Lute Fest East 2023: Faculty Biographies

Grant Herreid

Grant has performed on lute, theorbo, cittern, early guitar, early reeds, brass, and voice with many early music ensembles. A noted teacher and educator, he is a past recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education.

He is on the faculty at Yale University, where he leads the Yale Collegium Musicum and the Yale Baroque Opera Project. Grant also directs the New York Continuo Collective, and devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of Renaissance music with the ensembles Ex Umbris and Ensemble Viscera

Christopher Morrongiello

Lutenist Christopher Morrongiello is a former British Marshall Scholar and a graduate of Mannes College of Music, the Royal College of Music and the University of Oxford, where he earned a doctorate in historical musicology. He was a prizewinner in the BBC’s Radio 2’s Young Musician of the Year competition and a recipient of a Marco Fodella Foundation scholarship for studies and research in Milan, Italy. In the 2006 LSA Lute Fest he was chosen to give the first of the Patrick O’Brien lectures.

Dr. Morrongiello is a professor of music history at Hofstra University where he directs the Hofstra Collegium Musicum. He is a frequent guest artist with leading early music groups and is often invited to teach, lecture, and perform at international music festivals and workshops. He is Artistic Director of the Long Island Early Music Festival, now entering its 4th season. Morrongiello has recorded for EMI, Avie Records, Gamut Music and the BBC. Recently the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City) produced several video recordings of him playing on a variety of historical and new lutes from their renowned instrument collection.

Jason Priset

Based out of New York City, Dr. Jason Priset is a regular soloist and performer in the United States and internationally. Dr. Priset has appeared through the Chamber Music Society of Detroit, Early Music New York, Florida Grand Opera, and the Riverside Symphony including performances in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine & Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center in Manhattan and the L’Auditori & Museu de la Musica de Barcelona in Barcelona, Spain. As an international artist Dr. Priset has appeared in concerts in Spain, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Dr. Priset holds a Doctor of Musical Arts (D.M.A.) from Stony Brook University and a post Doctorate degree from Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona, Spain and specializes in historical guitars and lute. He has studied extensively with the modern composer James Piorkowski (State University of New York at Fredonia), Jerry Willard (Stony Brook University), Xavier Diaz-Latorre (ESMUC) and Pat O’Brien. He is Director of the Lute Society of America summer festivals, on the faculty for the Amherst Early Music (AEM), and at Montclair State University in New Jersey.

Artist’s Website: jasonpriset.com