Muses of Baroque
An Afternoon of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Musical Gems
with Dr. Joyce Chen, Alice Culin-Ellison & Annabeth Shirley
November 22, 2025
Abbey church | 2:30 pm
Works by Buxtehude, Leonarda, Bach, and more! Alice Culin-Ellison will be playing on the baroque violin along with Annabeth Shirley on baroque cello, and Joyce Chen on the harpsichord.
Admission is free thanks to the Mount Angel Institute. All are welcome.
About the Artists
Alice Culin-Ellison, violin, is a versatile performer specializing in historical performance, with a particular interest in performing music late 16th and early 17th centuries. She is a founding member of Incantare, an ensemble of violins and sackbuts dedicated to exploring the musical and cultural connections of underrepresented musicians and traditions.
Alice performs across the country with ensembles including The Newberry Consort and Apollo’s Fire, and served as Artistic Director of Bourbon Baroque from 2017 to 2022. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she is deeply committed to education and scholarship; some of her research focuses on 19th-century American chamber music, with particular attention to music in Kentucky, and she has lectured and given masterclasses on historical performance practice throughout the U.S.
She earned her Doctorate in Historical Performance from Case Western Reserve University and also holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Indiana University.
Now recently relocated to the Portland, Oregon area, Alice is thrilled to immerse herself in the region’s vibrant early music community and collaborate with new colleagues and audiences. When she’s not performing, she’s an avid adventurer and outdoorswoman, eager to explore the Pacific Northwest’s mountains and forests. www.aliceculinellison.com.
Cellist Annabeth Shirley performs regularly with ensembles throughout the Pacific Northwest, including Seattle Baroque Orchestra, Vancouver Early Music, the Oregon Bach Festival, Baroque Music Montana, and Portland Baroque Orchestra, where she is honored to hold the Ruth K. Pointdexter Chair. Annabeth holds a bachelors and masters degree in Baroque Cello from the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and bachelors degrees in Cello Performance and Biology from the University of Michigan. She plays a cello of anonymous origin from approximately 1830, and she currently resides in Salem, Oregon.
A native of Taiwan, Dr. Joyce Wei-Jo Chen 陳瑋若 is Assistant Professor of Historical Keyboards at the University of Oregon. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Music (Historical Musicology) and the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in Humanities at Princeton University. Under the guidance of Wendy Heller, Dr. Chen is currently working on her dissertation, “Musica Experientia/Experimentum: Embodied Acoustics and Keyboard Knowledge in Europe, China, and America, 1600–present,” which explores the intersection between science, music, and aesthetics involving instrument-making, sensory experience, and the development of acoustical theory. For this project, Dr. Chen spent four months working as an apprentice at Zuckermann Harpsichords International—the last harpsichord manufacturing factory in the United States—in Stonington, Connecticut. In addition, she just finished building her first harpsichord from a Troubadour Virginal Kit.
As a solo harpsichordist, Dr. Chen has performed throughout the United States, Europe, and Taiwan. Dr. Chen received the 2018 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Delaware Division of the Arts and was a featured soloist in the 2019 Emerging Artist Showcase by Early Music America. She has performed as a soloist in the Musica Antica Festival in Belgium (2018), the International Normandy Baroque Competition in France (2018), and the Prix Annelie de Man in Amsterdam (2023). Dr. Chen holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Harpsichord Performance from Stony Brook University and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from UC Berkeley.
Outside academia, Dr. Chen is a dedicated church musician with over 15 years of experience. As an organist specializing in the baroque repertoire, Dr. Chen recently received the Colleague certification from the American Guild of Organists. Since August 2024, she has been serving as Music Director at St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Mt. Angel.