Violinist Lisa Rautenberg performs and records widely as a soloist and chamber musician. She gave her New York City solo debut with Concert Royale at the Mostly Mozart Festival in Alice Tully Hall, and performed her New York City recital debut in Merkin Hall playing virtuoso masters for the baroque violin. Lisa can be heard on over 100 recordings on labels such as Champignon International, SONY Classical, Virgin Classics, Newport Classics, MCA, Decca, Nonesuch, Telarc, and Deutsche Grammophone. She has performed concertos in many major American and European concert halls including Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, Kennedy Center, Orchestra Hall Chicago, Boston Symphony Hall, Hercules Hall, Concertgebouw, and BBC London. Lisa is Associate Concertmaster of the Hartford Symphony and Leader of Fanfare Consort. She has often performed with Arcadia Players. She holds a degree with distinction in violin performance from Indiana University, where she was a student of Josef Gingold, and also studied early violin techniques with Marilyn McDonald.

Alice Robbins received degrees from Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum, Basel, where she was a student of Hannelore Muller. She has performed widely on Baroque ’cello and viola da gamba in various chamber ensembles, including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Concerto Vocale, Smithsonian Chamber Players, and Boston Camerata. She was a founding member of Affetti Musicali, the Boston Consort of Viols, the Early Music Ensemble of Boston, the Oberlin Consort of Viols, and Concerto Castello, an international quintet specializing in the music of the early 17th century. She currently performs with the Handel & Haydn Society, the Boston Early Music Festival, and plays principal cello for Arcadia Players and Washington Bach Consort.

Ms. Robbins has recorded for Telefunken, EMI-Reflexe, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian, and Gasparo records, as well as for many radio stations. An Amherst resident, she currently teaches at both Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges in the Five College Early Music Program.

Monica Jakuc is the Elsie Irwin Sweeney Professor Emerita of Music at Smith College. She has played on three continents and championed the music of women composers.

Inspired by Malcolm Bilson, Ms. Jakuc has performed on early pianos since 1986. She is a frequent guest artist at the E.M. Frederick Collection in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, and was an organizer and performer at the international HaydnFest 1990, co-sponsored by Smith and the Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies.  A member of the board, she is a frequent guest performer with Arcadia Players, Pioneer Valley’s early music ensemble, and often features her 6 1/2–octave Paul McNulty Graf replica in Schubert concerts.

Ms. Jakuc's discography includes fortepiano sonatas by Marianne von Martinez, Marianna von Auenbrugger, and Joseph Haydn on Titanic Records, and Francesca LeBrun's complete Opus 1 Sonatas for fortepiano and violin, with Dana Maiben, on Dorian Discovery.  Her newest CD, “Fantasies for Fortepiano,” features works by Mozart, Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, and Beethoven’s “Moonlight” Sonata.  It is available on cdbaby.com.

In July 2006, Monica Jakuc married Robert T. Leverett, a well-known expert on old growth trees. Monica Jakuc Leverett retired from the faculty of Smith College in June 2008, after 39 years of service.
This is Ms. Jakuc’s ninth appearance on this Concerts Series since 1986.

Peter W. Shea has sung professionally since 1972 throughout New England and the Hudson Valley. He is a frequent tenor and baritone soloist with ensembles such as Arcadia Players (on whose board of directors he serves), Hampshire Choral Society, Commonwealth Opera and the Brattleboro Concert Choir. He also performs regularly with the vocal ensembles Cantabile and Novi Cantori and as a recitalist in various regional music series. He studied voice with Arthur Koret at the Hartt School, Hartford, librarianship at Southern Connecticut State University, and historical musicology at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where he also continued vocal studies with Ralph Griffin. Mr. Shea's musical interests include art song and vocal chamber music of all eras, with special emphasis on German lieder. He has worked for the past decade on a project to collect, analyze, and perform musical settings of Heinrich Heine's poetry, which has an online component. His day job is as a cataloger for the UMass Amherst Libraries.