Alice Robbins, viola da gamba (Amherst, MA), is a member of Arcadia Viols and the Oberlin Consort of Viols and plays principal cello as well as viol with Arcadia Players in western Massachusetts, of which she is a founding member. In the course of a long career, she has performed widely on baroque cello and viola da gamba in various chamber ensembles, including the Early Music Quartet (Studio der frühen Musik), Concerto Vocale, Smithsonian Chamber Players, Boston Camerata, Opera Lafayette, Washington Bach Consort, and the Handel+Haydn Society. She was a founding member of Concerto Castello, an international quintet specializing in the music of the early seventeenth century, and currently performs with the Folger Consort, Four Nations Ensemble and other ensembles.

A member of the Five College Early Music faculty at Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, Alice earned degrees at Indiana University and the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where she was a student of Hannelore Mueller. Alice studied with Yellow Barn founder David Wells at Kneisal Hall for two summers. She has recorded for Naxos, Centaur, Telefunken, EMI-Reflexe, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, Smithsonian and Gasparo records, as well as for radio productions.

Presentations of Alice’s well-received lecture, “What is Early Music, Anyway?” continue next Wednesday, April 22, at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Renaissance Studies in Amherst, MA.