Jeff has performed with a wide variety of Early Music Ensembles across the Midwest as well as with modern ensembles performing early repertoire. These performances include operas, oratorios, cantatas and vespers with large ensembles like the St. Louis Symphony, Louisville's Bourbon Baroque, the Madison Early Music Festival and the Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana.
In addition, Jeff appears regularly with early music chamber ensembles ranging from duos to quintets. These groups feature some of the Midwest's finest Early Music performers with training and performing experience across this country and Europe. Jeff has performed with the following ensembles on concert series and university campuses across the Midwest and up and down the Eastern seaboard. These ensembles are available for concerts as well as lecture/demonstrations, ensemble coaching, master classes and private lessons.
To view or listen to performance excerpts by a number of these ensembles, visit the Audio & Video Links page listed above.
For information on upcoming concerts, click on the PERFORMANCES link above.
For booking information, contact Jeff through this website or at jjnoonan@sbcglobal.net.
Musicke’s cordes
Using the violin and its early repertoire as a gateway, the duo Musicke’s Cordes embraces a wide swath of 17th-century instrumental music including fantastic Italian sonatas, elegant French suites and rustic English variations on popular tunes. Musicke's Cordes--baroque violinist Samuel Breene and lutenist Jeffrey Noonan--offers programs that feature the experimental instrumental music of the 17th century.
Violinist Samuel Breene and lutenist Jeffrey Noonan met in 2013 at the Newberry Library in Chicago as participants in a colloquium sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Informal reading sessions that summer evolved into a performance plan and since 2014 the duo has performed and taught in the Midwest and on the East Coast. The 2016 - 2017 season featured concerts in St. Louis as well up and down the eastern seaboard. The ensemble's 2017 - 2018 season included concerts and residencies in Colorado, Missouri, Kentucky and Rhode Island. Their 2018 - 2019 season featured a program titled “Music from the Chapels and Courts of Germany” with music by German and Italian composers active through the 17th century. Performances included concerts on college campuses in Missouri and on concert series in Indiana and across New England. In the spring of 2019, the duo premiered a new program focused on violinists and violin music tied to England through the 17th century. The program includes music by William Brade, Matthew Locke, Daniel Purcell, Nicola Matteis, Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi. The duo presented this program in early 2020 on Early Music concert series in St. Louis MO and Louisville KY.
La Petite Brise
In 2010, the Baroque flautist Lehighann Daihl and Baroque cellist Stephanie Hunt both lived in the Netherlands, pursuing advanced studies in Early Music performance. They performed together briefly in Holland but went their separate ways shortly after. In 2016, Leighann and Stephanie reconnected at an Early Music conference and determined to play together again. Shortly after the conference, they invited Jeff to join the ensemble and La Petite Brise offered its premiere performance in early 2017 at the Quigley Chapel in Chicago. The ensemble focuses on the French repertoire for flute and features music by Hotteterre, Boismortier, Blavet, Quantz and others. La Petite Brise's 2017-2018 season included performances in the St. Louis area as well as concert series in Indiana. La Petite Brise opened the 2018 - 2019 season with a performance on the popular concert series at the World Chess Hall of Fame in St. Louis. The spring and summer of 2019 included concerts as well as a grant-funded residency at The French House at the Vincennes Historical Site in Vincennes, Indiana.
Such Sweete Melodie
The three original members of Such Sweete Melodie first worked together on a recording session in 2009 led by violone player Philip Spray. Several months later, Phil, Lindsey and Jeff met in a church in Chicago to read some songs and immediately recognized the potential for good music-making. Although this meeting was an unrehearsed reading session, the church music director hired them on the spot for the church’s concert series. Since then, Lindsey, Phil and Jeff have worked together regularly as Such Sweete Melodie. Early keyboard specialist Charles Metz joined the ensemble in late 2012, bringing both his expertise and his 400-year-old Francesco Poggi virginal to the enterprise. Several months later, the quartet expanded to a quintet with the addition of baroque violinist Alice Culin-Ellison.
As individual players, they participate in a wide variety of music that includes Broadway show tunes, Medieval dance music, Argentine tangos and the standards of the classical repertoire, but as an ensemble Such Sweete Melodie has gravitated to the expressively experimental music of the early seventeenth century. The band has devised programs that focus on the early years of the baroque era, featuring the music and performance styles that came to define “baroque” as a break with the old style and something clearly on the cutting edge. From the well-known—Claudio Monteverdi, Henry Purcell and John Dowland—to the obscure—Tarquinio Merula, Benedetto Ferrari della Tiorba, Nicholas Lanier and others – Such Sweete Melodie offers evocative and beautiful songs and early violin sonatas supported by the dulcet sounds of lutes, guitars, lirone, violone and virginal.
Such Sweete Melodie has performed and taught on college campuses from Michigan to Mississippi and has appeared in concert in Louisville, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Indianapolis and Memphis with numerous appearances in the Chicago area.
Armonia e PASSIONE
Armonia e Passione, a baroque string band, debuted in the fall of 2014 with concerts in Chicago and Louisville. Full-house audiences jumped to their feet at the end of those performances, applauding the technical virtuosity and musical verve of the ensemble. William Bauer (baroque violin) and Jeff Noonan (theorbo, lute and early guitars), two of St. Louis's best-known early music performers, have worked together in a variety of ensembles for over twenty years. They are joined by Celina Boldrey Casado (baroque violin), a well-known pedagogue and performer in St. Louis, and Stephanie Hunt (baroque cello), a European-trained musician who has quickly established herself in the region as a popular teacher and respected performer.
The ensemble presents music heard in the chapels, courts and cathedrals of Rome, Venice, Florence and other cities across Italy in the vibrant years of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In these years, composer/performers like Biagio Marini, Antonio Bertali, Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi invented and expanded the technique and repertoire for the violin, bringing a low-class folk instrument into the church and court with an inventiveness and technical flair never heard before. The music of these composers features blistering scales, intricate double-stops and heart-wrenching Adagios. In creating a new way of playing, these composers laid the foundation for modern music and the later violin music of Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and beyond.