Canadian-born Alexa Haynes-Pilon has been described by Early Music America as “a special artist with a brilliant future,” Alexa Haynes-Pilon has quickly established herself in the early music scene, performing on baroque cello, viola da gamba, baroque bassoon and dulcian. She is the principal cellist of both Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra and Opera Neo, and co-director and cellist/gambist of Musica Pacifica. She has performed with numerous American ensembles, including the American Bach Soloists, The Washington Bach Consort, Pacific Chorale, Los Angeles Chamber Choir, Bach Collegium San Diego, Burning River Baroque, the Albany Consort, the American Contemporary Ballet, Handel Choir of Baltimore, Con Gioia, and more. In Toronto, she was a founding member of the early music ensemble, Rezonance, and performed with Accenti Vocali and Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra. She has concertized throughout the United States and Canada, as well as in Bogotà, Mexico City, and, most recently, Budapest, where she collaborated with the Hungarian State Opera. She has recorded for the TV show, Hannibal, and was the featured solo cellist on the soundtrack to the highly acclaimed 2017 documentary That Never Happened: Canada’s First National Internment Operations. Her recent album recordings include Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen Sings Gluck, Handel, & Vivaldi with the American Bach Soloists, Agostino Steffani: A son trés-humble service, Duets for Sophie Charlotte of Hanover under the direction of harpsichordist, Jory Vinikour on the Musica Omnia label, and François Couperin: Concert Royaux with Stephen Schultz, Mindy Rosenfeld, and Jory Vinikour on the Music and Arts label.
After completing her BMus and MMus in cello performance at Brandon University, Alexa Haynes-Pilon earned a performance certificate from the University of Toronto in connection with the Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra, studying cello with Christina Mahler and viola da gamba with Joëlle Morton. Alexa recently completed her doctoral studies at the University of Southern California, where she studied baroque cello and viola da gamba with William Skeen, and baroque bassoon and dulcian with Charlie Koster. She has participated in most of the major Early Music festivals and workshops in North America including the Tafelmusik Winter and Summer Institutes, the American Bach Soloists Academy in San Francisco, the Vancouver Early Music Festival, the Twin Cities Early Music Festival, and the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals.
Alexa’s passion is to create music and connect with members of the community, and because of this, she co-founded and was the Artistic Director of Los Angeles Baroque (LAB), a community baroque orchestra based in South Pasadena, CA. In addition, she has introduced thousands of elementary and secondary school students to Renaissance and baroque winds and viols through her work with the Crumhorn Collective, in collaboration with Ars Lyrica Houston’s outreach program in Houston. Alexa has been a guest conductor for the Orange County Recorder Society, the Pacifica Viola da Gamba Society, The Central Coast Recorder Society, the Sacramento Recorder Society, the San Francisco Recorder Society, and the Southern California Recorder Society. She has been a faculty member at the San Francisco Early Music Society (SFEMS) Recorder workshop and Baroque workshop (cello and viola da gamba), as well as a faculty member at the Road Scholar Hidden Valley Workshop in Carmel Valley, CA (viola da gamba and dulcian), and at the Port Townsend Early Music Workshop near Seattle (viola da gamba). She has also taught at Claremont Graduate University, and she has given masterclasses at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan.
She is directing a program for Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra in January 2023. She will be going home to conduct the Saskatoon Symphony Orchestra in May 2023, and will join the Orchester Wiener Akademie in Austria for a few performances in August 2023.