Suzanne Stumpf and Daniel Ryan, residents of Natick for 20 years, have been awarded the 2023 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society. The award was presented on November 11 in Denver at the AMS annual conference. Stumpf and Ryan are founding members and Artistic Directors of Musicians of the Old Post Road, a period instrument chamber ensemble. Natick residents may also recognize Stumpf’s name from the Natick Art Association; an award-winning ceramic artist, she has been participating in the Natick Artists Open Studios since 2004.

Established to recognize and foster outstanding contributions to historical performance practice, this national music award is named after the late conductor and musicologist Noah Greenberg, who is credited with contributing to the revival of interest in early music. Stumpf’s and Ryan’s work to bring attention to the little-known and outstanding chamber music by the German composer Christoph Graupner was the impetus for this year’s award. Their meticulous research resulted in premiere performances of some of Graupner’s instrumental chamber pieces in the ensemble’s Into the Light program in April 2023, and their headlining performance of the same program at Early Music America’s first annual Summit, which took place in Boston on October 24.

The pair has already begun producing new publications of the revived works to make them available to other musicians to study and perform. Plans are underway for a CD recording of the repertoire in 2024.

This is the second time that the research and performance work of Stumpf and Ryan have been recognized with the Noah Greenberg Award. In 1998, Musicians of the Old Post Road was selected for the prize for its premiere recording project of Scottish Folk Song Settings by J. N. Hummel.

Stumpf and Ryan founded Musicians of the Old Post Road in 1989. The period instrument chamber ensemble’s mission is to broaden the availability of period instrument chamber performances to diverse audiences and to stimulate audiences with innovative programming. The group’s concert series—now in its 35th year—unites historical repertoire with historical instruments in historical buildings along the fabled Boston Post Road. The Artistic Directors always prioritize researching and presenting outstanding repertoire and composers who have been lost to audiences for centuries.

Every season, the group includes regional historic premieres as part of its subscription series, and all of the group’s seven commercially-produced CDs include previously unrecorded works. The ensemble’s next concerts, a program entitled Blazing Italian Baroque, will be on March 9th at 4 pm (First Parish in Wayland and online) and March 10th at 4 pm (Old South Church in Boston), and will feature Baroque pyrotechnics on full display in concerti and sonatas for flute, strings, and harpsichord.

Musicians of the Old Post Road has also received recognition for its innovative programming with awards from Chamber Music America, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Foundation for the Arts, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council. The group recently received an Engagement Award from Early Music America.

For more information, visit www.oldpostroad.org, email [email protected], or call 781-466-6694.