Parish House Baroque
Colorado Springs’ Early Music Ensemble

Halls of the Sun King, featuring viola da gambists Mary Springfels and Zoe Weiss
May 10-11, 2025
The Peel House at First Lutheran Church

Never has music enjoyed more splendor than it did in the royal courts of 18th-century France. We’ll close our season with an incredible collaboration featuring acclaimed viola da gambists Mary Springfels and Zoe Weiss. This will be an unforgettable program exploring the magic of French baroque music in all its glory and nuance. This program is about the Sun King himself – and the joie de vivre we all love!

About Mary Springfels, Vielle, Citole, Viola da Gamba
Springfels has spent her adult life performing medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque music. She has worked with pioneering groups and individuals, including the New York Pro Musica, Sequentia, the Folger Consort, Marion Verbruggen, and Monica Huggett. For 25 years Mary was Musician-in-Residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago and director of the highly-acclaimed Newberry Consort. In 2007, she was given the Howard Mayer Brown award for an outstanding career by Early Music America. In that year, Mary moved to New Mexico. She performs locally as a guest with the Albuquerque Baroque Players, the Santa Fe Pro Musica, and Serenata; she teaches and performs worldwide, from London to Australia.

About Zoe Tall Weiss
Zoe Tall Weiss is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver’s Lamont School of Music. Both a musicologist and performer, she believes passionately in music’s ability to forge human connections which she explores in both her scholarly and performance work. She completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University where she wrote a dissertation on musical and material networks in the Elizabethan In Nomine tradition. Her scholarly interests range from the history of music theory and 16th-century polyphony, to performance practice and music cognition, and she has published work on Haydn string quartets and the consort music of John Jenkins. An active performer on the viola da gamba and Baroque cello, Zoe is a founding member of LeStrange Viols, Science Ficta, and the Folk Baroque Trio. She has also performed with the Oberlin Consort of Viols, the Smithsonian Consort of Viols, the Folger Consort, and ACRONYM. Zoe has taught viol at workshops for the Amherst Early Music Festival and the Viola da Gamba Society of America and served on the Board of Directors for the VdGSA as well as serving as an editor for the Journal of the VdGSA. Her recordings with LeStrange Viols and ACRONYM can be heard on the New Focus label, including the album Æternum which emerged from her research into the Elizabethan table-book GB-Lbl Add. MS 31390. Science Ficta’s recording of new works by composer Molly Herron, Through Lines, was released by New Amsterdam Records in 2021. Zoe has previously taught at Harvard University, Ithaca College, the Cornell Prison Education Program, and Cornell University, where she received a Don M. Randel teaching fellowship.