TREFOIL is a trio of singer-instrumentalists long active in early music, with experience in such ensembles as Concert Royal, Les Arts Florissants, New York's Ensemble for Early Music, Pomerium, Clarion Music society, Piffaro, My Lord Chamberlain's Consort, and other groups. The trio debuted in New York and Philadelphia early in 2000 with a program of 14th-century French ars subtilior song. The Philadelphia Inquirer tagged the performers as "a hearty trio of medieval music specialists" and their work as "an intricate, enigmatic vocal art." TREFOIL has appeared in concerts and master classes at The Cloisters, Temple University, Vassar College, Middlebury College, Franklin and Marshall College, the Vermont Millennium Arts Festival, the Museum Series of Providence, Boston College, the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH, the Neighborhood Music School in New Haven, the 2008 Connecticut Early Music Festival, the Howland Chamber Music Circle, the 2002 Amherst Early Music Festival, the New York Early Music Celebration, the Washington D.C. Early Music Festival, the 37th International Congress on Medieval Studies at the University of Western Michigan at Kalamazoo, The 2009 Boston Early Music Fringe Festival, and Bargemusic. The trio has also made joint appearances with Piffaro, the Renaissance Band in Philadelphia, the Folger Concert in Washington, D.C. and The Newberry Consort in Chicago, Illinois.

Regarded for over two decades as one of the world’s finest countertenors, Drew Minter grew up as a boy treble in the Washington Cathedral Choir of Men and Boys. He continued his education at Indiana University and the Musik Hochschule of Vienna. Minter has appeared in leading roles with the opera companies of Brussels, Toulouse, Boston, Washington, Santa Fe, Wolf Trap, Glimmerglass, and Nice, among others. A recognized specialist in the works of Handel, he performed frequently at the Handel festivals of Göttingen, Halle, Karlsruhe, Maryland. He has sung with many of the world's leading baroque orchestras, including Les Arts Florissants, the Handel and Haydn Society, Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Freiburger Barockorchester, and as a guest at festivals such as Tanglewood, Ravinia, Regensburg, BAM's Next Wave, Edinburgh, Spoleto, and Boston Early Music; other orchestra credits include the Philadelphia Orchestra, the San Francisco Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Mr. Minter is a founding member of the Newberry Consort and sings and plays early harps regularly with TREFOIL, My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, ARTEK, and the Folger Consort. Mr. Minter has made over 50 recordings on Harmonia Mundi, Decca/London, Newport Classics, Hungaroton and others. He appears in two films: as Tolomeo in Peter Sellars’s “Giulio Cesare,” and as the Devil in “In the Symphony of the World; a Portrait of Hildegard of Bingen.” He writes regularly for Opera News

Drew Minter is also a lauded stage director. He began as director of the operas at the Göttingen Händel Festival for five years, directing period baroque productions. Since then he has directed productions in many styles for the Opéra de Marseilles, Caramoor, the Boston Early Music Festival, Lake George Opera, the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Handel and Haydn, Boston’s Opera Aperta, the Manhattan School of Music, Mannes School of Music, Boston University’s Opera Institute, Amherst Early Music, the Folger Shakespeare Theatre, the Five Colleges in Northampton, Tempesta di Mare and Cleveland’s Apollo’s Fire. Since assuming artistic directorship of Boston Midsummer Opera in 2006, he has directed his own pastiches of scenes, The Marriages of Mozart and Tales of Offenbach as well as Peter Brook’s Tragedy of Carmen and Mozart’s Così fan tutte.

In addition to numerous workshops in the vocal and dramatic performance of baroque music, Mr. Minter teaches voice at Vassar College, where he also directs the Vassar Opera Workshop and conducts the Vassar Madrigal Singers. He has taught since 1989 at the Amherst Early Music Institute. He sings between thirty and fifty concerts each season with a variety of early music groups.

*For more information on Drew Minter, or to listen to a recording, contact his website: www.DrewMinter.com


Mark Rimple has garnered critical praise for his lute playing and singing from national newspapers (Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, The New York Times) and early music journals (Early Music UK, Early Music America Magazine, The Lute Society of America Quarterly). Most recently, a New York Times reviewer praised his "deft" lute playing, and a recent Philadelphia Inquirer critic wrote that his lute playing had "the specificity of a great vocal performance." He has appeared as countertenor and lutenist with The Newberry Consort, The Folger Consort, Ex Umbris, Piffaro, the Renaissance Band, The New York Collegium, and New York's Ensemble for Early Music, among others. He has accompanied some of America's top early music singers, including Drew Minter, Julianne Baird, and Ellen Hargis. He can be heard on recordings of fourteenth century music by Trefoil (MSR) and The Newberry Consort (Puzzles and Perfect Beauty, Noyse Productions). He also appears on the Norton Anthology of Western Music CDs as both countertenor and lutenist for Dufay's Reveillies Vous. He is a specialist in the notation of medieval through baroque music and is often invited to teach at workshops around the country. He has an interest in the history of music theory and has written and presented a number of papers and a recent book chapter: "Hidden Symphonies: Boethian Harmony in the Middle Ages and Twentieth Century" forthcoming in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, Noel Howard Kaylor and Phillip Edward Phillips, eds. (Leiden: Brill, 2010). Along with Alexander Rozin, he is currently working on a textbook for the undergraduate study of music theory that integrates all styles of music, including early music, into a perception-centered approach.

Mark is an accomplished composer and champion of new music for lute and countertenor. His works have been performed by the ISCM Chamber Players and Parnassus in New York, and have been presented by Network for New Music, Piffaro the Reniassance Band, and In Clara Voce in Philadelphia. As a lutenist, he can be heard on Matthew Greenbaum: Psalter and Other Works (Centaur), and as a countertenor, he appears on a recording of the music of composer Jonathan Dawe, A Noise Did Rise (Furious Artisans) in which he sings a work based on the music of Thomas Morley. He has also performed new music for guitar, mandolin, lute, and countertenor with Network for New Music, the Cygnus Ensemble, and in recital. He has premiered compositions by Matthew Greenbaum, Kristen Hevner, Alba Potes, Kristen Hevner, Larry Nelson, and Raoul Pleskow, among others.

Mark holds a DMA in Composition from Temple University, and is an Associate Professor of Music Theory and Composition at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, where he also directs the Collegium Musicum.

Marcia Young was cited by the Washington Post for her “elegant, dark-hued soprano voice” and “winning mixture of formal restraint and emotional intensity.” She is a member of My Lord Chamberlain’s Consort, Duo Marchand (with lutenist Andy Rutherford), and the medieval trio Trefoil, which has toured widely since its founding in 2000. In recent seasons Young has appeared with the viol consort Parthenia, the renaissance band Piffaro, and the Folger and Newberry Consorts; at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Cloisters, the Center for Jewish History, the Yale Center for British Art, the CityMusic Series in Columbus, the Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, Amherst and Boston Early Music Festivals, the Ars Antiqua series in Chappaqua, New York, the HotShops gallery space in Omaha, and the Lute Society of America Conference and Seminar in Cleveland. Young has toured and recorded with Pomerium and Early Music New York, and has taught vocal and instrumental classes at the San Francisco Early Music Society’s summer workshop. Coming concerts include a series of duo recitals on Long Island with lutenist Christopher Morrongiello. During the academic year, Young serves as Director of Performance Studies at Stern College, Yeshiva University. Also a music journalist, she writes regularly for Opera News, Playbill, and Chamber Music America, and has been a classical radio host for WNYC-FM New York and Sirius-XM Radio.