Con Gioia has featured such internationally renowned musicians as violinists Eduard Melkus, Monica Huggett, Daniel Stepner, Elizabeth Blumenstock and Greg Maldonado; flutists John Solum and Stephen Schultz; recorder player Mathias Maute; viola da gambists, Wieland Kuijken, Laura Jeppesen, and Mark Chatfield; oboist Gonzalo X. Ruiz; sopranos Julianne Baird and Sharon Baker; glass harmonicist Dennis James and others.

Stephen Schultz, heralded by the Los Angeles Times as "one of the rising stars of the period movement," is founder and director of American Baroque. He is principal and solo flutist with the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Musica Angelica of Los Angeles, and performs with the American Bach Soloists, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and Joshua Rifkin's Bach Ensemble. Concert tours have taken him throughout Europe and North America with featured appearances at the Tage Alter Musik Festival, Regensburg, Berkeley Early Music festival, Monadnock Music, J. Paul Getty Museum Summer Series, San Luis Obispo Mozart Festival, San Jose Chamber Music Society, and the Nakamichi Early Music Festival. A graduate of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Holland, Schultz also holds several degrees from the California Institute of the Arts and the California State University of San Francisco. Currently a lecturer at Holy Names College in Oakland, Schultz's engaging teaching style has left its mark at California State University at Long Beach and Sacramento, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the University of Southern California, and the University of California at Davis and Los Angeles. 

Appearing on more than twenty-nine recordings for Harmonia Mundi USA, New Albion, Amon Ra, Koch International Classics, RGB, XDot25, Heru, and the Musical Heritage Society, Schultz enters his multi-year recording contract on the Naxos label with a wealth of experience. Innovative playing styles and experimentation with world music groups such as D'CuCKOO and Haunted By Waters have given Schultz a perspective on the music world unparalleled by his peers.  Schultz's unique processed baroque flute sounds characterize a new genre of alternative music that offers listeners of early music a new platform to enjoy formerly traditional instruments.