Founded in 1989, Arcadia Players is a professional ensemble of musicians specializing in historical performance practice and dedicated to presenting music of the past in a fresh light for audiences old and new. We offer a series of concerts each year in communities around western Massachusetts and beyond, bringing together artists and audiences from throughout the region to engage listeners and showcase the work of area performers. Andrew Arceci became our new Artistic Director in the spring of 2022.
Arcadia Players is Ensemble-in-Residence at the Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies at UMASS Amherst.
Gregory Hayes, Conductor
Gregory Hayes retired in the spring of 2022 as Senior Lecturer at Dartmouth College, where he has taught piano and harpsichord since 1991. He is a busy collaborative musician and has performed on keyboard instruments of various kinds with the Springfield, Vermont, and Albany Symphony Orchestras and with Arcadia Players. He has participated often in the New England Bach Festival and on the Mohawk Trail Concerts series in western Massachusetts. Formerly the longtime music director for the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence, he is a resident of Goshen, and he has taught for many summers at Greenwood Music Camp in nearby Cummington. Mr. Hayes is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Amherst College and the Manhattan School of Music. In 2020, just before the pandemic intervened, he completed his performing edition of Johann Theile's Saint Matthew Passion (1673). This will be its first outing.
John Salvi, Baritone
An accomplished singer on both the operatic and concert stage, John Salvi's clear and agile baritone voice has been hailed as "stentorian” by many and has been heard extensively throughout the Northeast United States as well as Washington, D.C. and Montreal, Canada. For over two decades, john has appeared as a guest artist with opera companies and choral societies throughout New England including Connecticut Opera, Opera Boston, Opera North, Commonwealth Opera, Granite State Opera, Arcadia Players, Handel Society of Dartmouth College, Hampshire Choral Society, South Hadley Chorale, The Keene Chorale, and Assabet Valley Mastersingers. He has performed under the batons of many prominent conductors including Willie Anthony Waters, Gil Rose, Kevin Rhodes, and Ian Watson.
John earned his Bachelor and Master of Music degrees from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he studied voice with Paulina Stark. In addition to maintaining an active performing schedule, he is a music teacher and choral director at Haverhill High School in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
William Hite, Tenor
William Hite is critically-acclaimed artist who has appeared in opera, concert, chamber music and solo recital in a career that has spanned over three decades. His reputation as an expressive and engaging artist has led to appearances with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, Odyssey Opera, Dresdner Philharmonie, American Symphony Orchestra, Charlotte Symphony, Boston Modern Orchestra Project, Boston Baroque, Tafelmusik, Philharmonia Baroque, New York City Ballet, the Morris Dance Group and Emmanuel Music, under the direction of Bernard Haitink, Seiji Ozawa, Christopher Warren-Green, Nicholas McGegan, Jane Glover, Robert Spano, Gil Rose, Leon Botstein, and Julian Wachner.
Mr. Hite’s extensive discography now contains over 40 recordings spanning a wide spectrum of musical idioms. He may be heard in The Complete Songs of Virgil Thomson for voice and piano on New World Records, Messiah on Clarion, Acis and Galatea on NCA, the St. John Passion on Koch, and Mozart Requiem on Denon. William Hite has sung in music festivals at Tanglewood, Santa Fe, Token Creek, and Vancouver and at the Athens Festival, Festival Mitte Europa, Holland Early Music Festival and Festival d’Aix-en-Provence. He is an Associate Professor of Voice at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
