Lecturer, Lute, Historical Performance
Catherine Liddell's music education began long before formal college training, having begun first with the viola da gamba studying with Martha Blackman. After she changed to the lute, her teachers included most of America's foremost players and pioneers of early music during the 1960s: James Tyler, Joseph Iadone, Suzanne Bloch. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College, and a soloist Diploma from the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel Switzerland where she studied renaissance and baroque lute with Eugen M. Dombois.
Ms. Liddell is in demand for her skill in improvising continuo accompaniments. She has performed with many of America's leading period-instrument ensembles including: Folger Consort, Smithsonian chamber Chesmble, Four Nationsl ensemble, Les Idés Herueuses (Montreal) Boston Baroque, New York Collegium, Orchestra of St. Luke's (NY), Apollo's Fire (Cleveland), Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Boston's Handel & Haydn Society. She has performed in the Boston Early Music Festival production of Monteverdi's L'Orfeo (1993) Lully's Thesé (1999), and Lully's Psychée (2007). Ms. Liddell is a founding member of Ensemble Chanterelle, winner of the 1984 Concert Artist Guild Award, and with whom she has been Artist-in-Residence at UCLA.
Her performances in major music festivals include Aston Magna (Berkshires), Boston Early Music Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival and Northwest Bach Festival (Spokane, WA) Tage der Alten Musik in Regensburg, Germany. She has toured as accompanist to recitalists Sally Sanford (soprano), John Hsu, Laura Jeppesen and Brent Wissick (viola da gamba).
She has served on the Board of Directors and as President of the Lute Society of America and has taught frequently in their summer seminars, presenting week-long classes on such topics as: "Performing the music of Francesco da Milano," "Performing 17th century French lute music", "French lute style Unveiled", "Sacred Music for the Lute", Realizing continuo on lute, Lute Basics, Reading German Tablature, Making Transcriptions of Bach for the Lute.
Ms. Liddell has served on the faculties of the Longy School of Music (Cambridge, MA), the San Francisco Conservatory and Mount Holyoke College as part of the Five Colleges Early Music Program.
She has edited the first of a two-volume collection of Sacred Music for the Lute for Lyre Editions and published a number of articles for the Lute Society of America Quarterly. Her solo CD, La belle voilée: 17th Century French Lute Music by Jacques Gallot and Others was released on the Centaur label.