12/26/2025
Introducing Bitterroot Baroque's guest musician for The New-Yeeres Gift, Anna O'Connell, voice and harp!
ANNA O’CONNELL is a soprano and harpist specializing in self-accompaniment with folk, medieval, renaissance, and baroque harps. A visit to Ireland at a young age cemented her love of Celtic music and led to her lifelong fascination with the harp. Her musical interests range from Hildegard to Haydn with nearly everything in between, especially the music of Germanic monodists up through Oswald von Wolkenstein, and seventeenth-century Italian women composers—especially Francesca Caccini. These interests have led her to earning two Early Music America awards; the Thornton Scholarship for Medieval Music, and Emerging Artist, alongside her partner, Addi Liu, as their duo Time Stands Still.
Anna moved to Cleveland in 2018 to pursue a doctorate in Historical Performance Practice at Case Western Reserve University, which she earned in 2023. Her projects include “Frauenlob’s Flourishing and Fruit”, focused on medieval Marian monody, and 17th-century Italian extravaganza “Triple Threat: Women Singing, Dancing, and Self-Accompanying” in which Anna did all these things and more. She is a core member of the GRAMMY award winning Apollo’s Fire Baroque Orchestra and frequently performs as a vocalist and harpist with the group, traveling as far as San Francisco, and Heidelberg, Germany. With Apollo’s Fire, she has programmed “Baroque Bistros” and taught hundreds of students throughout Cleveland and Chicago through countless school shows. Recently, she was named director of the Apollo‘s Musettes, the treble youth chorus for Apollo‘s Fire. O‘Connell is also an assistant director for the Cleveland Chamber Choir, where she has developed a program celebrating the sounds of Mantua through the works of Salamone Rossi. As a soloist, O’Connell has appeared with Baroque Music Montana, Repast Baroque, the Hong Kong Early Music Society, the Cleveland Celtic Ensemble, the Back Bay Chorale, Bourbon Baroque, Choral Arts Cleveland, the Cleveland Composers Guild, and a wide variety of churches in Cleveland’s University Circle, namely the Church of the Covenant and Holy Rosary.
O’Connell has been committed to making music accessible for learners of all levels since her undergraduate music education degree at Providence College, and Choral Music degree from the University of Southern California. As such, O’Connell has been in demand as a guest clinician and speaker on topics of historical vocal performance and medieval, renaissance and baroque harps, with recent appearances at Boston Conservatory and Oberlin Conservatory. She currently teaches voice at the College of Wooster, and maintains an active studio of harp and voice students. Other recent projects include the formation of the North East Ohio Harp Circle, and Sestina Cleveland, a vocal ensemble focusing on early baroque madrigals and sacred music.
I first heard this song performed by Mary O'Hara on one of her albums and fell instantly in love. It's been a piece I have liked to play in my St. Patty's da...
