About

Lyracle’s mission is to engage with history through music and to illuminate our shared humanity.

We use musical performance as a vehicle to tell the stories of people throughout history who partook in music for voice and viol. Founded in 2018, Lyracle launched its self-produced concert series in Greater Boston in the 2022-2023 season.

Lyracle’s narrative, non-composer-centric approach to concert programming has earned it recognition as an emerging ensemble in the field. In the 23-24 season, in addition to producing two new concert programs in Greater Boston, Lyracle performs/presents on the Howard M. Brown Early International Early Music Series at the University of Chicago, at the Early Music America Summit, and at UMass Amherst.

Lyracle enjoys introducing young people to the viol and to historically informed performance  and has additionally presented for and worked with students at Brandeis University and UNC Chapel Hill. Lyracle also enjoys collaborating with other organizations with shared interests and missions. Favorite collaborations include a performance-presentation on at-home music-making in 17th century Massachusetts with historian Barbara Lambert at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. 

Lyracle has given presentations at the 2021 Indiana University Historical Performance Conference and at the 2021 Low Strings in the Americas Symposium. Lyracle was a 2020 Early Music America Emerging Artist and a 2018 Pegasus Rising Young Ensemble. Additional presenters include the Viola da Gamba Society of America, GEMS Midtown Concerts, and the Society for Historically Informed Performance.

Lyracle is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit and has received grants from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and the Iguana Music Fund.

Please visit lyraclemusic.com for more information about Lyracle. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Tik Tok @lyraclemusic

We are proud to participate in Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture program, in collaboration with the Department of Transitional Assistance, the Women, Infants & Children (WIC) Nutrition Program, and the Massachusetts Health Connector, by broadening accessibility to cultural programming. EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare cardholders can receive up to two free tickets to our events. See the complete list of participating organizations offering EBTWIC, and ConnectorCare discounts.

Artistic Directors

Mezzo-soprano Ashley Mulcahy is a recent graduate of the Voxtet Program (MM ‘19) at the Yale School of Music and Institute of Sacred Music, which provides four students each year a full scholarship to study early music, oratorio, and chamber music. At Yale, Ashley studied with James Taylor and had the opportunity to work with many internationally renowned conductors, including Nicholas McGegan, Masaaki Suzuki, David Hill, and Simon Carrington, and performed at venues such as Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall, and the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Ashley has performed with numerous ensembles including Bach Collegium Japan, Theatre of Voices, New York State Baroque, The Newberry Consort, Music of the Baroque, and the Handel and Haydn Society. She recently relocated to the Boston area, where she is a regular soloist at Marsh Chapel, under the direction of Scott Allen Jarrett. Ashley was a Young Artist at the 2017 Boston Early Music Festival and earned a BA in Italian and a BM in vocal performance from the University of Michigan, where she studied with Carmen Pelton.

James Perretta is a Boston-based viola da gamba player who is active as a performer, arranger, and teacher. For Lyracle’s concert programs, James arranges polyphonic madrigals for voice and viol, synergizing his facility on the viol with his knowledge of 16th and 17th century counterpoint. He is also active on TikTok and YouTube where he records his own arrangements of video game music for solo viol or viol consort. James enjoys working on projects that span multiple genres and explore the use of extended techniques on the viol. He currently teaches private lessons, group classes, and workshops at the Powers Music School in Belmont, MA and has performed with viol consort Long and Away. James holds a B.M. in Cello Performance and a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, where he studied modern cello with Richard Aaron and Baroque cello and viola da gamba with Enid Sutherland. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Computer Science at Northeastern University, hoping to pursue a dual-career as a musician and Computer Science teacher.

2023-2024 Guest Artists

Danielle Boivin is an actor, writer, and musician in New York City. She can be seen performing at Stonewall once a month with The Debbie Donnas. Recently, she appeared in the SheNYC festival with the play Finding Olive.

Karen Burciaga is an early strings specialist who bridges the worlds of classical and folk music. She is a founding member of Boston’s folk/early music ensemble Seven Times Salt and the viol consort Long & Away. Karen has performed on baroque violin and viola da gamba across New England and Texas with groups including The King’s Noyse, Arcadia Players, Folger Consort, El Dorado Consort, Zenith Ensemble, Austin Baroque Orchestra, Elm City Consort, and others. A lifelong love of Celtic music led her into the world of fiddling and folk traditions, and she enjoys playing and dancing Scottish, Irish, English, and contra styles. She has fiddled for the Celtic band Ulster Landing, southern Italian folk band Newpoli, and English Country Dance bands in Greater Boston. Karen earned an MM in Early Music Performance from the Longy School of Music where she studied early strings with Dana Maiben and Jane Hershey and Renaissance and Baroque dance with Ken Pierce. She has taught both privately and at Pinewoods Early Music Week, the Texas Toot, and workshops for the Viola da Gamba Society – New England. When not making music, she can be found reading, petting cats, climbing small mountains, or playing pickleball.

Praised for his “deeply expressive singing” (Cleveland Classical) and for performances featuring “unspeakable beauty and poignant” (Boston Music Intelligencer), Judah Coffman has performed in a variety of contexts as a singer and an early string player. Now based in Boston, Judah has appeared with The Boston Camerata, the Thirteen, The New York Philharmonic, Apollo’s Fire, Schola Cantorum Boston, Les Délices, and the Ashmont Bach Project, among other ensembles. Judah recently graduated from Case Western Reserve University’s Historical Performance program. There, his dissertation, focused on the viola da gamba accompaniments of seventeenth-century English song, received the Adel Heinrich Award for Excellence in Musicological Research.

Jacob Jahiel is a writer, editor, and violist da gamba currently living in Baltimore, MD. He holds an M.A. in Musicology with an outside field in Historical Performance from Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, also receiving a B.A. from IU’s Individualized Major Program, where he designed an undergraduate degree in music history. Jahiel studied modern violin with Jorja Fleezanis, baroque violin with Stanley Ritchie, and viola da gamba with Joanna Blendulf. He additionally held graduate assistantships in the Borns Jewish Studies Program and was an Undergraduate Research Fellow with the IU Platform in Global Popular Music. Currently, Jahiel works in the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s Marketing and Communications Department, performs, and writes on a freelance basis. He has written program notes for the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra, Boston Artists Ensemble, and Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, additionally contributing album reviews and features to Early Music America’s EMag. When not scraping away at various historical bow instruments, he can be found hiking, fly-fishing, and skiing near his childhood home in the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, where cows outnumber people 3:1.

Gold medalist and first-ever American laureate of the 7th International Bach-Abel Competition Arnie Tanimoto has quickly established himself as one of the foremost viol players in the US. He has performed and recorded in venues across North America and Europe with the likes of Barthold Kuijken, the Boston Early Music Festival Ensemble, and the Smithsonian Consort of Viols. Arnie was the first-ever viola da gamba major at the Juilliard School, where he soloed on both viola da gamba and baroque cello. In 2017 he was awarded with a Frank Huntington Beebe Fund Fellowship and subsequently finished his studies at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel, Switzerland. His principal teachers include Paolo Pandolfo, Sarah Cunningham, and Christel Thielmann. Arnie is currently on faculty at Princeton University and has served on faculty at the Mountainside Baroque Summer Academy, Viols West Workshop, and Viola da Gamba Society Conclave. He holds additional degrees from Oberlin Conservatory and the Eastman School of Music.

Board of Directors
Ashley Mulcahy, President
James Perretta, Treasurer and Clerk
Michaela Byrne
Jonathan Juett
Kelsey Lee