contributing Musicologists
Henry Lebedinsky
Hailed by The Miami Herald for his “superb continuo… brilliantly improvised and ornamented,” GRAMMY-nominated historical keyboardist, composer, and conductor Henry Lebedinsky has performed with the Seattle Bach Festival, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Opera, the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, Pacific Northwest Ballet, the Charlotte Symphony, Seraphic Fire, Sonoma Bach, and the Cantata Collective, among others. Recent conducting engagements include the Seattle Baroque Orchestra and Sonoma Bach’s Live Oak Baroque Orchestra. As part of a career built on collaboration, he serves as co-Artistic Director of the San Francisco Bay Area’s AGAVE and was co-Artistic Director of Seattle’s Pacific MusicWorks from 2018 to 2023. With countertenor Reginald L. Mobley, he has introduced listeners on three continents to music by Black composers from Baroque to modern, including recent appearances at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris and Festival Printemps Musical des Alizés in Morocco. In 2014, he founded Seattle’s Early Music Underground, which brought Baroque music to brewpubs, wineries, and other places where people gather, and presenting it in multimedia contexts which both entertain and educate.
Lebedinsky's compositions for choir and organ are published by Paraclete Press, Carus-Verlag Stuttgart, and CanticaNOVA, and two volumes of his poetry and hymns are in preparation. He has written program notes for London's Wigmore Hall and CD liner texts for the Alpha Classics and Acis Productions labels. Lebedinsky holds degrees from Bowdoin College and the Longy School of Music, where he earned a Master of Music in historical organ performance as a student of Peter Sykes. Currently in his third decade as a church musician, he serves as Missioner for Music at St. Augustine's Episcopal Church on Washington's beautiful Whidbey Island.
©HL for MoV 2025
Henry Lebedinsky photo by Elisabeth Ellis
Candace Smith
Candace Smith is an American editor and musicologist who has spent most of her life in Italy. She was particularly active in the field of contemporary music before going on to the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (Switzerland), where she specialized in medieval music under Andrea von Ramm. In Italy she studied and collaborated with the late singer Cathy Berberian, among others. In 1994 she earned a diploma in vocal pedagogy from the Rabine-Institut für funktionale Stimmpädagogik in Germany. She is active as a teacher throughout Europe, working with singers of varying repertoires (both classical and not), as well as actors, music teachers, psychiatric patients and others. She teaches voice at the Bernstein School of Musical Theatre in Bologna and the Accademia Teatrale Veneta in Venice.
Smith has collaborated and recorded with numerous ensembles of early music. Her first experience with early music composed by women was with her ensemble, Concerto delle Dame (1978–89), one of the first to specialize in this repertoire. In 1991 she founded Cappella Artemisia, dedicated to performing the music of Italian convents of the 16th and 17th centuries (www.cappella-artemisia.com). The ensemble has currently nine recordings on the Tactus and Brilliant Classic labels.
In 1997, she began publishing the repertoire of her ensemble, together with her husband, American cornettist Bruce Dickey, under the name of Artemisia Editions.
©MoV 2019
Candace Smith
Maks Adach
Maks Adach read music as Organ Scholar of Oriel College, Oxford. Whilst he undertook postgraduate research at Oxford, he served as Director of Music at both St John’s College and Pusey House. Following his time as Organ Scholar of both Lichfield and Liverpool Cathedrals, he moved to the USA where he works as Assistant Director of Music at St Paul’s Roman Catholic Church and Choir School, Harvard Square – one of only a handful of American institutions to offer daily choral worship.
©MoV 2019
Maks Adach
Photo by Andrew Kilgore
Dr Rhian Davies
Rhian Davies was awarded her Ph.D. by Bangor University in 1999 for a thesis entitled ‘A refined and beautiful talent: Morfydd Owen (1891–1918)’. She began researching Morfydd Owen’s life and works in 1982 and published the pictorial biography Never So Pure a Sight in 1994. She has since revealed many other lost narratives in the history of Welsh music through performances, broadcasts, and publications at the Gregynog Festival, where she has been Artistic Director since 2006.
©RD for MoV 2025
