARMA/Navona, and in addition can be heard on the Vanguard, Eudora and Vox Amadeus labels.

Widely known in the early music community as a teacher of recorder, early double reeds and bagpipes, she has been on faculty at early music festivals and workshops across the country, including The Madison Early Music Festival, The Early Double Reed & Sackbut Workshop, Amherst Early Music, The San Francisco Early Music Recorder Workshop, and Hidden Valley Early Music Workshop.

Joan has intimate knowledge and experience with early double reeds, playing both shawm and dulcian, as well as capped reeds and bagpipes. She has far too many of the latter in various sizes, pitches and volumes in her studio, and is committed to keeping them all in good working order! She makes her own reeds for all her instruments and supplies them as well for reed players across the country. One of her specialties is refurbishing whole sets of krumhorns, replacing the old plastic reeds with more authentic cane ones. In addition, she collaborates with instrument maker Joel Robinson on the construction of Medieval and Renaissance bagpipes.

Jody Miller

Recorder

Jody Miller has taught recorder and early music for over thirty years. While he enjoys performing, he is best known as a recorder pedagogue and is in demand as a teacher and consort coach. His early study was with Steve Rosenburg (recorder) of the College of Charleston and Dana Ragsdale (harpsichord) of the University of Southern Mississippi. Additional studies were with Marion Verbruggen, Eva Legêne, Aldo Abreu, and Frances Blaker.

Jody is Music Director of Lauda Musicam of Atlanta, a large community-based ensemble comprised of a 40-piece Renaissance band, a Baroque orchestra, a capped reed ensemble, a brass reed ensemble, a viol ensemble, and a flute ensemble. When Lauda Musicam of Austin was formed as a sister organization he helped shaped the direction of the ensemble. He has been Director of Mountain Collegium Early Music and Folk Music Workshop since 2011. During that time he has expanded the workshop to be one of the largest in the country, with programs for early brass and reeds and for emerging recorder and viol players. Jody has taught at workshops throughout the country, including San Francisco Early Music Society Workshop, Bloom Early Music Workshop, and Amherst Early Music Festival Online Workshop. He regularly travels to Greensboro, NC, to lead the Triad Early Music Society and he maintains a large recorder studio at his home in Marietta, GA.

Jody is a member of Amethyst Baroque Ensemble and Sol Divino 17^th Century Ensemble. His orchestral performances include the Victoria (TX) Bach Festival, Cincinnati Opera, New Trinity Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Atlanta Opera, and Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. As a supporter of new music for the recorder, he works closely with composer Timothy Broege and has given several premier performances of Broege’s compositions. In 2022, Miller performed Gregory Hamilton’s new work for unaccompanied recorder, Ave Maria Variations.

Susan Richter

Administrator

In the early music world, Susan Richter’s primary instruments are recorders and Renaissance double reeds: shawms and dulcians. Susan also enjoys singing in various church and early music groups. She has been a performing member of Texas Early Music Project (TEMP), St. David’s (Episcopal Church, Austin) Compline Choir, and the Austin Baroque Orchestra, and teaches adult beginning recorder at Austin’s Lifetime Learning Institute.

Susan is on the board of TEMP, was a Board member of the ARS 2008-2012, is a music leader at Central Presbyterian Church in Austin, and is Administrator of the Texas Toot early music workshops. She enjoys tending her wild Hill Country yard, feeding and watching birds, and occasionally playing penny whistle duets with her husband, Win Bent. Susan is now happily retired from gainful IT employment.

Mary Springfels

Viol

For most of her adult life, Mary Springfels had devoted herself to the performance and teaching of early music repertoires. She earned her stripes performing with many influential pioneering ensembles, including the New York Pro Musica, the Elizabethan Enterprise, concert Royal, and the Waverly consort.

For 20 years she directed the innovative Newberry Consort, and can be heard on dozens of recordings. In 2006, Mary moved to the mountains of New Mexico, where she is active in the formation of an intentional community called the Wit’s End Coop. She continues to teach and perform extensively. Most recently, she has taught at the San Francisco Early Music Society, The Viola da Gamba Society of America, Amherst Early Music, and the Pinewoods Early Music Week.

Héctor Torres

Lute/theorbo

Dr. Héctor Alfonso Torres González was born in Puerto Rico, where he started his guitar studies at the Preparatory School of the Puerto Rico Music Conservatory. He worked on his bachelor’s degree at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus; his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; and his doctorate in musical arts degree with a specialization in early music at the University of North Texas.

Héctor has concertized and taught throughout the United States, Puerto Rico, South America, Europe, and China, both as a soloist and ensemble musician. Distinguished by his versatility and sound, he frequently performs many styles of music, including early music, Latin music, and modern classical. As an early music performer, he regularly plays baroque guitar, theorbo, lute, and other period plucked instruments with different chamber groups and orchestras across the U.S, including the Texas Early Music Project, Austin Baroque Orchestra & Chorus, Ars Lyrica Houston, Lumedia Musicworks, La Follia, Mercury Chamber Orchestra, Fantasmi, Camerata del Sol, Red River Lyric Opera, Orchestra of New Spain, and his newly founded group Bambulaé Barrocá.

Currently Dr. Torres-González serves as an Associate Professor of Music at Tarrant County College – Trinity River Campus located in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

Sydney ZumMallen

Viol

Texas based baroque cellist and viola da gamba player, Sydney ZumMallen, is currently a doctoral candidate at UT Austin. As an active performer, you can find her playing with many baroque ensembles including Harmonia Stellarum, La Follia Baroque, American Baroque Opera Company, and many more. She is also a proud founder of the Early Birds Baroque Ensemble. Sydney has been part of multiple recording projects including the Dallas Bach Society’s Messiah, Dallas Bach Society’s St John Passion, and Rebecca Nelson’s album Do Not Lament.

Sydney’s commitment to share early music with the world has taken her across four continents including tours in Puerto Rico, Peru, Colombia, Italy, Austria, Germany, Czechia, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Taiwan, and New Zealand with prominent early music figures and ensembles. Additionally, she is a passionate teacher of early music. She was previously an adjunct faculty member at UNT where she taught baroque cello, viola da gamba, historical ornamentation, and early chamber music. You can find her teaching at the Texas Toot in the fall and summer.

Sydney completed her bachelor’s degree at the University of North Texas, a year of studies at The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and received a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she studied with Phoebe Carrai and Sarah Cunningham. During her years at The Juilliard School she was the winner of Juilliard’s inaugural baroque cello concerto competition, making her New York solo debut with Juilliard415 at Alice Tully Hall in New York.

In her free time, Sydney enjoys baking and sitting on the couch with her cats.