harpsichord / baroque dance

Dr. Tan Qin Ying's recent concerto appearance with City Music lauded her as "an excellent soloist, a compelling performer who is equally comfortable handling long strings of notes... and singing through emotive melodies with her instrument." This season's performances included appearances with City Music, Apollo's Fire, Piano Cleveland, ORMACO Inc., the Performing Arts Series at the Cleveland Museum of Art, SEA Music Academy, and Affekt. Dr. Tan co-directs up-and-coming ensemble Affekt with baroque violinist, Guillermo Salas Suárez, an ensemble which focuses on early music accessibility, education and diversity across Cleveland.

Dr. Tan is also known to be a "a natural and knowledgeable speaker who helped to bring perspective to the program" (Cleveland Classical). A firm believer of story-telling through music, Tan's influences steep from a pool of diverse music which includes baroque French court dance, Indonesian gamelan, the Chinese guzheng, as well as community song and dance. Born in Singapore, Dr. Tan moved to the United States in 2008 and graduated from Cleveland Institute of Music with a doctorate in harpsichord performance. Currently, Dr. Tan works at Case Western University and Notre Dame College as keyboard and music history faculty. Dr. Tan also serves as music director at Heights Christian Church and Forest Hills Presbyterian Church in Shaker Heights and Cleveland Heights in Ohio and is currently on the Northeast Ohio Music Teachers' Association's board as the vice-president.

baroque oboe

Veda was a Master graduate at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, before she attained a Konzertexamen degree at the Folkwang Universität der Kunst in Essen, Germany. Her teachers included Helena Gaunt, David Walter and Joe Sanders on the modern oboe, as well as Gail Henessy and Michael Niesemann on the baroque oboe.

On the modern oboe, Veda has made concerto appearances with the Duisburger Sinfoniker, Folkwang Hochschulorchester, Guildhall Sinfonia and The Philharmonic Orchestra performing concertos by Richard Strauss, B. A. Zimmermann and Mozart. Veda has also given solo recitals in the Crush Room at Covent Garden, Winchester Festival, and was the Special Prize Winner in the Barbirolli International Oboe Competition in 2009. Orchestra work and chamber music have also been central to her role as an oboist, playing with the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie (Germany), Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquestra Classica da Madeira (Portugal), Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra. With the Singaporean wind quintet EDQ, they were awarded the Tapio Tuomela prize at the 7th Henri Tomasi International Woodwind Quintet Competition 2013 in Marseille.

A passionate teacher at heart, Veda seeks to be an advocate for music not just through her identity as an oboist and performer, but also as an educator. Her role as a mother of three spurred her to pursue in 2020 a Master in Elementary Music Pedagogy at the Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, where she currently lives with her family.

Veda plays on a Denner copy made by Toshi Hasegawa.

soprano

Belgian soprano Lilith Verhelst obtained her degree in classical singing at the Royal Conservatory of Antwerp before continuing her vocal studies at the Royal Conservatory of the Hague where she specialized in early music performance practice. Lilith is equally at home with singing baroque and contemporary repertoire.

Her passion for contemporary music has involved working as a soloist in modern opera, musical theatre and chamber music. She participated in the Darmstadt International New Music Festival (2012), where she was coached by the French soprano Donatienne Michel-Dansac. She sang while in the presence of the composer Georges Aperghis, of his work La Nuit en tête (2013) and also performed VOI(rex) by Philippe Leroux with Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin during her residency with the OPUS XXI Academy 2013 (Avignon). In April 2015, she sang the role of Green Romy in the opera ROMY – Elle est moi und töte mich by Belgian composer Joris Blanckaert in collaboration with SPECTRA Ensemble. Other notable projects have included touring the opera Alzheimer (2006) by Chiel Meijering, as well as singing within the Gaudeamus Festival Amsterdam, working with the Ereprijs Ensemble to premiere numerous works by young composers. She also performed the chamber opera Drawers in the presence of the composer Tom Johnson and participated in Columba by the Belgian musical theatre group Luna Baal, singing music by Nicholas Lens.

As a solo and ensemble singer Lilith has collaborated with ensembles such as The Flemish Radio Choir (BE), CantoLX (LU), Cappella Amsterdam (NL) and Baroque Ensemble Collegium AD MOSAM. She has also performed within stylistically diverse programs such as the Frescobaldi/Cage programme put on by CantoLX. Or reviving music of 17th century Turnhout composers in collaboration with the baroque orchestra B’Rock and the very same CantoLX.

In November 2015 Lilith moved to Singapore where she was Adjunct Voice Teacher at The School of the Arts Singapore (SOTA). Projects include Sonic Blossom by artist Lee Mingwei at the National Art Gallery Singapore during the Night to Light festival, as well as numerous appearances with Red Dot Baroque. She has since relocated back to Europe at the end of 2019.