Douglas Mandell has been singing and playing various instruments since he was five. With the Festival Consort, he sings tenor and plays shawm, recorder, crumhorn, sackbut, gittern and percussion. He has also sung with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra’s Chorale. In addition to early music, Douglas performs with Goat Hall Productions (San Francisco Cabaret Opera), Lamplighters Music Theater, and plays cornet and electric piano in a blues band.
Carol Menke studied at the Franz Schubert Institute in Austria and coached with some of Europe's finest recitalists, including Elly Ameling, Jörg Demus, and Norman Shetler. She has appeared in numerous chamber and solo recitals in universities, colleges, churches, and concert halls both here and abroad. Ms. Menke holds her M.A. in Vocal Performance from CSU, Chico. She is a member of the music faculty at the Santa Rosa Junior College and is Director of Music at the Church of the Incarnation in Santa Rosa.
A founding member of the King's Trumpetts and Shalmes, led by David Hogan Smith, Alan Paul has been active in the Bay Area early music scene for many years. In addition to shawm, crumhorn, and recorder, he plays baroque oboe and has performed with numerous groups in the Bay Area and southern Oregon, including the Pacific Collegium, City Concert Opera, Baroque Etcetera, and the Jefferson Baroque Orchestra. He participated in three different “fringe” concerts at this past summer's Berkeley Festival and Exposition.
David Hogan Smith holds a D.M.A. degree in Performance Practice from Stanford University. He edits and publishes music for wind instruments of the Renaissance and Baroque periods and is the author of Reed Design for Early Woodwinds, published by Indiana University Press. He performs on a variety of early woodwinds and brasses, including sackbut, shawm, and baroque bassoon, and has been a faculty member of the San Francisco Early Music Society Workshops at Dominican University and the Amherst Music Festival. He is also the founding director of the King's Trumpetts and Shalmes, a Renaissance band based in San Francisco.
Joanna Bramel Young studied recorder and early music at the Hochschule fur Musik in Freiburg, Germany, and at Stanford University. She taught recorder classes for many years at Santa Rosa Junior College, and has been on the faculty of early music workshops in New York, and San Francisco Early Music Society workshops at Dominican University. With the Festival Consort, she plays not only recorder, but also shawm, crumhorn, and curtal. Her baroque ensemble Nota Bene performs works for baroque recorder, baroque oboe, harpsichord and baroque bassoon.