Virginal Music
The newly-formed duo Virginal Music consists of Melanie Germond (soprano) & Marc Bellassai (virginal/harpsichord). Taking its name from the popular early English parlor instrument, the virginal, the group performs period music for voice and keyboard.
Soprano Melanie Germond is a founding member of the Medieval a cappella ensemble LIBER (formerly Liber unUsualis), with whom she has performed internationally for the past thirteen years. The ensemble’s CD “Unrequited: Music of Guillaume de Machaut” was voted one of the “Best of 2004” by Goldberg magazine, and hailed as “a most impressive recording” by Gramophone. Melanie has had an extraordinarily active concert schedule, performing extensively throughout North America and Europe at many of the major music festivals. She has also performed with various groups as a soloist, including the Newberry Consort, Boston Secession, Musica Sacra, Composers in Red Sneakers, and Musica Sonora. Melanie currently lives with her husband and two small children in Bisbee, Arizona and teaches voice at Cochise College.
Marc Bellassai has studied harpsichord at Oberlin Conservatory, Indiana University's Early Music Institute and the Civica Scuola di Musica di Milano. As a youth he studied organ and music theory at the Peabody Conservatory Preparatory Department, and while at Oberlin, was a student intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History, studying and performing on the early keyboard instruments in the Musical Instruments Division. Later, he was a Fulbright Scholar for two years in Milan, Italy, assisting in cataloguing the collection of antique keyboard instruments housed in the Castello Sforzesco. He also performed and recorded with the Orchestra Barocca della Scuola Civica (dir. Enrico Gatti) and studied with the late Maestra Laura Alvini. He made several concert/recording tours in Taiwan R.O.C. with the ensemble Melothesia, and recently directed the Cochise College Chamber Choir in a program of English and Italian vocal music entitled 'Elisabethan Idol'.
He currently lives and teaches in Sierra Vista, and can be reached at bellassaim@cochise.edu.