Renée Hemsing, a native of Los Alamos, New Mexico, specializes in chamber music and early music performance on both violin and viola. She earned her doctorate at the University of Colorado where her string quartet (Ajax Quartet) was graduate Quartet-in-Residence with the Takacs Quartet. She earned her masters at the University of North Texas with Emanuel Borok where she also studied baroque violin​ with ​Cynthia Roberts, and her bachelors from the University of New Mexico under​ ​renowned Brazilian soloist Cármelo de los Santos. In addition to her primary instructors, Renée’s mentors include Brandon Chui, Paul Kantor, Charles Wetherbee, and David Halen. Renée has been presented in master classes with the Takacs Quartet, Pacifica Quartet, Jupiter Quartet, Escher Quartet, American Quartet, Augustine Hadelich, Don Weilerstein, Sylvia Rosenberg, Vadim Gluzman, Matt Albert, Stephen Rose, and Peter Otto. In Spring 2014, Renée was featured on the cover of Symphony Magazine. Currently, Renée lives in Arlington, MA, where she maintains her private studio of string students. Her concert engagements this season include performances with the Handel + Haydn Society, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Charlotte Bach Akademie, and Seraphic Fire.

Susanna Ogata enjoys an active performance schedule in greater New England and beyond. Her playing has been described as “warm, witty, responsive, making the tops of phrases gleam” (Gramophone Magazine), “warm and rich of tone” (Fanfare Magazine), and “electrifying energy, awesome technical command and rollicking dialogue” (Arts Fuse Magazine) where her performance was distinguished as a top performance of the season.

Dedicated to exploring music on historical instruments, Susanna has appeared as chamber musician and soloist with the Handel and Haydn Society, where she serves as Assistant Concertmaster, as well as with the Bach Ensemble, Sarasa, Boston Early Music Festival, Newton Baroque, Ashmont Bach Project, and Upper Valley Baroque. Upcoming performances include appearances as soloist on Vivaldi’s Four Seasons with the Connecticut Early Music Festival, St. Ann’s Kennebunkport, Maine Early Music Festival, and with Upper Valley Baroque. She will also be performing performing at the Tage Alter Musik Festival in Regensburg, Germany in June, 2025. Susanna has had the opportunity to work with early music specialists such as Raphaël Pichon, Harry Christophers, Sir Roger Norrington, Bernard Labadie, Jonathan Cohen, and Filippo Ciabatti among others.

Susanna and keyboardist Ian Watson completed “The Beethoven Project”, surveying and recording the complete Sonatas for Fortepiano and Violin of Beethoven on period instruments, receiving praise in such publications as The Boston Globe, where it was distinguished as an eminent release of 2017, BBC Music Magazine, Strad Magazine, Gramophone, and Early Music Review. The New York Times praised them for “elegant readings that are attentive to quicksilver changes in dynamics and articulation. Their performance of the Sonata No. 4 in A minor is darkly playful, their ‘Kreutzer’ Sonata brilliant and stormy.” They completed a two-year residency, called “On Beethoven’s Piano”, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, performing and working with students there.

Susanna is currently enjoying early music coaching with music students at the New England Conservatory through the Pratt Residency and Performance Series.

Ms. Ogata’s teachers have included Charles Castleman and Laura Bossert—and Dana Maiben with whom she studied Baroque violin. She also worked extensively with Malcom Bilson and Paul O’Dette while completing her undergraduate and graduate studies at the Eastman School of Music.

Guy Fishman is principal cellist of the Handel & Haydn Society, with which he made his Symphony Hall solo debut in 2005. He is in demand as an early music specialist in the United States and Europe, having performed as principal cellist with Tafelmusik, Seraphic Fire, Bach Akademie Charlotte (where he is co-artistic director), Les Violons du Roi, the Consone String Quartet, Arcadia Players, Connecticut Early Music Festival, Querelle des Bouffons, Emmanuel Music, the Boston Museum Trio, Boulder Bach Festival, El Mundo, and with Boston Baroque and Apollo’s Fire, among others. He has appeared in recital with Dawn Upshaw, Mark Peskanov, Eliot Fisk, Richard Eggar, Lara St. John, Gil Kalish, Kim Kashkashian, and Natalie Merchant. His playing has been praised as “plangent” by the Boston Globe, “electrifying” by the New York Times, and “beautiful….noble” by the Boston Herald, and “dazzling” by the Portland Press Herald. The Boston Musical Intelligencer related having “…heard greater depth in [Haydn concerto] than I have in quite some time.”

Mr. Fishman has recorded for the Olde Focus, CORO, Telarc, Centaur, Titanic, and Newport Classics labels. Recordings of sonatas by Andrea Caporale and duos for cello & bass were warmly received. Vivaldi cello concerti with members of the Handel and Haydn Society were called “brilliant” by the Huffington Post and “a feast for the ears” by Early Music America, which also remarked on the “exuberance…adroit sense of phrasing and extraordinary technique…grace and agility” found in his recording with H+H of the cello concerti by CPE Bach.

Mr. Fishman studied with David Soyer, Peter Wiley, Julia Lichten, and Laurence Lesser, with whom he completed Doctoral studies at the New England Conservatory of Music. He now serves on the faculty there, where he teaches and oversees the Harold Pratt Early Music Residency. In addition, he is a Fulbright Fellow, having worked with famed Dutch cellist Anner Bylsma in Amsterdam. He plays a rare cello made in Rome in 1704 by David Tecchler.

Multi-talented IAN WATSON has been described by The Times in London as a “world-class soloist” and a keyboard performer of “virtuosic panache” and by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung as “a conductor of formidable ability.” He is currently Artistic Director of New England Baroque, Artistic Director of the Connecticut Early Music Festival, Associate Conductor of Boston’s Handel and Haydn Society, alongside positions as Music Director at the Plymouth Church, Framingham and St. Ann’s Kennebunkport

Born in England in the Buckinghamshire village of Wooburn Common, Ian won a scholarship at age 14 to the Junior School of the Royal Academy of Music in London, later winning all the prizes for organ performance, including the coveted Recital Diploma. He completed his studies with Flor Peeters in Belgium. In recognition of his services to music, he was honored with an Associateship of the Royal Academy of Music. Ian’s first major appointment was as Organist at St. Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey, at the age of 19, a position he held for ten years. He also served as Music Director of the historic Christopher Wren church, St. James’s Piccadilly.

Ian has appeared as soloist or conductor with the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and Royal Philharmonic Orchestras, the Scottish, English, Polish, Irish and Stuttgart Chamber Orchestras, Bremen Philharmonisches Gesellschaft, Rhein-Main Symphony, Colorado Symphony, the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, the Handel and Haydn Society, English Baroque Soloists, and The Sixteen, among many others. He has also been featured on many recordings and film soundtracks including Amadeus, Roman Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, Restoration, Cry the Beloved Country, Voices from A Locked Room, and the BBC‘s production of David Copperfield.

Ian completed a major project with violinist Susanna Ogata, recording the ten Beethoven Violin Sonatas on the CORO label, using period-instruments. The set has received extraordinary praise in Gramophone, The Strad, The New York Times BBC Music Magazine, Fanfare Magazine and countless others. describing it as “revelatory” and “groundbreaking”. His fortepiano recital in the Boston Early Music Festival was included in the top picks of the year by the Boston Musical Intelligencer.

In honor of the Handel and Haydn Society’s 200th Anniversary, Ian conducted an outdoor performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in Boston’s Copley Square to an estimated audience of 6,000 people.