Flora Newberry received her training at the Juilliard School of Music and also in the Jazz Studies program at William Paterson College. She has pursued further studies at the Amherst Early Music Festival and the Oberlin Baroque Performance Institute. She currently resides in Roebling, N.J., teaching and performing in the Greater Trenton area, offering demonstrations and performances on historical instruments, performances on modern trumpet, educational demonstration-concerts and therapeutic music groups. She performs frequently in the area and throughout the east coast with groups such as the Delaware Valley Philharmonic, Trenton Symphony, Boheme Opera, Fuma Sacra, Actor's Net Theater, Burlington Brass, and the Washington Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble, and is a composer/songwriter as well. She joined the faculty of Westminster Conservatory in 2003.
Mezzo-Soprano K. Rebecca Oehlers has been an active artist in the Philadelphia region receiving praise from both conductors and audiences alike. Mrs. Oehlers received her music education from the Mannes College of Music, and Temple University, where she studied both voice and french horn. She has been a featured soloist several times with the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, the St. Clement’s Choir of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Classical Symphony, where she was a guest artist performing 17th Century Spanish Opera with Early Music Soprano Ellen Hargis and the Harp Consort, under the direction of Andrew Lawrence King. Her discography includes A White Christmas at Longwood Gardens on the DTT Label, Hymns of Heaven and Earth, Music of Tomás Luis de Victoria, and Masses and Motets of Rheinberger and Brahms, all done on the Dorian Records Label. Rebecca has also been heard on numerous radio broadcasts singing Schumann’s Frauenliebe und Leben and Brahms’ Liebeslieder Walzer. She has most recently performed the music of Bach and Lieder of Schubert and Schumann in Aachen and Jülich, Germany. She is currently on the voice faculty at Drexel University, and is thrilled to be a new member of Quidditas.
Soprano Jacqueline Smith performs a wide-ranging repertoire on the concert stage. Recent appearances include performances with the Ambler, Lansdowne, and Old York Road Symphonies, the Bryn Athyn Orchestra, the Bux-Mont Chamber Orchestra, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra, and many others. She is a member of the PhilAria Vocal Quartet and of the Skylark Ensemble, and frequently performs in recitals of new music and with local chamber groups. She holds the Master of Music degree in vocal performance from Temple University where she studied with Professor Emeritus Florence Berggren. She was also a student of the late Martin Rich, longtime Associate Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. She has been a fellow at the Bach Aria Festival in Stony Brook, Long Island, and has attended the Bach Sommerakademie with Helmuth Rilling in Stuttgart, Germany. She has served on the music faculties of La Salle University, Eastern University, and Philadelphia Biblical University, and is the Director of Music at Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in Abington, Pennsylvania.
Priscilla Smith has performed with The Waverly Consort, Early Music New York, Istanpitta, Ex Umbris, and the Alpha Omega Ensemble. As a member of Piffaro, she has made appearances at festivals throughout the United States and Europe, and has collaborated with such groups as the Concord Ensemble, Capilla Flamenca, Psallentes, The Crossing, and ARTEK. A graduate of Temple University, Priscilla is on the faculty of the Madison Early Music Festival. This November, Priscilla will take up the position of solo soprano at the Church of St. Agnes in New York City, whose music program features a vocal quartet that sings a different polyphonic mass every Sunday. This season features two Piffaro cd releases, collaborations with Parthenia, Vox Vocal Ensemble, and The Newberry Consort, festival appearances in Hawaii, Seattle, Houston, and Pittsburgh, performances with the Yale Voxtet and a new ensemble premiering at New York's Midtown Concerts series, and the premiere and recording of pieces by Matthew Greenbaum and Mena Hanna, featuring her as soprano with the Cygnus Ensemble and Momenta Quartet.
Kile Smith, percussionist and singer for Quidditas, is an award-winning, internationally performed composer. The Philadelphia Inquirer has called his music "boldly lighted and brilliant," "emotion-laden," and "particularly American." He is the Composer-in-Residence for Musica 2000, the professional orchestra based in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and was the 1999-2000 Composer-in-Residence for the Jupiter Symphony in New York. He has received commissions from the Jupiter Symphony, the Lehigh Valley Chamber Orchestra, Network for New Music, and Latin Fiesta of Philadelphia, among others. His works have been performed by the Delaware Symphony, the Chamber Symphony of Philadelphia, the Susquehanna Symphony, the Missoula Symphony Orchestra, the Grand Rapids Symphony Orchestra, the Sofia Youth Philharmonic in Sofia, Bulgaria, and many other orchestras and chamber groups. Kile is Curator of the Edwin A. Fleisher Collection of Orchestral Music in the Free Library of Philadelphia which is the largest circulating collection of orchestra music in the world, and host of WRTI's Discoveries from the Fleisher Collection.
