Helen-Jean Talbott

Bio & Interview

Helen-Jean Talbott started playing recorders and flutes at age 8 and never stopped.  She is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Maryland with B.S. and M.S. degrees in Agronomy.  After lengthy careers as a scientist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Director of Credit Policy MIS for a major financial company, she began to pursue music full time, earning her Master of Music degree in recorder performance at The Peabody Conservatory of The Johns Hopkins University in 2009.  The Washington Flute Society selected her flute and guitar composition Canzona for the 2004 Flute Fair composers’ concert, and in 2013 she won the Recorder Orchestra category for the "ARS is 75! Composition Competition" held by the American Recorder Society.  Helen-Jean recently added French baroque hurdy-gurdy to her repertoire of performance instruments.  She continues to study composition at Peabody, and now has several publications — flute & piano music, published by Falls House Press; and recorder music, published by Peacock Press and the American Recorder Society.  Her goal for composition is to create music that is enjoyable for the audience as well as for the performer.  Her compositions exhibit beautiful melodic lines, rich harmonies, interesting rhythms, and dialogue among all of the parts.  In addition to composing music, Helen-Jean performs medieval, Renaissance, and baroque music with Consort Anon and other musicians.  Her performance venues include Amherst Early Music workshops, the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and de Stage de Musique Baroque in Châteauroux, France.  She also performs music for worship services and concerts at St. Matthew's United Methodist Church in Bowie, Maryland.

For more information about Helen-Jean’s connection to Early Music, see the online interview posted by Early Music America:  “Center Stage, July 2016: Helen-Jean Talbott” which is available at https://www.earlymusicamerica.org/web-articles/center-stage-july-2016-helen-jean-talbott/