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Giving to Bloomington Early Music has many returns!

11/25/2018

 
Dear Friends,

As 2018 comes to a close, Bloomington Early Music celebrates a season of unprecedented growth, thanks to the amazing creativity of many artists, the multiple partnerships we’ve developed, and the dedicated people who support our work.

We look toward exciting new opportunities for 2019 and invite you to support our mission generously.

​It’s inspiring to know that this year’s Bloomington Early Music Festival was enjoyed by a dramatically expanded audience! Through innovative live-streaming on Facebook and IUMusicLive, more than 25,000 early music fans across the US and around the world were able to watch, in addition to the approximately 4,000 audience members at the concerts. Our new partnership with Early Music America also led to multiple high-profile articles in their quarterly magazine, as well as mentions in blogs and social media posts. This substantially aided our mission to support and showcase the extraordinary talent of emerging artists.


Exciting plans are underway for the 2019 Bloomington Early Music Festival. Besides continuation of our work with partners Early Music America and the IU Historical Performance Institute, we anticipate welcoming three long-standing national organizations - the Lute Society, the Viola da Gamba Society, and the American Recorder Society. Running from May 17-25, BLEMF ’19 promises to be a truly impressive week for early music enthusiasts in Bloomington, the region, and around the globe.

In addition to the festival, we’ve been enjoying a busy 2018-19 season through sponsorship of several projects: Las Aves performed in the IU Salon Latino Chamber series; Alchymy Viols presented two concerts at Trinity Episcopal Church (one with the IndyBaroque Chamber Players); we presented two concerts at the Courthouse; and the popular Bloomington Bach Cantata Project is in the middle of its ninth annual series at St. Thomas Lutheran Church. Finally, our education programming will soon provide performance and teaching residencies at several local elementary schools, thanks in part to a grant from the Bloomington Arts Commission. Let us know if you’d like more information about these programs.

Our efforts to support musicians and present early music to the Bloomington community would not be possible without the support of our donors. We invite you to consider making a generous tax-deductible donation to Bloomington Early Music as you plan your end-of-year giving.

  Thank you for your support of Bloomington Early Music!

Board Members: Alain Barker (President), Adam Dillon (Secretary), Anthony Lanman (Treasurer), Paulina Francisco (Manager), Erica Rubis (Education), Mollie Abels, Aaron Cain, Alison Calhoun, Micah Fleming, Sally Gaskill, Dana Marsh, Reynaldo Patiño, Stanley Ritchie, and Shelley Taylor.

A Bloomington Early Music Festival reflection

6/4/2018

 
By Peter Jacobi H-T Columnist

When all of the music was over and all my reviews of BLEMF concerts had run in The Herald-Times, I sat down to ponder what I had written.

It was different when, earlier in the process of creation, I sat at the computer and typed out the copy, testing the words with my ears to determine if, in formation, they made sense. It was different when, on completion of the copy, I edited it carefully as I could before sending it for publication. It is normally different when, after covering a single event, I scan the newspaper to see if the review is there and do a read-through, hoping not to find any error that might have slipped through. But post- BLEMF, I had words about a bunch of events, a lot of words, an awful lot.

Of the Bloomington Early Music Festival’s host of concerts, performed over a period of 10 days, most of them clustered during two extended weekends, I managed to attend 10. Sorry to have missed the others, but that was the best I could physically and mentally do.

Because the programs often came in clusters (two or three a day), I determined to write them up in the same manner, in clusters. My aim had been to keep down the length, and I did hold down the amount of space given to each event, striving to include, though often briefly, everything I considered a must.

Well, here I was a few days later, looking through those reviews. My coverage, on reflection, was appropriate; I didn’t shortchange content or performances. I dare to say my writing was decent enough, particularly for copy written in a hurry. But looking at the whole, I concluded that, for most readers, the coverage might seem cluttered. There are so many names of musicians and composers. There are so many titles. There are hasty evaluations etched in, one after another after another.
As festival planner or participant, I’d probably be happy enough with the shape of coverage. Fans of early music who attended, I decided, might want to check personal views against a reviewer’s and read. Fans who didn’t might want to find out what happened and read. The folks in charge would study what I said and appreciate the inches upon inches given to their hard work. Bloomington historians might be grateful for having this record as part of a city scrapbook.

Much of the H-T’s readership, though, would stare at a review’s headline, see the length of the copy beneath, and move on, no different than I perusing the sports pages, satisfied with just the scores. As writer, I might read a sportswriter’s story to study the craft. But I’d have little enthusiasm for a rundown of happenings from inning to inning or period to period. Still, those stories also need to be written. A newspaper serves many masters.

But as I said, I sat there and came to realize that I hadn’t encapsulated my thoughts about this Bloomington Early Music Festival of 2018, the 25th since the celebration came to be and the most extensive in length and substance since changes in leadership, reductions in public enthusiasm, and heavyweight financial problems almost killed it a few years back.

This year’s was a youthful BLEMF, beefed by the inclusion of two young artists programs furnished by Early Music America, a national institution that exists to promote the growth of early music in performance practice and scholarship. The presence of those budding musicians, along with ensembles from important music programs around the nation, helped give the festival a welcome vitality.

Not a single concert I attended was mediocre or of just standard fare. Quality throughout was high, often higher than high. The musicians and their leaders expected only the best from themselves. Pride of accomplishment and joy for attending the festival as working artists could be read into action and spirit. To these visitors, add the presence of IU students and alums and longtime friends, prepared to do battle for the cause. Result: more than 130 musicians contributed to the presentations. The Early Music/Historical Performance field apparently is healthy. BLEMF 2018 was its jubilant reflection.

From the Bloomington end of things, Bloomington Early Music, a combine of locally-based individuals important in and for early music, and Indiana University Jacobs School of Music’s Historical Performance Institute were keys in bringing together all the elements of BLEMF 2018, which took important and measurable steps forward from the leaner time.
Alain Barker, executive director of BLEMF in its brightest years, presides over Bloomington Early Music. Dana Marsh serves as chair of the Jacobs School’s Early Music Department and director of its Historical Performance Institute. It is Marsh who consolidated the ties with Early Music America.

How binding those ties will remain, says Marsh, is hard to tell right now, “but it would not be an exaggeration to say that EMA was ecstatic about what our collaboration had to offer at this point in its development, both in terms of future vision and by virtue of what our collaborative model could have to offer a variety of festival situations elsewhere….Everyone benefited equally from this venture. Bloomington gave EMA a far better forum in which to project its interest nationally than has to date been the case in either Boston or Berkley,” sites of the nation’s most prestigious early music festivals, “and at a fraction of the cost. This is especially relevant to the student groups that travelled long distances to be here, who invested heavily their time and energy. I feel we made it very much worth their while.”

Marsh also addressed the addition of streaming opportunities this year: “These provided audiences far away from Bloomington the opportunity to attend events ‘virtually.’” One of BLEMF’s “fathers,” the eminent violinist Stanley Ritchie, was in Australia during the festival but reportedly was able to watch all of the live-streamed events from there.

Barker says the season served as “a break-through moment.” Since its inception, he adds, “The festival has always been a set of partnerships – between students and faculty at IU, between community organizations, with alumni and colleagues in the profession, sometimes with regional and national ensembles, and there’s much to celebrate and admire these past 24 years. However, on a structural level, the organization wasn’t always sure-footed. This year feels different because of the alignment of interests among the partners….I feel more confident than ever that BLEMF can sustain itself.

​“It’s too early,” Barker continues, “to truly know what the significance of this year may mean. My sense, though, is that we can now build towards even greater collaborations, perhaps in partnership with major ensembles and artists, as they develop their passion projects. Bloomington’s ‘special sauce’ for artists who visit is the breathtaking resources we have at our disposal on campus and in this beautiful town. ... We’ll spend the next few months digesting and processing. We’ll plan for next year and beyond and perhaps finally get to the point where a five-year plan is a realistic proposition.”

In other words, right now, the outlook is sunny.

Gratitude and Thanks to Our 2018 Festival Partners!

5/31/2018

 
THANK YOU FOR #BLEMF18!!!

With the glow of the 2018 Bloomington Early Music Festival still present, we’re so deeply grateful to the many musicians who performed this year (more than 130 of them, a number of whom are listed here: http://www.blemf.org/performers.html,) providing the community and the world a snapshot of the astounding emerging talent in early music. YOU ARE ALL AMAZING!!!

Likewise, we extend our thanks and deep gratitude to the festival's artistic and organizational partners – Early Music America (with executive director Karin Brookes, colleagues David Wood and Dina Bash,) The Historical Performance Institute IU-JSoM (directed by Dana Marsh, who as board member of Early Music America, developed the idea of the current partnership,) JSoM Office of Entrepreneurship & Career Development (directed by Alain Barker,) the six primary community and university spaces we had access to (Auer Hall, Unitarian Universalist Church of Bloomington, First Presbyterian Church Bloomington, Ind., Trinity Episcopal Church Bloomington, Monroe County History Center, Bloomington City Hall Atrium,) among others.


Our thanks to the ensemble and project directors, who prepared, coordinated, and inspired such extraordinary performances – Grey Larsen (Old-Time Music and Dance,) Sarah Cranor (The Bloomington Bach Cantata Project,) Brady Lanier (HPI goes Pop!) Adam Dillon and Jon Wasserman (Tarara,) Michael Lynn (Oberlin Baroque,) Michael Walker and Micah Fleming (The Sacred Music Project,) Mark Cudek and Adam Pearl (B’More Bach Ensemble,) Julie Andrijeski (Case Western Reserve University Baroque Ensemble,) Adam Knight Gilbert (UCS Collegium Workshop,) Leela Breithaupt (Les Ordinaires,) and Ingrid Matthews (Festival Orchestra.) We also were thrilled to welcome and relish performances by the EMA Emerging Artists - Rumore Terribile, Mélisande McNabney, Voyage Sonique, Rachell Ellen Wong, Adriana Ruiz, and the Costanoan Trio.


We could not have dreamed of a successful festival without a few key individuals on the ground here in Bloomington – Alain Barker (president), Dana Marsh (board member), Michael Walker (our general manager), Amy Osajima (board member and treasurer), Paulina Frances (Francisco) (board member and artist liaison), Adam Dillon (board member and president of Gamma Ut - Indiana University), Reynaldo Patino (board member and manager of the Bach Cantata Project and Festival Orchestra), Aaron Cain (board member and embedded guru at WFIU), Joe Goetz, and Shelley Taylor (board member and reception coordinator); the instrument tuners Ted Robertson, David Paul Jensen, and Patrick Fischer. The list continues with the complete board (see: http://www.blemf.org/about.html,) the photography volunteers, videographers, instrument movers, and many others who made it all happen. Thank you!!

We deeply appreciate the many donors who have sustained us through the years as well – some who have been with us for almost our entire history. We would not be able to follow our passion for early music without you!

Lastly, we’d like to recognize our media partners WFIU Public Radio (Rick Brewer, Joe Goetz, George Walker), IU Music Live, the Jacobs School of Music Audio Engineering and Sound Production, and Community Access TV Services at the Monroe County Public Library (Indiana), who have truly taken the festival to the ‘next level’, opening up a path for us to share festival delights with many thousand online friends and radio listeners. The Herald-Times, likewise, has been enormously helpful with great articles and announcements, especially through the legendary journalist Peter Jacobi's weekly classical music columns and multiple reviews.

With the live festival events completed, we look forward to revisiting the extraordinary performances online and on radio stations around the country over the next few months.
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For updates and announcements, please visit our website and sign up on our email list. Announcements will also be added to this Facebook page on a regular basis!

BLEMF concerts display wealth of early music talent

5/29/2018

 
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com
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For all of its 25 years, thriving ones or lean, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, or BLEMF as we more fondly call it, has been heavily peopled by the young. Those who pushed for such a festival back in 1994 were young.

They were students in what was then called Indiana University’s Early Music Institute, now the Historical Performance Institute. Waiting to take the stage were talents in abundance, and when the festival became reality, they stepped forward. What’s more: loyal alums, many of them in the developing portion of their careers, seemed equally inclined to step in for moments in the festival spotlight; they did so, coming from nearby and far away.

More mature talents were hired to round out the roster, but the look and feel of BLEMF was always budding and buoyant. And who could mind that when the results were, most of the time, so positive?

Well, this current 25th BLEMF, striving to make a strong impression of come-back after several leaner years designed for rebuilding, features an even more dominant footprint of youth. That’s because those who put the festival together — the IU Jacobs School of Music, its Historical Performance Institute, and Bloomington Early Music (dominanant figures in the field combined to preserve BLEMF) — got themselves a new partner.

Early Music America, a national organization with the aim of promoting the performance and study of early music, signed up to bring its Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase to Bloomington as part of BLEMF 2018. So, a number of concerts have been devoted to highlighting young talents nationwide — individuals and ensembles — to enlarge the presence of blossoming talent.

Two ensembles performed in consecutive events at First Presbyterian Church Thursday afternoon: The IU-formed and developed Tarara and the Oberlin Baroque. Both declared that, indeed, there is a wealth of talent coming along to give validity and glamor to an endeavor that, through the use of period instruments and performance practices, seeks to more closely tie music’s past to the present and, in reverse, the present to its past. We are shown how music from long ago must have sounded when played in historic style on instruments of the time. In reverse, we can learn what music of more recent eras and even today might sound like when voiced by those old instruments (results can surprise!).

Tarara — an ensemble of 11, some who sing, some who play period instruments, some who do both — focused on late 15th to early 17th century vocal music from Spain and the New World. The repertoire included both sacred and secular pieces: a gorgeous “Ave Maria,” gentle reflections on nature, sharper reactions to people encountered, and humorous tales taken from the imagination and real life.

The five Tarara members who sang — sopranos Paulina Francisco and Lucy Wortham, tenor Gregorio Taniguchi, and basses Danur Kvilhaug and Jonathan Wasserman — made one believe the concert was then, not now, so keen seemed their sense of period. The two basses brought along their guitar and lute expertise. From the remaining musicians (Reynaldo Patino, Adam Dillon, Stephen Nosko, Charles Wines, Sarah Lodico Wines, and Beth Garfinkel) came the music’s other instrumental requirements, exotic exhalations from violin, recorder, sackbut, bagpipes, viola da gamba, percussion, and organ. Dillon and Wasserman directed the ensemble, with faculty advice from Dana Marsh, one of BLEMF 2018’s architects.

Oberlin Baroque, a group of 10 directed by Michael Lynn, proved an extremely gifted set of musicians focused on instrumental music. To prove a point made earlier, that new music played on old instruments can provide a notable experience, a recorder player from the Ohio contingent, Peter Lim, and guitarist Craig Slagh, performed two pieces by Astor Piazzolla, “Café 1930” and “Bordel 1900.” The results were quite wonderful: sensuous in the café visit and deliciously playful for the bawdier place: Lim made of his recorder a flirtatious coloratura; Slagh not only strummed his guitar but struck it with fervor. The music was renewed via the old.

​As for bringing the past into the present: that was much in evidence, as:

• Lim and fellow recorder artists Jonathan Seamon and Kelsey Burnham, along with Matt Bickett on chamber organ and Leonardo Marques Ferreira Lima on viola da gamba, warbled and splashed through Henry Purcell’s “Three Parts on a Ground.”
• Violist da gamba Lima joined two fellow violists, Ruby Brallier and Chris Labman, in stunning unity zipped through Marin Marais’ “Pieces pour trios violes, Livre IV.”
• Organist Bickett masterfully negotiated Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Major, BWV 541.
• Violist Labman, in concert with cellist Jessica Korotkin and harpsichordist Abe Ross, fervently and also with commendable finesse added Jean Baptiste Barriere’s “Sonate pour le Violoncelle, Avec la Basse Continue, Livre 3, No. 4” to the ensemble’s afternoon program.
• And, Baroque flutist Kelsey Burnham joined violist Brallier, cellist Korotkin, and harpsichordist Rose for a nifty reading of Georg Philipp Telemann’s Concerto in B Minor, TWV 43:h3.

Early music festival's conclusion a glorious success

5/29/2018

 
By Peter Jacobi - Bloomington Herald Times

A pair of programs on Sunday brought the Bloomington Early Music Festival to an end, and successfully so. Beefed by the inclusion of young artists sponsored by Early Music America, the national organization committed to the furthering of early music scholarship and performance practices, BLEMF — over a 10-day period — managed to present a treasury of concerts.

On Sunday afternoon in Trinity Episcopal Church, Les Ordinaires, an ensemble devoted to use of 17th- and 18th-century instruments (copies thereof), continued a series of festival programs fixed on French repertoire here, more specifically, on “Birth of the Flute: Songs with and without Words.”

That meant a spotlight on the flutist in the group, Leela Breithaupt, a virtuoso on the baroque instrument and Les Ordinaires’ director. For one span of about 20 minutes, she tooted and tweeted and released long and longing tones through Michel Pignolet de Monteclair’s “Premier Concert pour la flute traversiere,” a series of 13 short pieces: airs, gigues, minuets, rondeaus, and such. She never faltered; her lips and fingers conquered a gargantuan exercise, romping and floating and coursing through very challenging music.

Breithaupt continued to be tonally prominent during Monteclair’s “Premier Suite from Brunetes ancienes et modernes,” an eight-piece collection topped by the expressive soprano voice of Minnesota-based Carrie Henneman Shaw, tasked with anguishing through tales of misbegotten love. Shaw added Monteclair’s take on the Ariadne and Bacchus misadventures in mythology, another test of endurance for her voice. She endured without problem.

Through much of the afternoon concert, the ensemble’s other musicians — violinist Allison Nyquist, violist da gamba Erica Rubis, and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour – were asked to enrich the performance and surely did. More Monteclair and an air by Jacques Hotteterre filled out the program.

In the evening

The evening festival finale in Auer Hall featured the Festival Orchestra and a series of outstanding soloists in German and Italian music of the baroque. It was performed in memory of the late Victor Harnack, a Bloomingtonian-in-retirement who gave immeasurable assistance to BLEMF in times of need. Friend Victor would have gloried in Sunday’s music.

A star in the early music firmament, the wonderful Ingrid Matthews, an alumna of IU’s Jacobs School and early participant in BLEMF events, returned from her now Seattle-based life to both direct the orchestra and add a solo highlight. That highlight was Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto Number 2 in G Minor, “Summer,” one of the composer’s “of course it’s Vivaldi” gallops, delightful to listen to and a humdinger to play. My, how Matthews played it!

More Vivaldi, the Concerto in B Minor, called upon cellist Kevin Flynn and a quartet of violinists from the orchestra (Maria Romero, Reynaldo Patino, Micah Fleming and Anna Maberry) to move front and center for their chance to vanquish the Vivaldi tests. They, too, distinguished themselves.

George Frideric Handel was represented by his Suite in G Major and a scene from the opera “Alcina.” The suite, in five movements either ornamented or stately, put the splendid 16-member orchestra to work and, as a concert opener, set the high quality tone for all that followed. The “Alcina” excerpt, an interplay involving Alcina (Paula Francisco), Ruggiero (Kia Marie Frank, and Bradamante (Elijah McCormack), as sung, correctly captured the flavor of bantering.

Soprano McCormack returned to the stage, took an almost motionless position, assumed an attitude of accepted sorrow, and let his voice create tragedy, that of Orfeo grieving the loss of his beloved Eurydice in Luigi Rossi’s early 17th-century version of the tale: Suicide is contemplated as a means for reunion with her in death. McCormack’s interpretation, never overwrought, was stunning. This young soprano is turning out to be a very special artist.

Jory Vinikour, on harpsichord, took on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto Number 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052. In a brilliant performance, he produced lyric sorrow during the concerto’s middle movement, an Adagio, but inconceivably furious, fast, and florid masses of notes in the surrounding Allegros. Breathtaking.
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Sunday’s program ended with the Concerto Grosso in D Major by Arcangelo Corelli, most of its pages — like Vivaldi’s — filled with quicksilver, pump-and-saw passages. With violinist Matthews at the helm, the orchestra grasped hold of the music’s technical dares and vanquished them. We had good music right to the end.

Early Music America concerts display talents of young, emerging artists

5/29/2018

 
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com

Early Music America’s contribution to this year’s Bloomington Early Music Festival came to an end with three concerts on Saturday, two in the afternoon fulfilling the promise of introducing collegiate ensembles purveying the best in early music performance, one in the evening featuring remarkably gifted artists invading today’s concert halls to exhibit their talents.

In the afternoon

Case Western Reserve University’s Baroque Chamber Ensemble — a collective of seven instrumentalists and three singers keenly directed by Julie Andrijeski — continued the festival’s focus on French music, offering two works of space and substance: Francois Couperin’s “La Piemontoise” from “Les Nations” and “Pyrame et Thisbe,” a cantata by Michel Pignolet de Monteclair.

The Couperin is a chamber work for four (here, violinists Alan Choo and Guillermo Salas Suarez, cellist Eva Lymenstull and harpsichordist Michael Quinn) that received, as needed, a muscular and energetic reading which might be described as historically attuned jam session. Any sleepy listener would have been aroused.

The cantata retells the mythological tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, lovers doomed in life to be misguided into suicides but, thanks to relenting gods, reunited in death as embracing parts of nature. The lovers, in the Pignolet score, are given their measures of arias and duets, accomplished nicely by soprano Sarah Coffman and tenor Nathan Dougherty. The most extensive role, however, was that of the narrator who weaves the story; it was powerfully performed by bass Daniel Fridley, he of a thrillingly deep and beefy voice and dramatic bent. Ensemble members Alice Culin-Ellison (violin), Sophie Benn (cello), and Peter Bennett (harpsichord) furnished the instrumental backdrop in supportive fashion.

Program number two on Saturday afternoon brought a visit from the University of Southern California Collegium Workshop and its director, Adam Knight Gilbert. They offered “O virgo splendens: Devotional Music of Iberia,” music from the 13th, 14th and early 17th centuries of mostly a devotional nature. The program was intended to emphasize the continuity of this music and did.
One heard music of highly emotional quality, passionate in expression whether dolorous or exuberant, full-bodied vocally or whining, concerned with mortality and the hereafter or matters romantic. Over an hour or more, the music cast a hypnotic spell that carried the listener along embroiled in a whirlwind of song.

The collegium’s singers were superb: three women who could switch their instrumens from pure to coarse (Maria Hernandez, Rachelle Romero and Marylin Winkle) and countertenor Jae Hwan Kim. Several of the singers doubled as instrumentalists, but there were full-timers engaged with non-vocal aspects of these Spanish songs: Jason Yoshida, vihuela and percussion; Erin Young, baroque guitar and lute, and collegium director Gilbert, recorder and percussion.

In the evening

The day ended with a final Emerging Artists Showcase, once more divided into three parts: for violinist, soprano/harpsichord duo and piano trio.

Violinist Rachell Ellen Wong, an IU Jacobs School alum, contributed a half hour of virtuosity as she focused on 18th-century Italian violinist and composer Giuseppe Tartini and two musicians who were indebted to him, Italian violinist/composer Bartolomeo Campagnoli as student and German violinist/pianist/composer Friedrich Wilhelm Rust as one influenced. All of her recital was for violin solo, no accompaniment, either because the composer wrote the music so or the performer changed it.

Campagnoli’s Larghetto and Fugue, Opus 10, No. 5, gave soloist Wong a chance to reveal both the warmth and then brilliance of her playing. The Rust Sonata No. 1 also proved a showcase for her technical strengths. As a windup, Wong turned to two movements from Tartini’s famous/back then “infamous” Violin Sonata in G Minor, the “Devil’s Trill.” She was quite wonderful in all she played from it but also remarkable negotiating that “trill’ section in the concluding Allegro assai. Wong is an accomplished artist, in every way an EMA “emerging artist” to watch and seek out.

Soprano Adriana Ruiz, in collaboration with harpsichordist Benjamin Katz, next on the program, apparently for reason of time, cut down their set of songs by the 17th-century female composer Barbara Strozzi; the pace of the music made recognizing the cuts difficult.

Ruiz proved, however, that she has the natural and trained soprano voice to focus on Strozzi’s heart-gripping songs. And she joined, with impact, the chorus of musicians seeking to prove that Strozzi, though now increasingly recognized, is still not sufficiently regarded as a composer of importance. Strozzi’s songs about love endured, love longed for, love betrayed and love glorified are potently expressed in songs that echo the sentiments embedded in their ardent words. Soprano Ruiz proved herself an equally ardent disciple.

The program concluded with the Costanoan Trio, musicians who hail from the San Francisco area and decided a year ago they were meant to play together. Of that, they gave ample proof on Saturday evening. Cynthia Black is the ensemble’s soulful violinist, Frederic Rosselet its resonant tone-producing cellist and Derek Tam its fortepianist of the beguiling fingers. Late 18th-century music for piano trio was the object of their preference.

That meant impressive forays into the Piano Trio in C Major of Anton Reicha and Sonata in D Major of Luigi Boccherini, both contemporaries of the dominating figure of the era, Beethoven. That meant, then, happy to say, endearing attention to Beethoven’s Piano Trio in G Major, Opus 1, No. 2, a graceful, richly lyric and notes-laden piece, all joy and subdued spectacle.
The trio exhibited artistic personality and musical excellence; there can be little doubt about its path to success.

An amazing array of talent devoted to early music in Friday BLEMF performances

5/29/2018

 

By Peter Jacobi | H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com May 27, 2018
Early Music America, visiting partner in the programming offered by the Bloomington Early Music Festival, continued to have a significant impact on what audiences saw and heard on Friday.

​Pledged to promote the study of and the performance opportunities in early music, often now called historical performance, EMA made BLEMF its 2018 site of preference: the event at which to stage its annual Young Performers Festival and Emerging Artists Showcase.

In the afternoon, at Trinity Episcopal Church, another collegiate ensemble was featured, on this occasion the Peabody Conservatory’s B’More Bach Ensemble. In the evening, for the showcase, the headliners were a recorder-viola da gamba duo called Rumore Terribile, harpsichordist Melisande McNabney and a Juilliard School-originated ensemble, Voyage Sonique.

All proved there’s an amazing array of talent around devoted to early music; what one heard was impressive. However, in the evening, each also proved to be a rule breaker. Reportedly, the musicians were told to hold their portion of that concert to 20 minutes. Instead, each portion exceeded 40. In sum, and without official breaks, that was more than a number of audience members could take. There were departures, a shame for those who performed late.
Still, the musical values exhibited on Friday could not be doubted.

The afternoon

Peabody’s B’More Bach Ensemble consists of seven musicians, all graduate students at the institute. They spent the afternoon focused on Bach, of course, but also his important contemporary, Georg Philipp Telemann.

The Telemann pieces, Paris Quartet No. 2 in A Minor and Trietto No. 1 in G Major, were happy, gentle items, typical of the composer’s chamber music. Sets of four played them with clarity and a fine sense of line. The flute was each work’s featured instrument, one for the Paris Quartet, two for the Trietto. Sara Lynn tackled both with remarkable agility and lungs capable of the long haul. JT Mitchell served as her partner in the Trietto and totally held his own.

The four Bach selections included three vocal, which cast soprano Katelyn Aungst and baritone William Marshall into starring roles. From BWV 21 “Ich hatte viel Bekummernis” (“I Had Much Affliction”), the two joined for a duet expressing dependency on Jesus (“Come, my Jesus, and restore and delight with your glance”). Their voices vividly took on the emotion. From BWV 51 “Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen” (“Exult in God in Every Land”), soprano Aungst sang “Highest, renew your goodness every morning from now on.” Again, her voice captured the pleading, tearful nature of the aria’s message. The two then combined to unleash the fear and trembling addressed in “Crack open, heaven; tremble, world. Descend into my lament,” from the “St. John Passion.”

Flutist Lynn was joined by violinist Stephanie Zimmerman, cellist Matt Gabriel and harpsichordist Paula Maust for a carefully balanced and lyrically toned reading of Bach’s Trio Sonata in G Major, BWV 1038.

The evening

“Rumore Terribile,” a duo of two years standing, brings together the gifts of Martin Bernstein on recorders and Salome Gasselin on viola da gamba. Bernstein adds acting occasionally to his bag of tricks. It looked as if he can on Friday, but speaking without microphone and often diminishing his interpretation to near whispers, much of what he uttered was lost to this listener. It’s a complaint I frequently share after listening to musicians (and others) talk from the Auer stage.
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The two performed a program of French and British music, 17th- and early 18th-century works by Louis and Francois Couperin, Jean-Marie Leclair, Marin Marais, Humphrey Salter, and Matthew Locke. The Italian composer and lutenist Andrea Falconieri snuck into the list with a soft, soothing melody of his. Bernstein and Gasselin make for a compelling duo. Their technical mastery of the instruments is first rate; they work in comfortable unison, and they seem to believe strongly in the music they play.

Harpsichordist Melisande McNabney delivered an all-French program of exquisite delicacy and elegance, some of it consisting of works she has transcribed. One heard music of Jean-Henri d’Anglebert, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Jean-Baptiste Lully and Antoine Forqueray. Her keyboard technique is formidable. Her taste is appropriately refined. Her sense of period is assured. Her conception of the music is on point. She well should be an artist on the rise.
​
Leclair, Francois Couperin and Marin Marais — more French fare — provided the substance for Voyage Sonique’s concert-closing segment. This group — violinists Augusta McKay Lodge and Jeffrey Girton, cellist Keiran Campbell and harpsichordist Robert Warner — played mostly as full ensemble. Its usual theorbo player had to miss the festival and was replaced by the eminent locally based Dusan Balarin, who fit right in.

In the ensemble’s playing, one could hear strong interpretive inclinations: a more formal yet intimate Sunday concert feel for Leclair’s Trio Sonata No. 1 in D Minor; a dreamy nature in Couperin’s “Le Parnasse ou L’apothetique de Corelli”; a haunting quality in Marais’ Chaconne from “Semele” and subtleties of presentation in Couperin’s Les Concerts Royaux No. 4. All were performed superbly; the musicians really appeared to belong.

CELEBRATING BLOOMINGTON’S BICENTENNIAL WITH OLD-TIME MUSIC AND DANCE

5/2/2018

 
PictureThe Hogwire String Band
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 4, 2018


In honor of the City of Bloomington’s bicentennial, the Bloomington Early Music Festival will bring together leading instrumentalists, singers, dancers and speakers in a concert, May 20, to celebrate old-time, rural-style folk music and dance traditions in the community. In addition, the festival will offer a workshop and presentation of local old-time music field recordings on May 19.

The three events are part of the upcoming Bloomington Early Music Festival, which runs from May 18-27 in multiple performance locations, in multiple Bloomington locations. For information on the complete festival of 20 events (all free to the public), visit http://blemf.org.

THE CONCERT

Old-Time Music and Dance in Bloomington: Past & Present
When: Sunday, May 20 at 7pm
Where: Unitarian Universalist Church, Bloomington
2120 N Fee Ln, Bloomington, IN 47408


Featured bands from the Bloomington area will be Brad Leftwich and the Hogwire Stringband (with Sam Bartlett, Abby Ladin and Linda Higginbotham), The Nailbenders (Grey Larsen, Mark Feddersen and Cindy Kallet) and Jamie Gans & Friends (with Brad Leftwich, Sam Bartlett and Grey Larsen). Special guest Dillon Bustin will perform traditional old-time folk songs of Bloomington and the region. Tamara Loewenthal will call and demonstrate a contra/square dance with selected dancers. Abby Ladin, Tamara Loewenthal and Malke Rosenfeld will add their percussive dancing talents to the program.

The evening will include The Nailbenders’ tribute to Joe Dawson (1928-2012), a Bloomington fiddler who for decades passed along his traditional Monroe/Brown County old-time musical legacy to members of the community.
​

Several speakers, including Dillon Bustin, Teri Klassen and Alan Burdette, will shed light upon local old-time music traditions, resources, and tradition-bearers such as fiddlers Lotus Dickey (namesake of the Lotus World Music and Arts Festival) and Strawberry McCloud.

The evening is supported in part by the Bloomington Old Time Music and Dance Group. 

PictureCindy Kallet and Grey Larsen
THE WORKSHOP

       
Old-Time Music – The Legacy of Joe Dawson
            led by Grey Larsen, Cindy Kallet, and Mark Feddersen
        When: Saturday, May 19, from 10am-12pm
        Where: Monroe County History Museum 
        ​     202 E 6th St, Bloomington, IN 47408

Bloomington fiddler Joe Dawson (1928-2012) carried and shared a treasured repertoire of traditional Monroe and Brown County old-time music. He learned these fiddle tunes from his grandfather, as well as other family members and neighbors, while living on the Elkinsville-area family farm, which is now beneath the waters of Lake Monroe. The workshop leaders will explore his legacy, introduce his music, and teach some of his tunes to all who would like to learn them. Bring your musical instrument. Audio recording is welcome, for personal use only (no posting online please).

For more on Joe Dawson, see https://greylarsen.com/resources/joe-dawson/.



PictureJoe Dawson
FIELD RECORDING PRESENTATION

        The Legacy of Fiddler Joe Dawson
           presented by Alan Burdette (director, Archives of Traditional Music) and Grey Larsen
        When: Saturday, May 19, 1pm
        Where: Hoagy Carmichael Room, IU Archives of Traditional Music
        ​    Morrison Hall, Indiana University

The presenters will describe and play samples from the large collection of Joe Dawson field recordings that Larsen made, curated and donated to the Archives. The collection also includes photos, video and other documents, and represents one of the most important collections of local traditional music in the Archives’ holdings. 

For more on Joe Dawson, see https://greylarsen.com/resources/joe-dawson/.


Postlude: We are excited to also announce that, in the fall of 2018, Grey Larsen and Cindy Kallet will be partnering with young violinists within the Monroe County Public Schools and pedagogues from the Bloomington area to teach Joe Dawson’s local traditional fiddle music.

About the 2018 Bloomington Early Music Festival

Marking its 25th year, the Bloomington Early Music Festival is grateful to a number of key partners, including the Historical Performance Institute (HPI) at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and Early Music America, which brings to town its innovative series of performances by emerging artists and college ensembles across the United States and Canada. This year’s festival overlaps with the third annual conference on Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity, presented by the HPI, under the guidance of its director, Dana Marsh. For more information, please visit http://blemf.org. Sponsors for the festival include WFIU Public Radio, the City of Bloomington, and the IU Arts and Humanities Council.
Information about performances and activities surrounding the Festival this year can be found online via blemf.org and on social media. For more information, please contact the festival organizers at office@blemf.org.

FESTIVAL PARTNERS

  • Bloomington Early Music supports, encourages, and produces historically informed performance arts in Bloomington and South Central Indiana.
  • Early Music America serves and strengthens the early music community in North America through grants, scholarships, and resources that help everyone in the field at any level to explore, engage, and connect with early music and one another.
  • IU Historical Performance Institute at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music offers students the highest standard of instrumental and vocal training along with a thorough grounding in the academic reference tools of the profession – comprehensive theoretical, critical, historiographical and practical skills: to study, interpret, and perform period-specific music of the past millennium through to the early twentieth century.
  • WFIU Public Radio serves south-central Indiana with cultural programming and NPR News. WFIU also extends the educational mission of Indiana University across America and beyond as the producer and distributor of programs including Harmonia. For more than two decades, Harmonia has been a chief destination for early music on dozens of U.S. broadcast outlets, and online at harmoniaearlymusic.org.

Herald Times' Peter Jacobi Discusses the Upcoming Festival

4/10/2018

 
Picture

By Peter Jacobi H-T Columnist | 
Apr 8, 2018The folks who have been working the past few years to rebuild BLEMF, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, made known some of their plans for BLEMF 2018 a couple of weeks ago. The nine-day event (May 18-27), marking the 25th anniversary since the founding of the festival, will bring us a series of what look to be outstanding programs featuring locals and artists from elsewhere: fortepianist Robert Levin, the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project, Costanoan Trio, violinist Ingrid Matthews, harpsichordists Melisande McNabney and Jory Vinikour, soprano Adriana Ruiz, violinist Rachel Wong, the Festival Orchestra, the Festival Sacred Music Project, Historical Performance Institute Goes POP, Les Ordinaires, and Rumore Terribile. Some are familiar to me; others not.

The developers and presenters, BLEMF (through Bloomington Early Music) and IU’s Historical Performance Institute, have achieved a partnership with the prestigious institution Early Musical America that will result in a series of concerts featuring emerging early music artists and college ensembles from the U.S. and Canada; three days of programs will bring us competition-winning young artists and student ensembles not only from the Jacobs School but Case Western, Oberlin, the University of Southern California, and Peabody. The festival will also take prominent note of Bloomington’s Bicentennial celebration, reach into the city’s folk music past, and tie into a national conference on “Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity,” to be held on the IU campus.

Dana Marsh, head of the Historical Performance Institute (HPI) and instrumental in achieving the tie with Early Music America (EMA), says: “This festival marks a milestone in BLEMF’s fulfillment of serving as an artistic catalyst for the Bloomington community. With the presence of EMA, BLEMF, and HPI, we bring together three dynamic visions, all of which are complementary and share a particular interest in education. This summer’s BLEMF extravaganza will fulfill important educational aims for all three organizations, and those overlapping benefits will be shared among all who attend or participate.
“Speaking for the three organizing institutions, respectively,” adds Marsh, “I think it’s safe to say that this year’s festival is our ‘next step’ in the progress of long-term growth and service. It is my sincerest hope that listeners will emerge from performances having reveled in the realization that there is an astonishing and incredible future for our profession, one evinced through the ingenuity, creativity, and artistic excellence of great performers united in their dedication to bring great music from our past vividly to life in our present.”

Alain Barker, who ran BLEMF in its previous glory years and now serves as president of Bloomington Early Music, says, in looking ahead: “At essence, the festival is keeping close to its values, while exploring new opportunities, collaborations, and partnerships. At its core, BLEMF celebrates artistry in Bloomington, the extraordinary legacy of historical performance at IU, and the abundance of talent and innovation in young musicians who shape our collective future. In addition, we’re excited by the bi-centennial project and intend to grow this aspect of the festival in future years by exploring and collaborating with different parts of our wonderful community.”
​

I’m excited.

THE BLOOMINGTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES MAJOR COLLABORATION WITH EARLY MUSIC AMERICA

3/21/2018

 
Picture
For Immediate Release | Bloomington, Ind. | March 22, 2018

The Bloomington Early Music Festival (BLEMF) and the Historical Performance Institute (HPI) at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music are pleased to announce a major partnership with Early Music America (EMA) this year that includes an innovative series of performances by emerging artists and college ensembles from across the United States and Canada.

Marking 25 years since the founding of the Bloomington Early Music Festival, this year’s celebration overlaps with the third annual conference on Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity, presented by the HPI, under the guidance of its director, Dana Marsh. The Festival will host the founding of a national network of collegiate EMA chapters (under the name of IU’s founding chapter, Gamma Ut), a seminar on music entrepreneurship led by prominent figures in the field, a series of community events in Bloomington that coincide with the city’s bi-centennial celebrations, and an “Early Music, Late Night” open-mic event.

“This summer’s triple-collaboration has been in the planning for two years—stimulated by a process that has nurtured a spontaneous and organic alignment of aspirations and goals contributed by all involved,” said Marsh, who also serves as a member of the BLEMF board. “We’ve emerged with a shared vision that has the potential to create new models of interaction and means of achievement within our field."


Taking place from May 18-27, 2018, the Festival will open with an informative performance by world-renowned fortepianist, Robert Levin, and will continue with a brilliant array of concerts by the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project, Costanoan Trio, Ingrid Matthews (violin), Mélisande McNabney and Jory Vinikour (harpsichord), Adriana Ruiz (soprano), Rachell Wong (violin), the Festival Orchestra, Festival Sacred Music Project, HPI goes POP!, Les Ordinaires, Rumore Terribile, and Voyage Sonique.

Embedded in the Festival will be two showcase performances of EMA Emerging Artists ​from across the US and Canada, and the EMA Young Performers Festival, a series of five concerts over three days by some of the leading early music programs around the US: Case Western Baroque Ensemble, Oberlin Baroque, USC Thornton School of Music Collegium Workshop, B'more Bach Ensemble (Peabody), and Tarara (Indiana University). Showcase performances at the Festival will be live-streamed via IUMusicLive! and all performances, exhibitions, and seminars are free and open to the public.


“It really is thrilling for EMA to be able to bring these extraordinary young musicians to Bloomington in May,” said Karin Brookes, Executive Director of Early Music America. “There is clearly a huge demand for historical performance and networking opportunities and the partnership with the Jacobs School of Music and BLEMF is a great formula for providing the complex collaborative experiences that are so valuable to musicians today.”

Celebrating the City of Bloomington’s bicentenary, audiences can look forward to a star-studded performance by local old-time musicians and dancers, a project led by multi-instrumentalist Grey Larsen. As part of the old-time music celebration, the Festival will offer a hands-on workshop that explores the legacy of local fiddler, Joe Dawson (1928-2012) and will partner with the Indiana University Archives of Traditional Music in a display and presentation of field recordings of the artist.

“We’re truly thrilled to be hosting this celebration in our community this year,” said Alain Barker, president of Bloomington Early Music. “It comes at a time of impressive growth and interest in early music, especially as we expand the concept of what it means to study and perform historical performance.” 

WFIU Public Radio, the festival’s primary media partner, will participate in the live-streaming of selected concerts, and will feature many recordings from the festival through its nationally syndicated program, Harmonia.
 
Information about performances and activities surrounding the Festival this year can be found online via blemf.org and on social media. For more information, please contact the festival organizers at office@blemf.org.

Quick links:
  • Bloomington Early Music Festival
  • Early Music America
  • IU Historical Performance Institute
  • IU Archives of Traditional Music

​About The Partners:
 
Bloomington Early Music supports, encourages, and produces historically informed performance arts in Bloomington and South Central Indiana.
 
Early Music America serves and strengthens the early music community in North America through grants, scholarships, and resources that help everyone in the field at any level to explore, engage, and connect with early music and one another.
 
The Historical Performance Institute at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music offers students the highest standard of instrumental and vocal training along with a thorough grounding in the academic reference tools of the profession – comprehensive theoretical, critical, historiographical and practical skills: to study, interpret, and perform period-specific music of the past millennium through to the early twentieth century.
 
WFIU Public Radio serves south-central Indiana with cultural programming and NPR News. WFIU also extends the educational mission of Indiana University across America and beyond as the producer and distributor of programs including Harmonia. For more than two decades, Harmonia has been a chief destination for early music on dozens of U.S. broadcast outlets, and online at harmoniaearlymusic.org.


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    Bloomington Early Music (Early Music Associates, Inc.) is a registered 5019(c)(3) not-for-profit organization whose mission encompasses catalyzing historically informed performance arts in Bloomington and South Central Indiana.

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