Florida Pro Musica is. . .

The Florida Pro Musica Chorus at Sacred Heart Church in Tampa.
Photo by Tom Wineman

The Chorus:  The lineup of the Florida Pro Musica Chorus changes according to the repertoire being performed. Many of the finest singers in the Tampa Bay area have sung with Florida Pro Musica, in groups ranging in size from 3 to 6 (for a Gregorian Chant in liturgy or concert) up to the full chorus of 20-25 singers for works such as the Mozart Requiem or Handel's Messiah with the FPM Orchestra. The following are some of the singers who have performed with the FPM Chorus:

Soprano:  Meghan Alfaro, Rosemary Collins, Margaret Flint, Beth Hunter, Laura Hollis, Joanne Johnson, Joyce Liu, Tasha Lohman, Michelle Rego, Cara Bryan, Janna Vincent, Kirsten Wetherbee

Alto:  Marissa Pope-Beck, Jean Crossman, Judy Vincent Kent, Bonnie Gregory, Meredith Schupay, Roseann Spieldenner, Karen Western

Counter-tenor: Kyle Dostal, David Condon

Tenor:  Martin Angiulli, Paul Cohill, Kevin Jon Coward, Corona Harris, Tom Haueter, Jim Hunter, Brad Meredith, Chris Romeo, Stephen Rosser, Matt Ruley, George Western

Bass:  Peter Baker, Stephen Galloway, David Gillespie, Linden Gould, D.J. Holt, Tim LaDue, Rim Karnavicius, Ian Peacock, Dave Redman, Dan Vincent

German Language Consultant:  Andrea Iking Gramling

The Schola Cantorum of Florida Pro Musica

The FPM Schola Cantorum has performed a concert of Gregorian Chant during the season of Advent for the last six years. Presented in concert form, rather than a liturgy, listeners can sit and absorb the meditative sounds of Gregorian Chant in the visually and aurally magnificent setting of Sacred Heart, leaving behind the noise and hectic pace of December at the shopping malls. These concerts have become a tradition at Sacred Heart, and draw a capacity audience. The Schola also presents these concerts in other venues in Florida. Tampa Tribune Photo.

Our 7th annual concert of Gregorian Chant is on Sunday, December 20, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. at Sacred Heart. The FPM Schola, a small male ensemble, will perform Mass for the 4th Sunday of Advent. Hear Latin sacred music as it may have sounded 1,000 years ago. The 45-minute concert is followed by a reception in the parish hall.

Read the Tampa Tribune's Preview Article about our December 14, 2008 concert. The article also includes links to the WFLA-TV story, additional photos, and an interview with Larry Kent (right). Tampa Tribune Photo.

Here is a sound sample from a previous season.

The photos below are by Sally Gurba, December 2008.

FPM Chamber Ensemble

The Florida Pro Musica Chamber Ensemble performs mostly Baroque chamber music for violin, cello and harpsichord. Judson Griffin, Javier Caballero and Larry Kent have played together since the early years of FPM, often in collaboration with members of The Dance Project, a Tampa-based professional dance company specializing in 18th century dance. Here is a brief music sample from a video that the ensemble recorded with The Dance Project. Photo by Meshekoff.

Chamber Ensemble

Violinist Judson Griffin appears in New York as concertmaster of Concert Royal, Amor Artis, Sinfonia New York, and the American Classical Orchestra, among others. He has been guest soloist and concertmaster with the Dallas Bach Society and New Trinity Baroque in Atlanta. He was associated with the Connecticut Early Music Festival for many years as concertmaster, soloist, conductor, and for six years as Music Director. He has performed with Florida Pro Musica since the group's inception in 1998, as concertmaster of the chamber orchestra and in a variety of chamber music concerts. He is Music Advisor to the Foundation for Baroque Music in Saratoga Springs, NY, where he plays chamber music in July, and provides repertoire research, programming, and personnel advice to numerous organizations. He has been a principal player with Helicon, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra, and Apollo's Fire of Cleveland; and concertmaster of the Philadelphia Classical Orchestra. Mr. Griffin led period-instrument orchestras for dance performances at the Maggio musicale in Florence, in opera at Musica nel chiostro in Italy, and led the Lobkowitz Quartet in performances of Haydn's Seven Last Words in Germany. He has toured with the English Concert and Trevor Pinnock; played with the Akademie der alten Musik in Berlin; with Il complesso barocco in Innsbruck, Milan, and Venice; and has been a soloist at the Festival de Clisson, France. Solo recitals have been given in Boston, Detroit, Washington, D.C., in New York at Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Hall, and in Alaska. Mr. Griffin is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music and earned a doctorate at The Juilliard School. He plays a baroque violin by Gio. Paolo Maggini, Brescia, ca. 1610-1620, a classical violin by Claude Pierray, Paris, 1707, and an anonymous northern Italian modern violin from ca. 1760.

Mr. Griffin's more than 80 recordings include new music from the mid-1970s to early 1980s; quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven on period instruments with the Smithson String Quartet, of which he was a member for 10 years; the Schubert Octet with the European ensemble Atlantis; recordings with Philharmonia of San Francisco and Tafelmusik of Toronto, among others; works of Richard Strauss, Elgar, and Barber with the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra on modern instruments strung in gut; and the Mozart Requiem and Haydn Creation as concertmaster of Amor Artis – all on period instruments.

Cellist Javier Caballero, born in Puerto Rico, received his Master’s Degree and Graduate Performance Diploma as a student of Rhonda Rider at the Boston Conservatory, where he won the 2005 String Department Honors Competition. Previously, he received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of South Florida under Scott Kluksdahl. While in Tampa, he began playing baroque chamber music with Florida Pro Musica, in concerts and in a video on 18th century dance in collaboration with The Dance Project. A frequent freelancer, performances have taken Mr. Caballero from Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, Symphony Hall and Jordan Hall to clubs such as Ryles Jazz Club, Lizard Lounge and Makor in NYC. He has recorded with the Balmus Ensemble, the Tami Machnai Ensemble, the Tim Janis Ensemble, and with several Boston-area singers and indie rock bands. He has also performed with Diana Ross and the Supremes, Sarah Brightman, Mannheim Steamroller, and the Irish Tenors. He served as principal cellist of Tampa’s Mostly Pops Orchestra and is currently principal of the Worcester Collegium. Mr. Caballero has toured China and was featured on PBS and QVC. In December 2008, he was invited to take part in a two-week concert tour in Palestine and Israel as part of the Baroque Festival organized by the Al Kamandjati Music Center. In addition to performing in the Boston area and beyond, Mr. Caballero teaches strings for the Brookline Public Schools as well as privately.

Larry Kent is Music Director of Florida Pro Musica, in addition to maintaining a busy schedule as a harpsichordist and pianist in solo and chamber settings. He made his European conducting debut in a rare performance of Gazzaniga’s Don Giovanni at Teatro Signorelli in Cortona, Italy, in 1996, and his Asian debut in the Peoples Republic of China conducting symphonies of Brahms and Mozart with the Xian Symphony Orchestra in 1998. Also an accomplished composer, Kent’s choral and instrumental works have received numerous performances on both sides of the Atlantic. While completing his doctoral studies he conducted two critically acclaimed performances of his one-act opera, Charlotte, which he composed to an original libretto by the late John Lawson, Jr., a noted Tampa attorney and wordsmith. Since co-founding Florida Pro Musica in 1998 with attorney George F. Gramling, III, he continues to explore both familiar and unfamiliar literature for chorus, chamber orchestra, and smaller ensembles.

Mr. Kent holds degrees in piano performance from Virginia Commonwealth University, where he studied piano with Carl Pfeifer and harpsichord with Lawrence Robinson, and from the University of Miami, where he was a student of Ivan Davis. He earned his doctorate from the University of South Carolina, where he studied composition with Dick Goodwin and conducting with Donald Portnoy and Manuel Alvarez. He has participated in master classes with Peter Phillips, Stephen Paulus and Libby Larsen, and was an original member of the Virginia Consort in Charlottesville, Virginia. He has also served as a Choral Scholar at Church of the Good Shepherd in Columbia, South Carolina, and sings and directs Florida Pro Musica’s annual Advent concerts of Gregorian Chant at Sacred Heart Church in Tampa.

FPM Chamber Orchestra

The Orchestra:  Like the Chorus, the lineup of the Florida Pro Musica Orchestra changes according to the needs of the repertoire for a particular program. Many of the players are principals and assistant principals with the Florida Orchestra, the Florida West Coast Symphony, and the Jacksonville Symphony, as well as leading artists and artist-teachers in the Tampa Bay area. During the 1999-2008 seasons, the following are some of the players who have performed with us:

Violin: Valerie Adams, Eugene Bazhanov, Natasha Bazhanov, Melody Brock, Felicia Brunelle, Mary Corbett, Hillary Bram, Oleg Geyer, Fiona Lofthouse, Lei Liu, Yan Lu, Qiong Hulsey, Eric Nordstrom, Kim Padget, Ann Rylands, Carolyn Stuart, Amy Schwartz Moretti

Viola: Ben Markwell, Allison Heydt, Ken Kwo, Che-yen Chen, Lee Ann Darling, Karen Dumke, Michael Fernandez, Glen Loontjens

Cello: Lowell Adams, Scott Kluksdahl, John May, Javier Caballero, and Sasha von Dassow

Contrabass: John Miller, Dee Moses, James Young

Flute: Daphne Soellner

Oboe and English Horn: Lane Lederer, Martin Hebert, Joyce James

Clarinet: Erika Shrauger and Mario Estrada

Bassoon: John Kehayas, James Rodgers, Fernando Traba, Kevin Fuller

Horn: Justine LeBaron, Gene Berger, Jeff Bram, Carolyn Wahl

Trumpet: Mark Fenderson and Don Owen

Trombone: Thomas Brantley, Dwight Decker, Harold van Schaik

Timpani: John Bannon

Harpsichord: Bonnie Gregory, Svetozar Ivanov, Preston Smith

Organ: Carl Klein, Kurt Knecht, David Clark Isele, Bonnie Gregory, Preston Smith

Piano: Grigorios Zamparas