Forgotten Clefs (Renaissance Wind Ensemble) was founded in Bloomington, Indiana in 2014
and specializes in the European wind band repertoire of the Renaissance and early Baroque. The group plays on copies of instruments from 1400-1700 including shawms, dulcians, crumhorns, recorders, and sackbut. The ensemble regularly performs at the Bloomington Early Music Festival and in venues in Brown and Monroe Counties, Indiana. Forgotten Clefs has performed for Musikanten Montana, North Carolina HIP Festival, Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (Richmond, VA), and Calvary Schola (Pittsburgh, PA). Programs this season include “The Cantors of Leipzig,” “Surviving Inquisition,” and “Canterbury Tales.” Forgotten Clefs’s annual educational outreach program, “Shawms and Stories,” brings musical storytelling to schools, libraries, and community centers in South-Central Indiana with support from the Indiana Arts Commission, Smithville Charitable Foundation, and Early Music America.
Accompanying Musicians:
Joan Kimball is the former artistic co-director and a founding member of Piffaro, The Renaissance Band. She has concertized with the ensemble throughout the U.S., Europe, and South America and has performed with many of the leading early music artists and ensembles in this country. With Piffaro she has recorded for Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon ArchivProduktion, Dorian Recordings and PARMA/Navona, and in addition can be heard on the Vanguard, Eudora and Vox Amadeus labels.
Widely known in the early music community as a teacher of recorder, early double reeds and bagpipes, she has been on faculty at early music festivals and workshops across the country.
Bob Wiemken, a French hornist for many years before turning to early music and period instrument performance, is now a multi-instrumentalist, focusing on recorders and the double-reed instruments of the Medieval through Baroque periods. He is emeritus Artistic
Co-director of Piffaro, The Renaissance Band, with which ensemble he toured through the United States, Canada, Europe and South America, performing at many of the major early music festivals both in the US and abroad. He has performed with numerous
ensembles, including Early Music New York, the Grande Band, the Boston Early Music Festival Orchestra, the Folger Consort, King’s Noyse, Parthenia, the Newberry Consort
and Brandywine Baroque, among others. He has recorded on the Newport Classics, Deutsche Grammophon/Archiv Produktion, Dorian, Eufoda, Passacaile and Wyndham Hill labels. He is also a reed maker of some note. He has experimented extensively with
reed styles for Renaissance and Baroque instruments and provides historical reeds for professionals and amateurs alike throughout the United States.
