Flutist Anita Rieder performs in the Twin Cities and throughout the Midwest.  She has worked internationally in Mexico, Japan, Austria, and England. 

For many years a freelancer in Chicago, Anita was a first-call sub with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  She has performed with the Lyric Opera, Grant Park Symphony, Haymarket Opera Company, the Staunton Music Festival in Virginia, Peninsula Music Festival in Door County, Newberry Consort, Chicago Chamber Musicians, Chicago Baroque Ensemble, and Pilgrim Chamber Players. A frequent orchestral soloist, she has performed the Mozart, Nielsen, and Vivaldi concertos and recorded with Mannheim Steamroller, Chicago Baroque Ensemble, Ars Antigua, and Haymarket Opera Company.

This 2026-27 season, Anita plays baroque flute with the Bach Society of Minnesota, La Grande Bande, Just Bach and piccolo with the Wayzata Symphony Orchestra. She serves on the board of the Minneapolis Pops Orchestra and directs a chamber music series at Trinity Episcopal Church in Excelsior.  

Hailed by the Minneapolis Star Tribune as “nimbly expressive” and possessing“warmth and sensitivity”, cellist and violist da gamba, Maryne Mossey, is an active performer and teacher based in the Twin Cities. On Baroque cello and viola da gamba, she performs with La Grande Bande, Consortium Carissimi, Lyra BaroqueOrchestra, the Bach Society of Minnesota, and other early music ensembles throughout the upper Midwest. Maryne was a 2025-26 Minnesota Public RadioClass Notes Artist with La Grande Bande. Maryne’s teachers have included Clive Greensmith and Marcy Rosen on modern cello, Phoebe Carrai on Baroque cello, and Sarah Cunningham and Julie Elhardonviola da gamba. Dedicated to fostering the next generation of cellists and gamba players, Maryne teaches and coaches viola da gamba consort classes at Macalester Collegeandthe Saint Paul Conservatory of Music. When Maryne is not playing or teaching, she can be found tending to her garden and her two Italian greyhounds in the Longfellow neighborhood of Minneapolis.

Thomas Walker, Jr started classical guitar lessons at age 10. He returned to classical music in college, studying both classical guitar and music theory. Theory classes provided his first introduction to the earlier musical vocabulary of counterpoint. After college, he studied jazz guitar independently, but was increasingly captivated by early music, particularly polyphony. He bought his first lute in 1992 and began studies with Phillip Rukavina soon after. Since then, Walker has performed with Rukavina, Dr. Sam Backman, Ensemble Polaris, Lute2Viols, Consortium Carissimi, the Rose Ensemble, and the Venere Lute Quartet, as well as with lutenists Paul Berget and Edward Martin. He and his spouse Sarah Jackson curate and perform on the "Chamber at the Chapel" concert series at University Lutheran Chapel.  Walker served a term as treasurer for Lyra Baroque from 2003– 06, and served as treasurer for the Lute Society of America until 2017. In regular hours he works as a consulting economist for small, privately held companies.

Soprano Sarah Jackson is an active soloist and recitalist in the Twin Cities area. She has appeared at various venues including Chamber Music Amarillo, Calvary Baptist Church, and the Institute of Vocal Artistry. More recently she has joined the Hyperion Singers. Her repertoire ranges from the music of the Baroque period to German Romantic Lieder, and she has a special passion for the music of J.S. Bach. She holds a degree in Music from the College of St. Catherine and has done further graduate study at the University of Minnesota.

Sonja Thompson is a Minnesota-based pianist and collaborator dedicated to imaginative programming and the development of new work. With particular interests in Nordic music, chamber music, and the intersection of music and theater, she has worked with a host of organizations - most recently playing chamber music for the Alexandria (MN) Festival of the Lakes and for Music Saint Croix; performing piano duo performances of Carmina Burana with Twin Cities Ballet, and premieres by Minnesota composers AJ Isaacson and David Evan Thomas; and providing Musical Direction for Hearts is Broke, a new musical by composer Aaron Gabriel for Theater Latté Da’s NEXT Festival; Bohemian Flats, a devised music-theater-dance project with the University of Minnesota Theater department; and Composer-Librettist Workshops with Nautilus Music Theater (St. Paul) and Alliance for New Music-Theater (Washington, DC.)

Recent creative efforts include a new adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Peer Gynt for the 150th anniversary of the 1876 premiere in Oslo; this adaptation notably includes the complete incidental music by Edvard Grieg, performed by a cast of six singer-actors and piano. For CROSSINGS 200 (an international festival in 2025 commemorating the bicentennial of Norwegian immigration to the U.S.) Sonja collaborated with tenor Dan Dressen to create and perform Migrations, a mix of poetry, song and chamber music. Works-in-progress include a cabaret adaptation of Song of Norway, continuing development of two new music-theater works: A Song at Twilight (Robert Elhai & Jim Payne) and Bluestem (Kim Sherman & Eric Anderson), further development of Peer Gynt for the Ibsen bicentennial in 2028, and more concerts with soprano Maria Jette - a favorite musical collaborator and friend for many years!

Maria Jette, soprano, has appeared with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, New York Chamber Symphony, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and Minnesota Orchestra: the Symphonies of Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Grand Rapids, Kansas City, Charlotte, Santa Rosa and Buffalo; Vocalessence (formerly The Plymouth Music Series of Minnesota), the Handel Choir of Baltimore, Choral Arts Society of Philadelphia, and Los Angeles Master Chorale; and with original instrument ensembles Angelica Cantanti, Portland Baroque Orchestra and The Lyra Baroque Orchestra. She has been a regular guest at the Oregon Bach, Victoria Bach and San Luis Obispo Mozart Festivals, the Oregon Festival of American Music, and on Public Radio International's A Prairie Home Companion. With conductor Helmuth Rilling, she has sung Bach, Mozart and Monteverdi in Germany, Spain, Japan, and Canada, as well as in Minneapolis, New York, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. In a 20+ year association with conductor Philip Brunelle, she first appeared as the coloratura dog, Fido, in Britten’s Paul Bunyan; and has gone on to sing everything from fully-staged operas by Mozart opera and Virgil Thomson through oratorios by Handel, William Bolcom and Francis Grier, and most recently, Dominick Argento’s glorious Evensong (2009).

Her 45+ operatic roles range from Monteverdi's Poppea and Handel's Cleopatra through Mozart's Pamina, Countess and Fiordiligi, many of them with the late, lamented Ex Machina Antique Music Theatre in the Twin Cities. With The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, she starred as the Mrs. in the May 2002 premiere of Garrison Keillor's operatic excursion, Mr. and Mrs. Olson. She has performed her own production of Seuss/Kapilow’s Green Eggs & Ham for more than 50,000 kids, with symphonies and music festivals around the USA.n goes here