Laurette's Page
- Laurette Goldberg's story, as told by her husband, Alan Compher
Laurette Goldberg in 1974
One of the Bay Area's leading Baroque specialists, Laurette Goldberg was a teacher, performer, author and founder of musical enterprises.
She is the founder of San Francisco-based Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, a major international recording and touring institution and selected as her successor the conductor Nicholas McGegan. She taught at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she began and chaired the Baroque program, and also taught harpsichord at UC Berkeley.
Ms. Goldberg inaugurated many Baroque music activities in Jerusalem and installed the first replica harpsichord in the Middle East at Hebrew University, where she served on the faculty. She was also a faculty member of the Rubin Academy in Jerusalem, and presented several lecture series at the Jerusalem Music Center.
She regularly gave classes, master classes, and workshops with special emphasis on teaching teachers.
A harpsichord student of Gustav Leonhardt and Ralph Kirkpatrick, she performed in the United States, Denmark, Australia, Canada, Europe and Israel, where she was invited for eight consecutive years. She also toured with the early music performing ensemble Tapestry. She recorded for 1750 Arch Street and Harmonia Mundi.
Laurette Goldberg wrote her own edition of Bach's preludes and fugues, J.S. Bach Open Score, The Well Tempered Clavier in a handsomely bound two volume set, published by Medallion Guild. In 1995 MusicSources published The Well Tempered Clavier of J.S. Bach, A Handbook for Keyboard Teachers and Performers by Laurette Goldberg.
She served several years as music director for the Junior Bach Festival in Berkeley, a 50 year old organization dedicated to the performance of Bach by young people aged 5-20, and served on the Board of American Bach Soloists.
Laurette founded and directed MusicSources, a Center for Historically Informed Performance, in Berkeley, California. Music Sources is a cultural resource center, an educational institution and a special events facility. It rose out of her belief that "when we are involved with historic music we need to have a context; we need to connect with what I call 'the now of then', the continuum of history, of which music is a major artifact."