Medieval Piffaro Trio

On Sunday July 20, 2025 at Pacem in Terris alongside the Wawayanda creek in Warwick, “The Wind Player’s Delight: Music through the Ages“ featuring Priscilla Herreid, Grant Herreid, and Sian Ricketts was performed.

The program included music spanning the 13th-17th centuries, including a piece composed by Henry VIII, the king known more for his enmity toward his wives than as a composer. Virtuosic medieval dances, exquisite polyphony, and music written at the dawn of the baroque era was on the menu, and Piffaro’s pied-pipers of early music worked their way through a music evolution, while showing off some of their massive collection of wind (and string) instruments.

Artistic director Priscilla Herreid is a musician in the ancient and living tradition of woodwind doubling. The daughter of musicians rooted in Philadelphia’s music scene, she was exposed to the city’s vast musical landscape. Her time studying with Louis Rosenblatt at Temple University deepened her love of the oboe and orchestral repertoire, and playing renaissance wind instruments in Temple’s collegium felt like home.

Grant Herreid performs frequently on early reeds, brass, strings and voice with Piffaro, Hesperus, and many other early music groups around the country. On the faculty at Yale University, he directs their Collegium Musicum and is artistic and music director of the Yale Baroque Opera Project (YBOP). A noted teacher and educator, he was the recipient of Early Music America’s Laurette Goldberg award for excellence in early music outreach and education. He devotes much of his time to exploring the esoteric unwritten traditions of early music with the ensembles Ex Umbris and Ensemble Visce.

Sian Ricketts enjoys a multi-faceted career as a period woodwinds specialist, singer, and medieval pedagogue. She is a core member of Piffaro and Alkemie, and she also performs and records medieval, Renaissance and baroque chamber music and orchestral repertoire with ensembles. As a co-managing director and performer with Alkemie, she has appeared on series including the Berkeley Early Music Festival, Arizona Early Music, the Five Boroughs Music Festival, Music Before 1800, and the San Francisco Early Music Series. With Alkemie she co-produced and performed on the soundtrack for the BAFTA award-winning videogame Pentiment by Obsidian Entertainment (pub. Xbox).

Pacem in Terris is a trans-religious space created along the Wawayanda River in Warwick by Frederick and Claske Franck. To learn more about the unique artistry and philosophy of Frederick Franck, log onto FrederickFranck.org.