The Musicians
Elizabeth Hardy, shawm, dulcian & recorder
Rigel Lustwerk, cornetto
Liza Malamut, sackbut
Daniel Meyers, sackbut & recorder
Catherine Stein, shawm, dulcian, & recorder
Matthew Stein, shawm, dulcian, & recorder
Daniel Stillman, shawm, dulcian, sackbut, & recorder
Elizabeth Hardy, Administrative Director, holds a Master’s degree in Early Bassoons from the Indiana University Early Music Institute, where she studied with Michael McCraw. Her undergraduate study was on modern bassoon with George Sakakeeny at the Oberlin Conservatory. With Baroque ensemble Frutti Musicali, Ms. Hardy has toured the American Heartland, performing in Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana. She has also performed on Renaissance woodwinds and Baroque & Classical bassoons at the Boston Fringe and Bloomington and Indianapolis Early Music Festivals. Orchestral engagements have included the New York State Baroque Orchestra, the Handel & Haydn Society, the Boston Cecilia Society, as well as Canadian ensembles Classical Music Consort and Ensemble Caprice. In 2007, she participated in the International Young Artists Presentation in Antwerp, Belgium, as a member of the ensemble New Harmonie Winds.
Rigel Lustwerk holds a B.S. in Geology from the University of Arizona and a Ph.D. in Geochemistry and Mineralogy from The Pennsylvania State University. She subsequently did post-doctoral research in Oceanography at Old Dominion University, where she studied horn with David Wick and played recorder with the University’s Collegium Musicum. Rigel first heard a cornett played in June 1999, and has never been quite the same since. She is fortunate to study cornett with her favorite cornettist, Michael Collver, and has repeatedly attended the Amherst Early Music Festival. She was a continuing studies student at the Longy School of Music where she first began playing with the other members of 7 Hills. Other Ensembles include Second Wind and the Five College Renaissance Wind Band. She has also performed with Seven Times Salt.
Liza Malamut, historical and modern trombones, has performed with Piffaro the Renaissance Band, Early Music New York, the New York Collegium, the Clarion Society, the Concord Ensemble, the Arcadia Players, the Washington Revels, and other groups across America. She played sackbut at the Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, and appeared as a guest artist at the Bloomington Early Music Festival and the Rochester Early Music Festival. Ms. Malamut has also toured with the outreach ensemble Tales & Scales, appearing with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, and other performing arts venues across the United States. She has also performed with the Evansville Philharmonic and other orchestras. Ms. Malamut was the only American finalist for the International Trombone Association Concerto Competition for Alto Trombone, held in Aarhus, Denmark.
Daniel Meyers holds an MM in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music, where he studied recorder with Sonja Lindblad and Renaissance winds with Dan Stillman, and a BA degree in music and English literature from Whitman College, where he studied modern trombone with David Glenn. He spent two seasons as a musician with the Utah Shakespearean Festival, and has been a performer at several early music venues in the UK and Ireland, where he received a Watson Fellowship for ethnomusicology studies. In addition to his activities with 7 Hills, he is a founding member of the English consort Seven Times Salt, and has performed with the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble, Schola Cantorum of Boston, and the Cambridge Revels. He also performs Irish traditional music on uilleann pipes, whistle, and flute; his piping was recently featured on the soundtrack of the award-winning documentary film “Rooters: The Birth of Red Sox Nation.”
Catherine Stein, once a modern oboist, was introduced to historical performance in the collegium directed by Pat Petersen at the University of North Carolina Greensboro. She earned a Masters in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music, where she studied Baroque oboe with Stephen Hammer, and Renaissance reeds with Dan Stillman. On early reeds and as a mezzo-soprano, she has performed with a number of choirs and historical performance groups, including the choir of the Church of the Advent, Early Music New York, Newport Baroque, New Trinity Baroque, Vox Consort, and the Boston Shawm and Sackbut Ensemble.
Matthew Stein began his double reed escapade on the modern bassoon, studying under Michael Burns at UNC-Greensboro. He joined the Collegium Musicum and studied recorder, shawm, and crumhorn with Pat Petersen. Matthew was an original member of LA Tool and Die, an indie rock band from Charlotte, North Carolina. He can be heard playing amplified bassoon on their album, Fashion for the Evildoer. In Boston, Matthew has been a member of 7 Hills since early 2007, and has appeared with Seven Times Salt.
Daniel Stillman is a founding member and director of the Boston Shawm & Sackbut Ensemble. As a player of Renaissance wind instruments (both double reeds and brass), he has performed with the Gabrieli Consort and Taverner Players (London), Oltremontano (Antwerp), Apollo’s Fire (Cleveland), Folger Consort (Washington, DC), La Nef and Les Sonneurs (Montréal), Trinity Consort (Portland, OR), and the avant-garde ensemble Roger Miller’s Exquisite Corpse, and has toured extensively with both the Boston Camerata and Waverly Consort. As a player of historical trombone with period-instrument orchestras, he is an ongoing member of Boston Baroque, and has performed with such as groups as the Handel & Haydn Society, Washington [DC] Bach Consort, Arcadia Players and the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra. Dan is a highly sought-after instructor of Renaissance wind instruments, having taught at Wellesley College, the Longy School of Music, Tufts University, and the Five College Early Music Program (Amherst, MA), as well as at summer workshops for Amherst Early Music and the San Francisco Early Music Society, and can be heard on some two dozen recordings for the Telarc, Erato, Harmonia Mundi, Deutsche Grammophon Archiv, EMI, Dorian, Eclectra, and SST labels.
