Staff

Dr. Paul Cienniwa

Director of Music

Email:
Phone: 617-267-6730 x 227

Paul Cienniwa’s harpsichord playing has been called “expert” (Boston EDGE), and the Boston Musical Intelligencer wrote that “not everyone can capture the Baroque French style as Cienniwa does.” For his recording of the Bach Viola da Gamba Sonatas with cellist Audrey Sabattier-Cienniwa, KBAQ radio (Phoenix, AZ) called his ability to accompany “spot-on...perfect”. In recent years, he has appeared at Harvard, MIT, Yale, St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, with renowned violinist Rachel Barton Pine and with Grammy Award-winning uilleann piper Jerry O’Sullivan. An advocate of new music, he has premiered harpsichord works by Larry Thomas Bell and choral works by Karl Henning.

In 2009, he was music director for Boston Opera Collaborative’s acclaimed production of Handel’s Alcina. As conductor, he leads Sine Nomine choral ensemble and the choruses at Framingham State College and Mount Ida College. As organist and conductor, he is music director at First Church in Boston, where he can be heard weekly on WERS (88.9 FM) Boston.

From 2003-2010, he led Newport Baroque Orchestra (later Newport Baroque) in works from Arne to Zelenka, including performances of Bach cantatas and Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas and collaborations with the Providence Singers, the Tufts Chamber Choir and Providence College. With grants from Target, the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities, the Apple Pickers Foundation and private donors, Newport Baroque Orchestra gave eight successful concert seasons of baroque music on period instruments.

Originally from Niles, IL, Paul Cienniwa began his keyboard studies at age six. In his teen years, he played thrash guitar with the Evanston, IL punk band Malicious Intent, followed by seven years as keyboardist with the innovative Chicago-based Irish group Baal Tinne. Following his undergraduate studies at DePaul University with harpsichordist Roger Goodman and organist Jerome Butera, he received the Doctor of Musical Arts degree from Yale University, where he was a student of Richard Rephann. He has also studied harpsichord with Peter Watchorn, John Whitelaw and David Schrader. As a scholar, he been awarded Belgian American Educational Foundation and Fulbright grants, and his musicological articles have appeared in American and European journals, including Early Music and Ad Parnassum.

For more information, visit http://www.paulcienniwa.com.