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Since 1999, Baroque Arts Project has enchanted audiences with innovative programs of music and dance of the 17th & 18th centuries. Based in historic New Bern, NC, the group was founded by Baroque dancer Paige Whitley-Bauguess and Baroque trumpeter Barry Bauguess to bring the rich dance and musical arts of the Baroque period to life. Through research and reconstruction of historical performance practices, Baroque Arts Project artists create fresh and enlightening performances that delight young and old, enrich the arts landscape in communities, broaden the understanding of our heritage, and spark curiosity. Core members based in North Carolina are frequently joined by impressive historical dance and early music artists from around the world to perform Baroque masterpieces of court and theatre. In addition to public performances, Baroque Arts Project offers a wide range of engaging educational programs.

Baroque Arts Project has performed concerts and educational programs throughout North Carolina and has partnered with a variety of organizations including the ECU Early Music Ensemble, the Concert Singers of Cary, Chatham Baroque, and the New Bern Dancing Assembly. Baroque Arts Project musicians also collaborated with Paige Whitley-Bauguess in the production of two educational Baroque dance DVDs.

ARTISTS

PAIGE WHITLEY-BAUGUESS, Dance Director and Baroque Dance, interprets, recreates, and performs Baroque theatre dance in venues all over the world. She has recently appeared with Andrew Lawrence-King as Guest Artist with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, served as Guest Stage Director and Choreographer at the Peabody Conservatory for “Pastorale & Masque - Miniature Masterpieces from the Dawn of Opera,” and Stage Directed Mozart’s “Il re pastore” at East Carolina University. In 2004 she directed ECU’s production of Handel’s “Acis et Galatea.” Paige directs two historical social dance troupes (youth and adult) and has produced two Baroque Dance DVDs, “Introduction to Baroque Dance-Dance Types,” funded in part by an NC Choreographer’s Fellowship, and “Dance of the French Baroque Theatre,” released in July 2005. In addition, Paige travels extensively performing, teaching, and directing operas both as a soloist and with her artistic collaborator, Thomas Baird. They have danced as guest artists with the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra, Fête de Versailles (Tokyo), Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, The Little Orchestra Society at Lincoln Center, Chatham Baroque, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra (Vancouver). Paige’s festival appearances include the Appalachian State Arts Festival, NC Dance Festival, Rutgers University SummerFest, Sapporo Early Music Festival, Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Boston Early Music Festival, Nakamichi Baroque Music Festival, Magnolia Baroque Festival, and the Madison Early Music Festival. As a master teacher, she is on the faculty of The East Coast Baroque Dance Workshop at Rutgers and has given master classes and lectures at numerous universities, conservatories, and museums in the US, Canada, Japan, and Hong Kong. Paige will be a Guest Artist at Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute this summer.

BARRY BAUGUESS, Music Director and Baroque Trumpet, is one of North America’s most sought-after Baroque trumpet sololists. He frequently appears with many of North America’s finest period instrument orchestras including the Portland Baroque Orchestra, Apollo’s Fire, The Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, Magnolia Baroque Festival, The Washington Bach Consort, The American Bach Soloists, The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, Tafelmusik, Concert Royal, New York’s Ensemble for Early Music, Capriole, and City Musick, and was a member of Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra from 1987 to 1999. He is currently on the faculty of the Baroque Performance Institute at Oberlin Conservatory.

THOMAS BAIRD, Baroque Dance, is the co-director of Apollo’s Banquet, a New York City-based Baroque dance and music ensemble, and, since 1998, is director of the annual East Coast Baroque Dance Workshop at Rutgers University. Mr. Baird is a regular guest lecturer at The Juilliard School and the Manhattan School of Music, and is a faculty member of the Opera Division at the State University of New York at Purchase where he teaches Movement Styles for Singers and choreographs the opera productions. Recently, he was the Period Movement Coach for the Broadway productions of O’Neill’s “A Touch of the Poet,” and, at Lincoln Center Theater, Sheridan’s “The Rivals.” In 2005, he made his Metropolitan Opera debut as a choreographer, providing period dances for the US premiere of Franco Alfano’s “Cyrano de Bergerac.” This season he is choreographing and performing period dances from the Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and Modern eras, for the New York Philharmonic’s Young People’s Concerts at Avery Fisher Hall.

GESA KORDES, Baroque Violin, performs with numerous chamber ensembles and Baroque Orchestras on both sides of the Atlantic, including The King’s Noyse, Opera Lafayette, Bach and the Baroque, Ensemble Tra i Tempi, and the Kurpfälzische Hofkapelle Mainz, as well as the Indianapolis and Atlanta Baroque Orchestras. She has toured as soloist and chamber musician in the U.S., Central America, Europe, and Israel and has recorded for NPR, harmonia mundi, FONO, Dorian, and Naxos. Since 1998, Gesa Kordes has been increasingly in demand as an ensemble director of chamber groups and Baroque and Classical orchestras in the U.S. and Europe, most recently at the Magnolia Baroque Festival in Winston-Salem, N.C. In August 2006, she joined the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro as the director of the School of Music’s newly-founded Baroque Ensemble. In 2007, her activities also include recitals and recordings with keyboardist Andrew Willis, concerts at the Bloomington Early Music Festival, the Victoria Bach Festival, and the Carmel Bach Festival, as well as masterclasses/residencies in Bloomington, IN and at the University of Louisville, KY. Gesa received her Baroque violin training from Stanley Ritchie and John Holloway at Indiana University’s Early Music Institute, where she served as Lecturer for Baroque violin. She holds a master’s degree in violin and musicology from Indiana University, where she is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology.

JOHN B. O'BRIEN, harpsichord and organ, has performed throughout the southeast as a soloist and chamber musician. He performs regularly with Baroque and modern trumpet soloist Barry Bauguess and has appeared with Chatham Baroque, the Clarino Consort, and Baroque dancer Paige Whitley-Bauguess. He has studied harpsichord with Malcolm Hamilton, Elaine Funaro and Arthur Haas and organ with Cherry Rhodes and Janette Fishell. Mr. O’Brien is Co-Director of the Early Music Ensemble at the East Carolina University School of Music where he is also Professor of Accompanying. Mr. O’Brien plays an Italian continuo instrument by Peter Tkach (1999), a French double harpsichord by Richard Kingston (1991), and a continuo organ by Klop Orgelbau, Netherlands (2002).

STEPHANIE VIAL, Baroque Cello, holds an undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, a Master’s Degree from Indiana University and a DMA in Eighteenth-Century Performance Practice from Cornell University. She is currently writing a book on the eighteenth-century analogy between punctuation in language and the concept of musical phrasing, for publication with the University of Rochester Press’ Eastman Studies in Music. She has appeared with a number of period instrument ensembles, including the Apollo Ensemble, Arco Voce, Publick Musick, and Les Violons du Roy. She has recorded for Dorian, Centaur Records and CBC radio. She makes her home base in Durham, North Carolina, where she is director of the instrumental Collegium Musicum at Duke University and a member of the adjunct faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Forrest Croce
Paige Whitley-Bauguess, Barry Bauguess,
John B. O'Brien

Photo by Paige Whitley-Bauguess
Barry Bauguess, John B. O'Brien, and Stephanie Vial
rehearsing in Greenville, NC.

Photo by Roxann Spears
Thomas Baird looks on as Paige Whitley-Bauguess
and a 5th grader demonstrate pocket hoops
at Oaks Road Elementary School.

Photo by Kit Jordan
Baroque Arts Project artists and members of the
New Bern Dancing Assembly perform the menuet
at Carver Elementary School in Mt. Olive,
explaining that George Washington danced
this dance in New Bern in 1791.