Northwestern Bach Academy

Andrew Megill is professor of conducting and director of choral organizations at the Northwestern University Bienen School of Music, where he holds the Carol F. and Arthur L. Rice, Jr. University Professorship in Performance. In addition, he leads Music of the Baroque, the Montreal Symphony Orchestra Chorus, the Carmel Bach Festival Chorale, and Fuma Sacra.

Megill is recognized as one the leading choral conductors of his generation, admired for both his passionate artistry and his unusually wide-ranging repertoire, which extends from early music to newly composed works. He has prepared choirs for the American Composers’ Orchestra, American Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, Dresden Philharmonie, National Symphony, New Jersey Symphony, New York Philharmonic, and Venice Baroque Orchestra for conductors including Pierre Boulez, Charles Dutoit, Joseph Flummerfelt, Rafael Frühbeck du Burgos, Alan Gilbert, Neeme Järvi, Zdenek Macal, Kurt Masur, Zubin Mehta, Kent Nagano, John Nelson, Rafael Payare, and Julius Rudel. Recordings of choirs conducted or prepared by him may be heard on the Decca, EMI, Canteloupe, Naxos, Albany, and CBC labels.

Megill is particularly admired for his performances of Baroque choral works. He regularly collaborates with leaders in the field of historically-informed performance, and has conducted many period-instrument orchestras, including Piffaro, Rebel, Sinfonia NYC, Brandywine Baroque, the Sebastians, Tempesta di Mare, and the Trinity Baroque Orchestra. A frequent champion of music of our own time, he has also conducted regional or world premieres of works by Caleb Burhans, Paul Chihara, Dominic DiOrio, Sven-David Sandström, Caroline Shaw, Lewis Spratlan, Steven Stucky, Jon Magnussen, Arvo Pärt, and Krzysztof Penderecki.

Prior to his appointment at Northwestern, Megill served as professor and director of choral activities at the University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) and taught at Westminster Choir College for more than 20 years. He also previously served as music director of the Masterwork Chorus and Orchestra and Chorusmaster for the Spoleto Festival USA. He has been a guest artist with the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, TENET vocal ensemble, the Juilliard Opera Center, and Emmanuel Music, and served as interim choirmaster for Trinity Church in Manhattan.

With a repertoire ranging from early 17th century violin solos to the string quartets of Beethoven and Schubert, Ms.Wilson is known as one of the leading baroque violinists in the U.S.  A founding member of many of American's pioneering period instrument ensembles, including Concert Royal, the Bach Ensemble, and the Classical Quartet, she performs regularly with Aston Magna and has worked extensively with the Smithsonian Chamber Players.  She has performed as concertmaster and soloist with leading conductors in early music, including Nicholas McGegan, Christopher Hogwood, and Jaap Schroeder, regularly leads period orchestra performances in theNew York City metropolitan area, and has over 50 recordings to her credit.

Her solo playing has been called "clear and sweet in tone, refined in articulation" by Gramophone, "exceptionally stylish" by The Edinburgh Scotsman and “expert” by the New York Times. As concertmaster of the  Boston Early Music Festival, she had the honor of playing on one of Bach’s own violins from the Thomaskirche in Leipzig. She has also appeared as soloist  in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons  in Philadelphia, Detroit and Chicago.  Ms. Wilson is currently undertaking the first ever recording of the sonatas for violin and continuo of Teodorico Pedrini.

A native of Detroit, Ms. Wilson holds degrees from Oberlin College and The Julliard School; she studied modern violin with Dorothy Delay, David Cerone, and Mischa Mischakoff, and began her studies of historical performance practice with Albert Fuller, Jaap Schroeder, and Stanley Ritchie. She has been invited to give lectures and workshops at throughout the U. S. and Europe, and currently teaches at Mannes College The New School for Music and Princeton University.

Violinist, peformer/educator Leah Gale Nelson specializes in the historical performance practices of the 17th, 18th, and early-19th-centuries. Based in New York City, she has performed throughout North America and in Europe, and is known for her refined and artistic interpretations of baroque and classical music as a soloist, chamber musician, leader and collaborator. She has led performances of landmark literature for some of the finest choirs in New York, has served as concertmaster for the Aspen Festival Opera Theater, Gotham Chamber Opera (NYC), and Chicago Opera Theater, as guest director for Lyra Baroque Orchestra in Minneapolis, and has been concertmaster and guest soloist for the Church of St. Luke in the Fields, New York City, since 1999, where she is Artist in Residence. Recent engagements post-Covid find her playing in the Petrie Sculpture Court at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art for the Ballet des Porcelaines, in Carnegie Hall with Musica Sacra, in Minneapolis for the Basilica of Saint Mary, and for YBOP, Yale's Baroque Opera Project.

An avid pedagogue, Leah is a Visiting Scholar at Rutgers University, where she has coached the Rutgers University String Ensemble, incorporating Historical Performance (HP) concepts within a mainstream ensemble. She also teaches HP with the New York Continuo Collective and the Illinois Bach Academy, and through her private studio where her students have gone on to graduate studies at Basel's Schola Cantorum, Case Western Reserve University, and the Juilliard School's Historical Performance program. She has coached for Yale University's Collegium Musicum and has taught at the Aspen Music Festival.

Born in Texas and raised in Minnesota, Leah holds a Bachelor of Music degree from Chicago Musical College, where she studied orchestral repertoire and performance through the Civic Orchestra of Chicago with the invaluable experience working closely with the musical brilliance, integrity, and infectious enthusiasm of conductor Michael Morgan, and the opportunity to work with Daniel Barneboim, John Corigliano, Leonard Slatkin, Joan Tower, Christopher Hogwood, and Sir Georg Solti. She holds a Master of Music degree from Mannes College of Music in New York, where she studied violin with the incomparable David Nadien, and historical performance through the Mannes Camerata and the once vibrant Mannes Historical Performance Program, with violinist Nancy Wilson, harpsichordist Arthur Haas, and stage director Paul Echols; additional studies in baroque violin with Michael Sand, Marilyn McDonald, Risa Browder, and Sarah Sumner.

Fuma Sacra has been recognized as one of the country's most exciting vocal ensembles specializing in early music, consistently acclaimed by critics and audiences for the passionate and virtuosic performances which have "left the audience gasping in amazement." (Classical NJ). Although the ensemble is committed to historically informed performance, Fuma Sacra's concerts are even more widely known for their innovative programming, passionate performance, and depth of artistry. This reflects Fuma Sacra's belief that every great work of art, from any time, not only reveals the cultural world of the composer, but teaches us what it means to be fully human and fully alive.

Andrew Megill and Fuma Sacra have a special love for the music of JS Bach, and have regularly performed the St John Passion, St Matthew Passion, Magnificat, and B Minor Mass since their founding in 1989. They have also sung over eighty of Bach's cantatas. Fuma Sacra's love of 18th century music has led the ensemble to champion music of earlier Baroque composers, such as Monteverdi, Carissimi, Caldara, Schein, Schütz, Pachelbel, and Buxtehude, as well as Bach's contemporaries, including Handel, Telemann, and Zelenka.

Fuma Sacra’s repertoire extends well beyond the Baroque. The ensemble regularly performs music ranging from Renaissance polyphony to newly-written works by composers such as Andrew Bleckner, Peter Maxwell Davies, Jon Magnussen, Joanne Metcalf, Arvo Pärt, Augusta Read Thomas, and Stephen Stuckey.

The singers who make up Fuma Sacra have been soloists with many of the country's leading orchestras and choirs, includingthe Carmel and Oregon Bach Festivals, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Mostly Mozart Festival, Tempesta di Mare, Apollo's Fire, Voices of Music, Tafelmusik, American Bach Soloists, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Bethlehem Bach Choir, the Spoleto Festival, and Festival dei Dui Mondi, Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, the choir of Trinity (Wall Street), Seraphic Fire, and the Santa Fe Desert Chorale.