Victoria Baroque

Andrew Clark has been blowing down pieces of metal tube ever since he first emptied his grandmother’s kitchen cupboard and found a funnel before the age of two.  A graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, studying with horn professors Halstead, Chidell and Bryant, he performed with many orchestras and ensembles using both period instruments  and  their modern counterparts.  Highlights of his career include many years of playing principal horn in London Classical Players (Norrington); Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment; Academy of Ancient Music (Hogwood); English Concert (Pinnock); and Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Koopman) with whom he recorded Bach’s Cantatas.

As a soloist he has made several commercial recordings: concertos by Vivaldi, Fasch and Crusell; works for horn and piano by Beethoven and Czerny; the Brahms Horn Trio, Mozart’s Horn Quintet, Beethoven’s Sextet and the Sonata da Caccia by Thomas Ades. He was also a horn teacher at London’s Royal Academy of Music for seventeen years and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama for ten years. He has performed in forty countries, but is now attempting to tour less often to reduce his carbon foot-print.

In 2010 Andrew moved from England with his wife, bassoonist Katrina Russell, to Vancouver Island. He has set up a horn making workshop there, building customized instruments for himself and for colleagues around the world. Since 2011 he has played principal horn with the Vancouver Island Symphony Orchestra.

Canadian violinist Chloe Kim has performed at prominent concert venues around the world, sharing the stage in both principal and soloist capacities with international figures such as Rachel Podger, Pablo Heras-Casado, Richard Egarr, and Nicholas McGegan.  The recipient of numerous awards including the 2020 Mercury-Juilliard Fellowship, Juilliard Historical Performance Fellowship, and the 2016 Early Music America Scholarship, Chloe was most recently nominated for the prestigious Sylva Gelber Music Foundation Award.

Chloe’s most memorable engagements include an all-women Vivaldi tour led by inspirational violinist, Monica Huggett, as well as two recent trips to France for collaborations with William Christie and Les Arts Florissants.  Last summer, Chloe served as concertmaster of Juilliard415 for several sold-out productions of Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, led by Avi Stein in London and the Versailles Royal Opera.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, season highlights would have included touring as concertmaster with Juilliard415 and Nic McGegan for performances of Handel’s Rinaldo in New York, Germany, and the Netherlands as well as a UK tour with Richard Egarr and Philharmonia.  Instead, Chloe is excited to present Music for the Pause, an online chamber music series cosponsored by multiple organizations and produced in beautiful Victoria, BC.  She is deeply grateful for the beloved West Coast colleagues that she considers family, and is especially indebted to her mentors, Elizabeth Blumenstock, Robert Mealy, and Heilwig von Königslöw.

Violinist Chloe Meyers performs with early music ensembles across North America as a leader, orchestra member, and chamber musician.

She is the concertmaster of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra in Vancouver and co-concertmaster of Arion Baroque Orchestra in Montréal and has led or appeared as soloist with groups including Victoria Baroque, Pacific MusicWorks, Ensemble Les Boréades, the Theatre of Early Music, Ensemble Masques, and Les Voix Baroques, of which she was a founding member.

Chloe has had the pleasure of sharing the stage with international violin stars, performing double concerti with Stefano Montanari, Enrico Onofri, Amandine Beyer, and Cecilia Bernardini. Chloe’s playing may be heard on many award-winning disks, including three Juno-nominated recordings she led as concertmaster.

A committed and enthusiastic teacher, she trains young artists in the Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Program, an exciting initiative of the University of British Columbia, Early Music Vancouver, and Pacific Baroque Orchestra.

Organist and harpsichordist Christina Hutten has presented recitals in Canada, the United States, and Europe, including performances in concert series hosted by the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam, the Hooglandsekerk in Leiden, Early Music Vancouver, the Universities of British Columbia and Calgary, and others.

She performs regularly with Pacific Baroque Orchestra and has appeared as concerto soloist with the Okanagan Symphony, the Vancouver Academy of Music Symphony Orchestra, and the Arizona State University Chamber Orchestra. 

Christina is also an enthusiastic teacher. She coaches and coordinates the early music ensembles at the University of British Columbia and has given masterclasses and workshops at institutions including Brandon University, the University of Manitoba, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada’s National Music Centre in Calgary, and the Tafelmusik Baroque Summer Institute.

Funded by a generous grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, she pursued historical keyboard studies in Europe with Francesco Cera, François Espinasse, and Bernard Winsemius. She participated in the Britten-Pears Programme, led by Andreas Scholl and Tamar Halperin, for which she was awarded the Loewen Prize.

Christina obtained a Master’s Degree in Organ Performance from Arizona State University under the direction of Kimberly Marshall and an Advanced Certificate in Harpsichord Performance from the University of Toronto, where she studied with Charlotte Nediger. She is now a doctoral candidate in musicology at UBC.

David Stratkauskas is a native of Vancouver and completed his MA in Music Theory at UBC working under noted theorist Dr William Benjamin.

Afterwards, he was active as an organist and choir director, pianist, accompanist, and conductor, in Vancouver and London, UK. He returned to Canada in 2010 to help build a vibrant music programme at St John the Divine, Victoria, with several choirs and a thriving Choral and Organ Scholarship programme. 

He has directed the St John’s Chamber Singers and the Victoria Baroque Players in numerous performances of great Baroque works, and is the director of Vox Humana Chamber Choir, which specialises in newer compositions and is well-known for its annual ‘Vox in the Stars’ concerts at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory.

David has also worked with the Victoria Children’s Choir since 2011, including as Artistic Director and conductor of the Concert Choir and Youth Choir divisions from 2021 until 2026.

Born and raised in Edmonton, Katrina Russell obtained her Bachelor of Music Degree in Performance from The University of Victoria. Further studies took her to Toronto, Banff, and then to Boston Massachusetts where she attended the New England Conservatory of Music. There she was able to pursue her interest in the Baroque bassoon, and was granted a Graduate Diploma Historical Performance with distinction in performance.

Armed only with a handful of bassoons and a desire to play them, Katrina moved to London, England where she was lucky enough to spend eighteen years playing them (as well as several others that presented themselves along the way). Specializing in historical performance, she played and recorded with many of the period instrument ensembles in Britain and Europe, including The English Concert, The King’s Consort, The Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, The Academy of Ancient Music, The Hanover Band, The Gabrieli Consort and Players, L’Orchestre de la Champs Elysees, The Orchestra of “The Sixteen”, and The Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra.

After several years of return visits to Canada to play with Early Music Vancouver ensembles and The Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Katrina and her husband (British horn player Andrew Clark) relocated to the West Coast in late 2010, and established themselves near Ladysmith where they have a speciality brass making workshop producing horns and trumpets.

Originally from Victoria, B.C., Mieka enjoys an active career as an orchestral and chamber musician performing on both modern and baroque viola and violin. She is a member of the Emily Carr String Quartet, the Aventa Ensemble and the Victoria Symphony.

In 2004, Mieka participated in Tafelmusik’s Baroque Summer Institute where her love of period performance practice began.

Since then, Mieka has regularly performed as principal viola with the Pacific Baroque Orchestra, Island Baroque and Victoria Baroque.

In the fall of 2014, Music in Victoria described her solo debut performing the Telemann viola concerto with the Victoria Baroque Players as “tossed off…with aplomb” and “received enthusiastically by the audience”.

She has also been presented by Early Music Vancouver and Early Music Society of the Islands.

Finnish-born Soile Stratkauskas moved to Victoria, BC, in 2010 and has since established herself as the leading baroque flutist on the Canadian West Coast.

She regularly performs at the Victoria Baroque, Pacific Baroque Orchestra, and Pacific Baroque Festival concerts as soloist, chamber, and orchestral musician.

Soile completed her undergraduate studies at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, and gained her Master’s degree at the Royal Academy of Music in London, UK, where she studied early flutes with Lisa Bezonsiuk.

Soile has performed with many prominent period instrument orchestras in the UK, including the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and the Gabrieli Consort and Players, and has toured in Europe with these groups.

With her chamber ensemble ‘Four Temperaments’ she has performed at the London Handel Festival, Saintes Festival in France and Musica Antiqua in Barcelona.

Soile is the Founder and former Artistic Director of the Victoria Baroque, and is passionate about creating opportunities for music making in the community. She teaches baroque flute at the University of British Columbia as part of Early Music Vancouver’s Baroque Orchestra Mentorship Programme.