Visiting artists join music faculty for Go For Baroque recital
Feb. 24 is "Go For Baroque," an oboe recital of Professor Andrea Ridilla, with guest Italian harpsichordist Giacomo Benedetti, who will also play solo pieces of Italian Baroque music. Guest assisting artists will be Miami faculty members, Marion Peraza, violin, and Franklin Sandoval, cello.
Visiting artists join music faculty for Go For Baroque recital
Event Details
"Go For Baroque"
Date: Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026, at⋅7:30 – 8:30 pm
Location: Center For Performing Arts, Souers Recital Hall
Faculty Oboe Recital: Andrea Ridilla, with guest Italian harpsichordist Giacomo Benedetti. Also including Miami faculty: Marion Peraza, violin, Franklin Sandoval, cello, and the 20250-26 Miami University Concerto Competition Winner, Jack Nomina, oboe. Music by Vivaldi, Albinoni, Scarlatti, Boni, Dreyer, and Handel.
About the Artists
Giacomo Benedetti
Giacomo Benedetti, Italian keyboard artist and conductor, specializes in all areas of keyboard and Baroque performance practice. He currently holds the position of Titular Organist at the Basilica of San Miniato al Monte and the Church of Santa Felicità in Florence, Italy. He is also on the keyboard staff at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Theater and the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory of Music in Florence. He is a professor of harpsichord at the Gallarate Conservatory in Varese. He previously taught at the Fiesole School of Music, where he also served as a collaborative harpsichord and organ accompanist. In the summers, he holds masterclasses in vocal coaching and accompaniment, and operatic interpretation at the Greve Opera Academy and Chamber Music Festival in Tuscany.
In Florence, Giacomo is President of Konzert Opera Florence (K.O.F.), society in collaboration with the Italian Ministry of Culture that promotes Early Music throughout Italy.
Giacomo began his musical studies in Naples, where he graduated from the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory with degrees in Organ and Organ Composition, and later earned a graduate degree from the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory of Music in Florence. He obtained a post-graduate degree in ancient organ at the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music (PIMS) in Rome.
Giacomo is a guest professor at various national musical institutions, including the Fermo Conservatory, where he teaches the music of François Couperin, as well as for International Masterclasses, Orchestra, Concerts, and Musical Summer Courses (IMOC) in Chianciano Terme, and the Basilicata Academy of Early Music.
He founded the instrumental vocal ensemble "Baroque Lumina," with whom he recently recorded on the Brilliant Classics label. With the ensemble, he served as conductor for recordings of the works of Giovanni Filippo Maria Dreyer (1703-1772). He also recorded the Sonatas of Johann Gottfried Muthel (1728-1788) on harpsichord, and he was a harpsichord continuo artist in the Sonatas by Franceso Maria Veracini, all for Brilliant Classics.
On the organ, Giacomo recorded the Sonatas by Tommaso Pegolotti (1660-1710) for Tactus Records, based in Bologna. As a harpsichordist, he recorded the Sonatas Op.3 for Two Violins by Tomaso Albinoni for Da Vinci Publishing, and has recorded on the Bongiovanni Records label.
He performs regularly as a concert soloist on organ and harpsichord in Italy and abroad. He has received critical acclaim in Japan, Mexico, the USA, Germany, Finland, France, Malta, and South Africa. In the USA, he will work as a coach for the Hartford Opera Co. in March 2026.
Andrea Ridilla
Andrea Ridilla is a Professor of Music at Miami University. She holds both a Master and Bachelor of Music degree from The Juilliard School, and a Bachelor of Music degree from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. She is Principal Oboe of the Classical Music Festival in Austria each summer and held the same position with the Festival International Echternach in Luxembourg from 1991-2007. She is Principal Oboe of the Mason Symphony Orchestra and the Southwestern Ohio Philharmonic (SWOP) Orchestra, and was Principal Oboe of the Middletown Symphony Orchestra under Maestro Carmon DeLeone from 1990-2016.
Intensely devoted to teaching, she won Miami University’s 2015 Distinguished Teaching Award. Her students have earned tenured positions in universities, and scholarships to prestigious graduate programs. Her high school students have won positions in the Cincinnati and Dayton Youth Symphonies, District and Regional bands and orchestras, and Ohio All-State Orchestra. Her online textbook on opera appreciation, Opera: Passport to the Liberal Arts, was published in 2022 by Kendall-Hunt Publishing Co. She is an F. Lorée-Paris performing artist.
