Desert Baroque

Webb Wiggins, recognized and lauded internationally for his innovative and musical continuo realizations, has performed and recorded with many US ensembles.  They include the Folger Consort, the Dryden Ensemble, Kings Noyse, Chatham Baroque, the Oberlin Baroque Ensemble, Apollo’s Fire, The Atlanta Baroque Orchestra, the Smithsonian Chamber Players and Orchestra, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra.  His collaborations with soloists, both vocal and instrumental, have earned him high respect among his colleagues in the world of baroque music and earlier.

Wiggins is also one of the foremost teachers of harpsichord as well as a coach for baroque chamber music and as musical director of baroque opera.  He was associate professor of harpsichord at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music for eleven years and was coordinator of the early music program at the Peabody conservatory of Music for twenty years.  On multiple occasions, Webb has given concerts, classes, lectures, and coachings to students at the Shanghai Music Middle School and at the Franz Liszt Conservatory in Quito Ecuador.  His recordings can be heard on the Smithsonian, Dorian, EMI, Bard, and PGM labels.

Webb holds degrees in organ performance from Stetson University and the Eastman School of Music and has done additional harpsichord study at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam.  He is perhaps the only harpsichordist in modern times to have given multiple performances on trans-Atlantic voyages.

Personal statement:
My first harpsichord experience was in undergraduate school which had acquired an instrument my senior year.  I was the first to use it on a colleague’s degree recital.  I thought, “Oh, an interesting toy.”  Later, I bought a “toy” and then decided I needed to learn something about it; another undergraduate colleague suggested attending Oberlin’s Baroque Performance Institute. I did, and my life was changed.