Summer 2025 - Texas Toot

Jennifer Carpenter

Jennifer Carpenter’s love for the recorder 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 and in early music ensembles in both Texas and Colorado. She is a member of Parish House Baroque, Colorado Springs’ early music ensemble, which performs concerts along the Front Range.

She enjoys teaching as much as performing. In addition to teaching private lessons, both in person and online, and coaching ensembles, Jennifer has been on the faculty of early music workshops in TX, CA, NM, CO, and AZ. Her enthusiasm for working with amateur recorder players has led her to serve on the Board of Directors of the American Recorder Society. Jennifer was the music director of the Dallas Recorder Society from 2009-2014 and continues to mentor and coach ARS chapters across the country. She is also the president of the Board of Directors for the Boulder-based early music ensemble Seicento Baroque Ensemble. Happily a resident of Colorado Springs, CO, she is enjoying integrating into the early music scene on the Front Range.

Jennifer Carpenter Read More »

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.

Carol Deihl Read More »

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.

Therese Honey Read More »

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.

Danny Johnson Read More »

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.

Joan Kimball Read More »

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.

Susan Richter Read More »

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.

Mary Springfels Read More »

Héctor Torres

Lute/theorbo

As an active early music performer, Héctor Alfonso Torres González regularly plays baroque guitar, theorbo, lute, and other period plucked instruments with chamber groups across the U.S., including the Texas Early Music Project, Austin Baroque Orchestra, Lumedia Musicworks, Orchestra of New Spain, La Follia Austin Baroque, Ensemble Fantasmi, and others.

Recently, he finished his Doctorate in Musical Arts in classical guitar performance with a related field in Early Music at the University of North Texas. While at UNT, he served as Teaching Fellow of classical guitar and Teaching Assistant for the UNT Baroque Orchestra, and was a frequent soloist playing works like Antonio Vivaldi’s Lute Concerto in D major RV 93. He was selected as one of Early Music America’s 2021 Emerging Artists.

Héctor Torres Read More »

Sydney ZumMallen

Viol

Texas based cellist and viola da gamba player, Sydney ZumMallen, is currently the professor of baroque cello and viola da gamba, the coordinator of the Early Music Chamber Studies, and the Ornamentation Theory course instructor at The University of North Texas. As an active performer, you can find her playing with many baroque ensembles including Harmonia Stellarum, La Follia (Austin), Ars Lyrica, Philharmonie Austin, and many more.

Sydney’s commitment to share early music with the world has taken her across four continents including tours with prominent early music figures. Her studies are comprised of an undergraduate degree at the University of North Texas, a year of studies at The Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and a master’s degree from The Juilliard School, where she was a recipient of the Historical Performance Scholarship and a student of 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 spending time baking, reading, and sitting on the couch with her cats. She is also addicted to space heaters.

Sydney ZumMallen Read More »