Boston Early Music Festival
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The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is a music festival held every two years in Boston, Massachusetts, USA, for all people interested in historical music performance.
It was founded in 1980 by a group of musicians interested in promoting historical performance in the United States and abroad. Since then, BEMF has promoted early music through a variety of diverse programs and activities, including an annual concert series that brings the early music’s brightest stars to the Boston concert stage, and the biennial week-long Festival and Exhibition. Through these programs, BEMF has earned its place as North America’s primary presenting organization for conservators and performers of music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods.
At each Festival, concerts are presented every day from morning until late at night. Concerts are given by a remarkable array of established luminaries and rising stars in the field of early music worldwide. BEMF concerts also allow for unique, once-in-a-lifetime collaborations and programs by the spectacular array of talent assembled for the Festival week’s events. In addition, there are many scheduled Fringe concerts and events, presented by both local and out-of-town groups at a number of local Boston venues.
In 1987, inspired by the success of the Festival concerts, BEMF introduced an annual concert series to meet the increasing demand for year-round performances by a number of internationally recognized artists. BEMF’s annual season now sets the bar nationally for early music performance, and has featured such musicians as The Tallis Scholars, Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI, and Les Arts Florissants, as well as the North American débuts of Bach Collegium Japan, Netherlands Bach Society, and Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.
[edit] Operas staged by the Boston Early Music Festival
- Psyché by Jean-Baptiste Lully (2007)
- Boris Goudenow by Johann Mattheson (2005)
- Ariadne by Johann Georg Conradi (2003)
- Thésée by Jean-Baptiste Lully (2001)
- Ercole Amante by Francesco Cavalli (1999)
- L’Orfeo by Luigi Rossi (1997)
- King Arthur by Henry Purcell (1995)
[edit] References
- Burkat, Leonard, and Pamela Fox. "Boston, Section 7 (i)", Grove Music Online, ed. L. Macy (accessed 8 August 2007), grovemusic.com (subscription access).
- Jaffee, Kay (January 1982). "Conference Report: Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition, May 26-31, 1981". The Journal of Musicology 1 (1): 125–129.
[edit] External links
The Boston Early Music Festival official web site
