By Peter Lyons Hall
If you’ve ever wondered what a Renaissance band sounds like, the audience on Sunday July 20, 2025 at Pacem in Terris, Frederick Franck’s unique sanctuary alongside the Wawayanda creek in Warwick, got to hear a performance of “The Wind Player’s Delight: Music through the Ages,“ that featured Priscilla Herreid, Grant Herreid, and Sian Ricketts playing on a unique variety of never-before-heard instruments.
The program included music spanning the 13th-17th centuries, including a piece composed by Henry VIII, the king known more for his enmity toward his wives than a composer. Virtuosic medieval dances, exquisite polyphony, and music written at the dawn of the baroque era was on the menu, and Piffaro’s pied-pipers of early music worked their way through a music evolution, while showing off some of their massive collection of wind (and string) instruments.
Artistic director Priscilla Herreid is a musician in the ancient and living tradition of woodwind doubling. Her formative years studying recorder at Philadelphia’s Settlement Music School led her to the High School for Creative and Performing Arts, where she began playing the oboe. The daughter of musicians rooted in Philadelphia’s music scene, she was exposed to the city’s vast musical landscape. Her time studying with Louis Rosenblatt at Temple University deepened her love of the oboe and orchestral repertoire, and playing renaissance wind instruments in Temple’s collegium felt like home.
As the collegium was led by Piffaro co-director Bob Wiemken, she was led to direct interaction with the group – whom she’d been listening to intensely for much of her childhood – and after further studies and occasional subbing, she became a member of Piffaro in 2007. Now as Artistic Director, Priscilla has the honor of continuing Piffaro’s mission of bringing the renaissance wind band and its repertoire to ever wider audiences. Passionate about sharing this slice of our musical history, Priscilla is also an avid educator, teaching at the Madison and Amherst Early Music Festivals and coaching existing ensembles in the art of playing renaissance polyphony – a form she believes is inherently satisfying for amateurs and professionals at every level.
Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Piffaro, Hesperus, and many other early music groups around the country. On the faculty at Yale University, he directs their Collegium Musicum and is artistic and music director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project (YBOP). Grant directs the New York Continuo Collective, and has created and directed several early music theatrical shows. A noted teacher and educator, he was the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education. Grant appeared on Broadway playing hurdy gurdy, lute, theorbo, cittern, and percussion in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Richard III, starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry. He devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the ensembles Ex Umbris and Ensemble Visce.
Sian Ricketts enjoys a multi-faceted career as a period woodwinds specialist, singer, and medieval pedagogue. She is a core member of Piffaro and Alkemie, and she also performs and records medieval, Renaissance and baroque chamber music and orchestral repertoire with ensembles including Makaris, Trobár (OH), Apollo’s Fire (OH), Theotokos (NY), and Science Ficta. As a co-managing director and performer with Alkemie, she has appeared on series including the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Arizona Early Music, the Five Boroughs Music Festival, Music Before 1800, and the San Francisco Early Music Series. With Alkemie she co-produced and performed on the soundtrack for the BAFTA award-winning videogame Pentiment by Obsidian Entertainment (pub. Xbox), as well as A Fine Companion (a dream-pop/shoegaze/ psychedelic rock rendering of troubadour texts) and Love to My Liking (a historically-informed realization of trouvère melodies and lyrics).
Pacem in Terris is a trans-religious space created along the Wawayanda River in Warwick, NY by Frederick and Claske Franck. It is “One man’s work of art that aspires to be an oasis of quiet, of sanity, where spirit and nature may reconnect. It is dedicated to what is Human in every human being.” To learn more about the unique artistry and philosophy of Frederick Frranck, click on FrederickFranck.org
Photo credits: Peter Lyons Hall
L to R: Piffaro Sian Ricketts, Priscilla Herreid, and Grant Herreid
Inside the all-stone performance venue, Pacem in Terris
