The viol, viola da gamba, or informally gamba, is any one of a family of bowed, fretted and stringed instruments with hollow wooden bodies and pegboxes where the tension on the strings can be increased or decreased to adjust the pitch of each of the strings. Frets on the viol are usually made of gut, tied on the fingerboard around the instrument's neck, to enable the performer to stop the strings more cleanly. Frets improve consistency of intonation and lend the stopped notes a tone that better matches the open strings. Viols first appeared in Spain in the mid to late 15th century and were most popular in the Renaissance and Baroque (1600–1750) periods. Early ancestors include the Arabic rebab and the medieval European vielle, but later, more direct possible ancestors include the Venetian viole and the 15th- and 16th-century Spanish vihuela, a 6-course plucked instrument tuned like a lute that looked like but was quite distinct from the 4-course guitar.
Hille Perl is a German virtuoso performer of the viola da gamba and lirone. She is considered to be one of the world's finest viola da gamba players, specializing in solo and ensemble music of the 17th and 18th centuries. She has a particular interest in French Baroque repertoire for seven-string bass viola da gamba. She also performs Spanish, Italian, German, and modern repertoire for the instrument and has released many CDs.
Vittorio Ghielmi is an Italian musician, conductor, compose Compared by critics to Jasha Heifetz ("Diapason") for his virtuosity, and described as "An Alchemist of sound" for the intensity and versatility of his musical interpretations, Vittorio Ghielmi attracted notice while still very young for his new approach to the viola da gamba and to the sound of early music repertoire. He is Professor for viola da gamba and Head of the Institut für Alte Musik at the Mozarteum Universität Salzburg and Visiting Professor at the Royal College of London. He is graduate at the Università Cattolica di Milano.
John Moran is an American musician and musicologist. He specializes in historically informed performance of music from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries on the cello and viola da gamba. He studied cello and baroque cello at the Oberlin Conservatory, baroque cello at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, and musicology at King's College London. He has performed and recorded with numerous groups in Europe, including Les Musiciens du Louvre, The Consort of Musicke, English Baroque Soloists. Since 1994 he has lived in the Washington, DC area. He is a regular member of REBEL, a New York based baroque ensemble and the music director of Modern Musick, a Washington period-instrument ensemble. He has also appeared with Opera Lafayette, the Washington Bach Consort, the Folger Consort, the Smithsonian Chamber Orchestra and Chamber Players. He teaches viola da gamba and baroque cello at the Peabody Conservatory, where he is also co-director of the Baltimore Baroque Band. He is currently President of the Viola da Gamba Society of America.
Nigel North is an English lutenist, musicologist, and pedagogue.
Jaap ter Linden is a Dutch cellist, viol player and conductor. He specialises in performance of baroque and classical music on authentic instruments.
Laurence Dreyfus, FBA is an American musicologist and player of the viola da gamba who was University Lecturer and Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford.
Charles Medlam is an English conductor and cellist also known for his performances on viola da gamba.
Desmond John Dupré was an English lutenist, guitarist, gambist and a prominent figure in the 20th century revival of early music. He was known particularly for his recordings on lute and viola da gamba, notably with counter-tenor Alfred Deller.
Kenneth Slowik is an American cellist, viol player, and conductor, Curator of Musical Instrument Collection at the National Museum of American History and Artistic Director of the Smithsonian Chamber Music Society. He took an interest in music and organology from an early age. He studied at the University of Chicago, the Chicago Musical College, the Peabody Conservatory, the Salzburg Mozarteum and, as a Fulbright Scholar, the Vienna Hochschule für Musik, guided by Howard Mayer Brown, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Antonio Janigro, Edward Lowinsky, and Frederik Prausnitz.
August Wenzinger (1905–1996) was a prominent cellist, viol player, conductor, teacher, and music scholar from Basel, Switzerland. He was a pioneer of historically informed performance, both as a master of the viola da gamba and as a conductor of Baroque orchestral music and operas.
John Tseng-Hsin Hsu was a viol player, barytonist, cellist, and conductor. He was a leading specialist in French baroque viol music and a professor of music at Cornell University.
Richard John Campbell was an English classical musician, best known as a founder member of the early music ensemble Fretwork and for his newer association with the Feinstein Ensemble, specialising in historically accurate performance of 18th-century music.
Markku Luolajan-Mikkola is a Finnish baroque cellist and viol player. Born in Helsinki, he studied cello with Arto Noras at the Sibelius Academy, where he received his diploma in 1983. Later, an interest in baroque music led him to summer courses with Laurence Dreyfus, and afterwards he went on to Royal Conservatory of The Hague where he studied viola da gamba with Wieland Kuijken and baroque cello with Jaap ter Linden, receiving postgraduate diplomas in viola da gamba and baroque cello in 1992.
Amy Domingues is an American viola da gamba player and cellist.
Christophe Coin is a French cellist, viola da gamba player and conductor active in the field of historically informed performance. He is the cellist of the Quatuor Mosaïques and is the director of the Ensemble Baroque de Limoges.
Myrna Herzog is a Brazilian born Israeli musician, player of the viol/viola da gamba and baroque cello, conductor, and researcher in the field of viols.
Judith Davidoff is an American viol player, cellist, and performer on the medieval bowed instruments. Her recorded performances reflect her wide range of repertoire and styles, including such works as Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht and 13th-century monody. She is responsible for the catalog of 20th- and 21st-century viol music.
Siegfried Pank is a German cellist and viol player. He was a member of the Gewandhausorchester in Leipzig from 1962 to 1980, and toured with the Neues Bachisches Collegium Musicum. He turned to playing the viol in historically informed performance, and lectured cello and viol at the Musikhochschule Leipzig from 1984, as professor from 1988 to 2001. He was a co-founder of the International Telemann Association in 1991, serving as its president from 2012.
