Blog Posts

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

3/21/2018

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:

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.

American at Versailles

1/16/2018

Alchymy Viols, in collaboration with Bloomington Early Music and Les Ordinaires, presents American at Versailles, a original ballet masque of French baroque music, dance and drama written and choreographed by Sarah Edgar, director of Chicago's Haymarket Opera.

An American on the Grand Tour encounters the exotic world of French baroque manners, dress, dance and love, guided for good and for bad by the countess. Monteclair's Pan and Syrinx, the mythological story of a woman forced to change, will be sung by soprano, Carrie Henneman-Shaw.

American at Versailles is a gift to the Central Indiana community from the Allen Whitehill Clowes Foundation, Christel DeHaan Family Foundation, Arts Council of Indiana, Bloomington Early Music and individual donors.

Free performance in Bloomington, Saturday, Feb 3, First Presbyterian Church of Bloomington, 7:30 PM

Indianapolis, Sunday, Feb 4, Cook Theater Indiana Landmarks Center , 4:00 PM

Happy Holidays

12/13/2017

Dear Friends,
The end of 2017 enables us to reflect on an incredible year of growth for Bloomington Early Music. As we join up once again with the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project, expand our reach into the community through education projects and performances, and prepare for next year’s festival, we’re pleased to share our plans with you.

> Click here to support us! <

A strategic partnership with the national organization Early Music America enables us to substantially expand the 2018 Bloomington Early Music Festival (May 18-27) by programming their Young Performers Festival and two showcase performances by artists around the US.

Significant additional partners in planning for next year’s festival are the IU Jacobs School of Music’s Historical Performance Institute and the student-led group, Gamma Ut. In all, the joint venture – that includes live streaming of select performances – will substantially boost the range of events we have to offer next May and help reinvigorate Bloomington’s reputation as an emerging center for early music in the United States.

Funding for the festival, Cantata Project, and education projects has been enhanced this year by local and state grants that allow us, for instance, to host concerts at the Wiley House for fourth-graders as they learn about Indiana history and to present Shakespeare’s Ear, a semi-staged show for kids that features performances and topic presentations inspired by Elizabethan England.

Amid continual growth, Bloomington Early Music remains dedicated to our amazing Bloomington community. With an increasing number of performances and programs in local churches, historical sites, and other architecturally inspiring spaces, we look forward to bringing the wonders of early music to you and many others for years to come.

None of our efforts to share our love of early music would be possible without gracious support from you, our donors. We are excited about what 2018 has in store for Bloomington Early Music and we invite you to build with us. Please consider us as you plan your end-of year giving.

We thank you for your generous support and look forward to seeing you at an upcoming event!

With best wishes for the Holiday Season,

Members of the Bloomington Early Music Board:
Mollie Ables, Alain Barker, Leela Breithaupt, Aaron Cain, Alison Calhoun, Adam Dilon, Micah Fleming, Paulina Francisco, Dana Marsh, Amy Osajima, Reynaldo Patino, Stanley Ritchie, Erica Rubis, Shelley Taylor, and Michael Walker.

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

9/12/2017

ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

WHEN: Sunday, September 17, from 2-3pm

WHERE: Farm Bloomington
(in the reception room towards the back)

Please join us to celebrate the success of our past year's activity and to hear about the very exciting plans in place for the 2018 Bloomington Early Music Festival that involve a collaboration with the national organization Early Music America, the Jacobs School of Music's Historical Performance Institute, and WFIU Public Radio.

If you plan to attend, please let us know by sending a note to office@blemf.org.

We hope to see you there!

BLEMF Continuing on a Promising Path

6/12/2017

By Peter Jacobi H-T Columnist

A look back and look ahead at BLEMF, the Bloomington Early Music Festival, seems in order.

It’s encouraging that this Maytime event, for which so many folks showed deep devotion but which all but succumbed to financial burdens, appears to be on a new road leading with clear purpose to manageable and artistically promising goals.

BLEMF 2017’s five-day presence, extended by a Historical Performance Institute Conference that included several concerts open to the public, already proved a dramatic step toward the old festival that stretched with a full schedule of events from the pre-Memorial Day weekend through that holiday weekend, about 10 days. Plans call for coming even closer to what once was when May 2018 rolls around. Not all is to be as it was, however; there are reasons for change, and what the board at Bloomington Early Music is seeking to move to involves different dimensions of collaboration and focus.

For someone who has been engaged as a customer/fan/supporter of the BLEMF of previous years, 2017 should have afforded satisfactions. In former days, there were alliances with Indiana University’s School of Music, more specifically, Early Music Institute alums who distinguished themselves and, through loyalty, returned to Bloomington to perform. However, there were also performances given by world class artists and ensembles that had little or no direct ties to the university or local scene but came by invitation, considering the acceptance as another opportunity to do their thing at an event becoming one of national, even international prominence.

That meant, of course, the festival ran on a budget, certainly tight yet pieced together with contributions, grants and ticket sales that allowed for the participants to be paid, probably not enormous sums but large enough, also adding in BLEMF’s increasing importance, to make the accepted invite worthwhile.

Since revival efforts stirred in the past few years, the talent has been mostly homegrown: Jacobs School faculty, student groups, nearby alums and others of talent who also live not far away. That has meant performers perfectly willing to perform for little or no pay. And that has allowed those who run the festival to open the concerts free of charge, a way to keep customers coming.

This year, compensation and such matters, according to Alain Barker, for 10 years executive director of the Bloomington Early Music Festival at its zenith and now board member of Bloomington Early Music, the town/gown organization promoting the festival and assorted complementing activities such as the ongoing Bloomington Bach Cantata Project, were handled this way: “Thanks to contributions from individuals, we were able to cover travel and a small honorarium for our visiting musicians, pay for festival expenses such as hall use, programs, marketing, and etcetera. The support for emerging musicians in the festival is taken seriously, and we made efforts this year to include them in career development activity through the Jacob School’s Office of Entrepreneurship and Career Development, of which I’m the director, profile them on the website, and promote their performances via social media.”

The extension of Early Music availabilities close to BLEMF came courtesy of a Historical Performance Institute Conference on Theory, Practice, and Intedisciplinarity, put together by another Bloomington Early Music board member, Dana Marsh, director of Jacobs’ Historical Performance Institute. That tie will be strengthened next season, if plans work out, and it sounds as if they will, for the organization and magazine called Early Music America to bring its Early Music America Young Performers Festival to Bloomington. In the past this event has seesawed between the Boston and the Berkley festivals. That, of course, would add a number of performances, thereby extending the enrichment to be like the Maytime Early Music days of old.

Barker expressed optimism brought on by this year’s “robust” audience. He explained: “I’m estimating an increase of around 15 to 20 percent. That resurgence in interest gives me a sense that the project of revival is up and running once again. The most important thing for us now is to keep growing in a creative, innovative, and sustainable way. As we look toward next year and a relationship with Early Music America, we’ll be focusing on our base of support, individuals and partners who we would love to work with long term, such as the Historical Performance Institute, WFIU, organizations in the region, and sponsors.”

If you read my Herald-Times reviews of the concerts last month, you’ll be aware that I expressed pleasure for what I heard: from truly distinguished alums like violinist Ingrid Matthews, harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, flutist Colin St. Martin, and viola da gamba player Liam Byrne; from Bloomington Early Music board member and flute/traverso specialist Leela Breithaupt and the violin/fortepiano duo of Jessica Park and Ji-Young Kim; from Jacobs School students Curtis Pavey (harpsichord), Kathryn Summersett (soprano), and Michael Walker (countertenor); from all who delivered a delightful program of French love songs from centuries of long ago; from students past and students present performing in honor of viola da gamba pioneer teacher and performer Wendy Gillespie on her retirement from IU; from those taking part in the closing program given by the Bloomington Early Music Festival Orchestra, and others that I may or may not have mentioned along the way. There was much good to be heard during BLEMF 2017, and I was happy to have it for my listening.

There’s looking ahead now to 2018 for more of the homegrown again, and more of the visitors, and, one hopes, the Early Music America up-and-comers, and some big timers, together on a more extended schedule. The future holds promise.

BLEMF means much to quite a few area devotees. One of them, my oft concert-attending colleague Janis Starcs, former owner and retired proprietor of Caveat Emptor, the city’s foremost used-book-store-on-the-square, also former BLEMF board member, sent me a message just before BLEMF 2017 got underway. I share it with you:

“While I am typing this, I am listening to WFIU playing Brahms’ Third Symphony with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Back when I started listening to Early Music, it was the poor stepchild of the music world and condescended to as the refuge of amateur and second-rate musicians. Karajan forbade his orchestra from hiring Harnoncourt and conducted Vivaldi more like Mantovani than anything we would recognize today. Now, Simon Rattle has been employing historically informed style and can tell the difference between Mozart and Mahler. Harnoncourt made recordings at the Concertgebouw. Early Music luminaries are guest conducting orchestras in Chicago, Boston, Vienna, and elsewhere.

“We now have alumni teaching at Juilliard, once a bastion of reaction,” Janis continues. “There are still people who have not yet gotten the message, notably among vocalists and some string players, but we have arrived. There is still the problem of funding, but that is probably true for all the arts these days. The recording industry keeps finding new composers and historical repertoire, and is turning out more high quality product than I can afford to keep up with. Forty years ago, each significant new recording was news. How many people of a certain age were blown away by Harnoncourt’s Monteverdi Vespers or the Ulsamer Collegium’s Praetorius ‘Terpsichore’ as I was? These are heady times.”

Surely, my friend and music lover Janis Starcs is pleased that BLEMF is back. He went to every performance this past May, and he’s yearning for more.

Contact Peter Jacobi at pjacobi@heraldt.com.

Review: Sunday concerts bring BLEMF to a satisfying close

5/30/2017

Review: Sunday concerts bring BLEMF to a satisfying close
By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com

Two interesting Sunday programs completed the extended weekend of Bloomington Early Music Festival concerts, leaving this listener, and undoubtedly many others, gladly ready to wait for more of the same in the future.

A violin-fortepiano duo twosome

Chronologically, the musical bill of fare moved forward, closer to our days, on Sunday afternoon when the Duo Park-Kim (violinist Jessica Park and fortepianist Ji-Young Kim) offered a sanctuary-filling BLEMF audience in St. Thomas Lutheran Church a program of music by Schubert and Mozart.

Schubert was the women’s first object of attention, as they played his Violin Sonata in A Minor and transcriptions for violin of two of the composer’s songs, “Die Gebusche” (“The Bushes”) and “Nacht und Traume” (“Night and Dreams”).

The sonata is in pure Schubert form, with the expected moods and tempos included. He can surprise a listener, however, if just by following descriptions of movement titles. Take the A Minor’s opening Allegro moderato. The music is very much Allegro but not so much Moderato. “Whatever,” as they say these days. The sonata contains highly attractive music, and the visiting duo treated it with loyalty to Schubertian and period style. As played on Sunday, one could imagine hearing both it and the quietly spellbinding songs being performed at one of the composer’s intimate Schubertiades, very much in tune with the times.

Mozart’s A Major Violin Sonata, K.526, should be retitled Violin and Piano for the balanced attention the composer gives to both instruments. It is a joyous piece with a show-off closing Presto that the two musicians treated with proper and bravos-inducing ebullience.

And then, an orchestra

Under the direction and with the participation of two former BLEMF stars, violinist Ingrid Matthews and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, the festival came to an auspicious end Sunday evening in Auer Hall, with a program of very different works by very different composers.

An orchestra of 21 members had been gathered to be used in shifting numbers to play music by composers well known and virtually unknown who worked in the 17th and 18th centuries.

The British Henry Purcell received early attention through the presentation of a suite of incidental music written for a 17th century theatrical production, “Abdelazer, or the Moor’s Revenge.” The string of airs and rondeaus and hornpipes and such was delightfully performed by an ensemble of 14 strings and harpsichord Byron Schenkman at the keyboard, he a fellow with smiling countenance and flashy finger work all evening. And to follow that Purcell gem, there came another, his Chacony in G Minor.

There had to be Bach, of course, on a festive Early Music/Historical Performance closing program. The directors Schenkman and Matthews chose the Brandenburg Concerto Number 5 in D Major, having asked flutist Colin St. Martin, violinist Clara Scholtes, violist Reynaldo Patino, and cellist Kevin Flynn to join them for what became felicitous music-making. A harpsichord cadenza, as unleashed by Schenkman, was incredible, ferociously speedy and absolutely precise, but the whole of the performance was nothing less than rewarding.

The post-intermission selections included a Baroque big-timer, Georg Philipp Telemann, but also a couple of composers about whom and their music far less is known, 17th century Italian contemporaries Camilla de Rossi and Evaristo Felice Dall’Abaco.

Telemann’s Concerto in G Major for Two Flutes, Bassoon, Strings, and Continuo gave flutists Colin St. Martin and Leela Breithaupt and bassoonist Kelsey Shilling ample chances to reveal their artistry once again in music of challenge and a most pleasant nature.

Camilla de Rossi’s Introduction and Sinfonia came from her oratorio “Il Sacrificio di Abramo,” one of four oratorios she left, all for solo voices and orchestra. What we heard required no voices, but her instrumental material, as niftily played on this closing concert, was attractive enough to make one want to hear more of the oratorio and other pieces she wrote. Distinguished lutenist Nigel North, violinists Matthews and Sarah Cranor, violist Jeffrey Smith, and cellist Christine Kyprianides (who in BLEMF’s pre-collapse years valiantly helped work to hold the festival together) collaborated in the distinctive reading of de Rossi’s music.

Sunday evening’s wind-up — given to the Veronese’s Dall’Abaco’s Concerto Grosso in D Major — brought an orchestral aggregate back to the stage, with, as soloists, violinist/director Matthews and Jessica Park (of the previously discussed Duo Park-Kim; hers was a busy day). Dall’Abaco’s Vivaldi-influenced concerto grosso packed a lyric punch and gave the ensemble, particularly the two soloists, a lovely vehicle in which to luxuriate.

Satisfying festival. The planners promise there’s more to come, but more about that later.

Weekend BLEMF Performers Deliver Splendid Shows

5/29/2017

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

The crowds have been large and enthusiastic for the Bloomington Early Music Festival series of concerts this past weekend. Here are some thoughts of mine about three events.

Friday evening

The echoing and spacious rotunda of the Monroe County Courthouse served as venue for a program of “French Love Songs in the Month of May.” These declarations of love were sung long ago, between the 13th century and the early 17th, coming from the creative spirits of Josquin des Prez to Marin Marais, just to list a couple of the more familiar composers.

What one heard and watched, thanks to the direction of a participant, Kathryn Summersett of the gleaming soprano, was a weave of compellingly attractive music, both vocal and instrumental. The concert required hardworking performers: four singers (Summersett, tenor Gregorio Taniguchi, countertenor Michael Walker and baritone David Rugger) and seven instrumentalists (violinist Maria Romero, lutenist Jon Wasserman, Charles Wines on percussion and recorder, Sarah Lodico and Brady Lanier on viols, Nicholas Burrus on harp and percussion, and Chris Burrus on viol, hurdy-gurdy, rebec and percussion).

The music, sad and joyful, both lulled and excited, coming at a listener as a river of sound, all of it falling sweetly on the ears as it swept one back in thought to those times so long ago. The singers were wonderful at their task, capturing what the music likely sounded like back then, as did the instrumentalists. The concert was a splendid example of historical performance at work, a worthy follow-through to the festival’s earlier programs.

Saturday afternoon

It was all Bach mid-Saturday in the filled sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church, four of Johann Sebastian’s sonatas requiring the virtuosities of Early Music performers well known hereabouts from previous BLEMF days and performances while they studied at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music. All of them have by now further distinguished themselves as performers elsewhere as well as in Bloomington: violinist Ingrid Matthews, flutist Colin St. Martin, cellist Shelley Taylor and harpsichordist Byron Schenkman.

Each of the sonatas chosen bears the signs of Bach, brimming as they are with counterpoint and other juicy delectations. Thanks to the BLEMF planners; they found the right artists to display them. Matthews and Schenkman are most familiar to me, after numerous concert and CD exposures. The two of them partnered for Bach’s Sonata in G Major, BWV 1019, for Violin and Harpsichord. Each had plenty of opportunities to shine, while also blending into a needed ensemble.

I’m sorry that Schenkman didn’t have a solo spot, because he knows how to make the absolute most of the harpsichord. But Matthews did get her solo, choosing the G Minor, BWV 1001, with its fugal moments and lyrical, plus a final movement made for speedy and agile fiddling. My, how Ingrid Matthews fiddled!

Schenkman joined St. Martin for the Sonata in B Minor, BWV 1030, for Flute and Harpsichord, and they made it joyful listening. St. Martin produced notes at all times perfectly on point and clear and flourishes fluid, just as one prefers to have the instrument sweetly warble.

Finally, to the front came all four musicians, this time with cellist Shelley Taylor (providing basso continuo), to play the Trio-Sonata in G Major, BWV 1039. The quartet made of it a well-knit reading and an appropriate ending to a most appealing concert.

Saturday evening

This event had an added purpose: to honor Wendy Gillespie on her retirement from the Jacobs School, where she served for influential decades and in recent years took on the directorship of the Early Music Institute, for which — among numerous other achievements — she was instrumental in organizing the Bloomington Bach Cantata Project. She is considered a viol player supreme and has set high standards for those who play the instrument. One former student present for the concert, Liam Byrne, recalled that after his senior recital, she limited her reaction to the words: “That’s the best I’ve heard you play.” He added that her strongly remembered principles for students were to believe in the music and that a musician can always do better.

The program included filmed comments from many other students and former colleagues in the concert and academic worlds. Quite a few also were in Auer Hall to address her in person and to play. So, one heard quite a bit of interesting music, very well performed on a variety of viols in different shapes and sound ranges.

Among the highlights was the above-mentioned Byrne, making his way through a solo piece by Alfonso Ferrabosco II, featuring just about every touch of trickery and surprise. Also there were loving comments from her husband of 35 years, retired Jacobs School professor and tenor Paul Elliott and — as part of an ensemble encore — a solo by alto/countertenor Michael Walker of “Unforgettable,” directly and devotedly aimed at the humble Professor Gillespie.

I congratulate her. She’s been a musical blessing here.

Music review: BLEMF Harpsichordist Curtis Pavey

5/27/2017

Music review: BLEMF Harpsichordist Curtis Pavey
BLEMF kicks off with intimate concert
By Peter Jacobi H-T Music Reviewer May 26, 2017

Wylie House Museum is a former Bloomington home with history in its sinews. It is an intimate place, and into its quarters came an intimate event Wednesday evening featuring a fine young musician playing an intimate historical instrument.

The onetime home turned more intimate when enough folks arrived to fill what must have been the entire Wylie House’s first floor: the living and dining rooms and foyer. Filled is the proper word. Those in charge kept adding chairs, and when there were no more to add, quite a few of the visitors were left to stand throughout an event lasting in excess of an hour. They did so patiently; not a one that I could see, and I sat near the front door, left before the end.

The occasion was the opening of the awaited Bloomington Early Music Festival 2017, or BLEMF as we’ve come to more intimately call it. Chosen to open the five-day, nine-event celebration was Curtis Pavey, at the moment still a master’s student in Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music and its Historical Performance Institute. He plays the piano and organ and harpsichord, the last of which he used for his Wednesday program. On that instrument, he proved himself to be an artist of considerable finish and even more promise.

Nothing he performed during his concert of delightful music from the 17th and 18th centuries, almost all of it either written by Italians or influenced by the musical styles of Italy in those centuries, lacked the necessary flavors or colors or touches or technical requirements that Baroque composers used to express themselves. Mr. Pavey may be young and may still be a master’s student, but he is already a master of the harpsichord, an instrument that asks of its users that they not only know how to smoothly use the keys but to imbue them with dollops of personality, an act far harder to accomplish, I’d say, than on the other keyboard music-makers he plays. He is an accomplished musician and contributed to his musicianship spoken comments — helpfully instructive, informal and succinct — that reinforced what he was trying to accomplish with his gifts for performing.

Pavey opened with a couple of charming toccatas by Girolamo Frescobaldi, laden with fugal enrichments, and followed them with the toccata of a German influenced by the Italians, Frescobaldi’s eminent German contemporary, Johann Jakob Froberger. To all these, Pavey gave grace and felicity. As he did to the Suite in A Minor of Louis Couperin, still another contemporary, part of whose composition honors the preceding item with a movement titled “Prelude l’imitation de Mr. Froberger,” followed with expectations of the period: an Allemande, Courante and Sarabande, all of them delivered with aplomb.

Two spirited Sonatas in A Major, K. 101 and 268, by the renowned 18th-century Italian Domenico Scarlatti, were played with bounteous verve. And then, Pavey focused on Bach, his “Italian Concerto,” towering above all the previous for its vitality and complexity. Bach described the music as “Keyboard Practice Consisting in a Concerto after the Italian Taste and an Overture after the French Manner for a Harpsichord with Two Manuals, Composed for Music Lovers to Refresh Their Spirits.”

It is all that, an attempt to imitate what an orchestra can accomplish. As such, it accomplishes quite a lot and does give the harpsichordist a profusion of challenges, all of which recitalist Pavey took excellent care of. He provided a fine reading that brought immediate cheers, fully deserved, from the audience.

His intimate concert in an intimate setting proved a pleasant way to spend a midweek evening and a promising start for BLEMF 2017.

HERALD TIMES PREVIEW: BLEMF begins May 24

5/15/2017

Music Beat

By Peter Jacobi H-T Columnist
May 14, 2017

What a satisfying task it is to announce there’s going to be another BLEMF, another Bloomington Early Music Festival. We’re moving toward the end of May, a time often reserved in our recent past for that celebration of Early Music, now more preferably referred to as Historical Performance.

Most important for me is not how this wonderful music is referred to but that zealous folks are working very hard to bring back the glories of a feast that enriched May time in Bloomington. The 2017 version of BLEMF may not yet be the equal, in length and luster, of those given us before a shutdown. But what’s coming looks highly promising, and those who’ve designed it say BLEMF 2017 is a major step toward ones contemplated. Revival is being carefully taken, so to assure success for what’s to come this month and months of May beyond.

Festival time 2017 arrives over the extended Memorial Day weekend of May 24 through 28. Ten events are scheduled, all of them free of charge and each different from the others. Planners point to the return of three favored participants from earlier years, IU Jacobs School alums who have made it big time: violinist Ingrid Matthews, harpsichordist Byron Schenkman, and flautist Colin St. Martin.

“I’m thrilled that those three remarkable musicians, headliners each, will be able to join us,” Alain Barker told me, he a figure of historical importance in the BLEMF story, having served as its executive director through 10 of its glory years, 1994 to 2004. Now director of Music Entrepreneurship and Career Development for the Jacobs School and member of the Bloomington Early Music Board, he remains instrumental in the creation of the festival’s future. “Ingrid, Byron and Colin will boost the variety and quality of our chamber and orchestral offerings,” he pointed out. “They are great talents. And we also have a celebration focused on Wendy Gillespie’s wonderful career.” She is retiring after decades of service at the Jacobs School.

According to another Bloomington Early Music Board member, Dana Marsh, director of Jacobs’ Historical Performance Institute, Wendy Gillespie “has played a vital role in the revival of the performance of the viol consort repertory during the 20th and 21st centuries, as her exemplary work with Fretwork and Phantasm, the two pre-eminent viol consorts of the past five decades, shows. Her work at IU has emphasized first-hand experience in viol consort study for students to an extent that has not been possible elsewhere in the country.” Honoring her will bring back a number of her former students.

Also being celebrated is Angela Mariani, whose WFIU produced and syndicated program “Harmonia” marks its 25th anniversary, certainly an important element of the Early Music scene here and in all the places to which it goes.

BLEMF 2017 entertainment stretches from a harpsichord concert of music by Scarlatti and Frescobaldi (performed by Curtis Pavey) and a program of French love songs from the Medieval and Renaissance periods to a Bloomington Baroque concert of sonatas and trios by Bach, a violin/fortepiano recital by the Duo Park-Kim of music by Mozart and Schubert and a “grand finale” Festival Orchestra concert featuring Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, a concerto for two flutes by Telemann (with Colin St. Martin and Leela Breithaupt as soloists), and music by Purcell, Camilla de Rossi and Dall’ Abacco, with the involvement of more soloists: violinist Matthews, harpsichordist Schenkman and lutenist Nigel North.

Yes, there’ll be the popular Instrument Petting Zoo once again. There’ll be pop-up performances around town. There’ll be a program of pop and rock songs “reimagined for early music instruments.”

Dana Marsh notes that in the days prior to the BLEMF weekend, a “Historical Performance Institute Conference on Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity” will be held, drawing scholars from all over the world, as was the case last year. “Our future plans with the conference,” Marsh explained, “involve creating educational opportunities through workshops and academy activities during the weekdays that link the two weekends. Ultimately, it will add up to one large early music event unique to our area only. A significant step in this direction will be taken next year. Early Music America and its Young Performers Festival typically alternates holding court at Boston and Berkeley early music festivals in alternating years. In 2018, rather than going to Berkeley, all that will come to Bloomington at the time of the conference and BLEMF. A great opportunity.”

Alain Barker, too, looks ahead with optimism. “Now that we’ve had a few years to regroup and it, thankfully, no longer feels like a question of survivability, going forward, we can focus on a few things that I think will provide sustainable growth. The festival continues to be the primary activity of Bloomington Early Music, and we have an opportunity, as Dana says, to expand our operations next year in partnership with both the institute and Early Music America.

“We’re delighted also,” Barker continues, “to now be the fiscal home for Bloomington’s Bach Cantata Series and look forward to assisting with the development of that project going forward. Our education projects are coming back to life. Partnerships with ensembles like Alchymy Viols and Les Ordinaires will help us produce concerts through the year. And it’s fortunate that Gamma Ut, the student organization for early music at IU, has become a close partner as we develop our projects. I believe the model we’re working on — one that connects the interests of an academic institution with the growth of a community-based not-for-profit — is proving to be very successful. I have hopes that the special relationships we’re developing will sustain us for years to come.”

I share those hopes. I believe many of us in the area do. By attending the forthcoming series of events, we can prove our interest. It is BLEMF time again.

Contact Peter Jacobi at pjacobi@heraldt.com.

Announcing the 2017 BLOOMINGTON EARLY MUSIC FESTIVAL

5/3/2017

Diverse Performances Before & During Memorial Day Weekend

The 2017 Bloomington Early Music Festival, in collaboration with the Historical Performance Institute and Gamma Ut at IU, will present a variety of exciting solo, ensemble and guest concerts in beautiful community locations. This year, the Festival plans to honor professor Wendy Gillespie in her retirement from the IU Jacobs School of Music after many years of extraordinary leadership, teaching, and mentorship.

We’re also thrilled to announce that Ingrid Matthews (violin), Byron Schenkman (harpsichord), and Colin St. Martin (flute) will be featured in two events, including the final Festival Orchestra concert.

All members of the Bloomington community and surrounding region are invited to attend the ten events planned, free of charge!

FREE EVENTS TO LOOK FORWARD TO...

Curtis Pavey: Harpsichord Works of Scarlatti and Frescobaldi
Wed, May 24, 7pm | Wylie House Museum (307 E. 2nd St.)
A concert by one of IU's emerging virtuosos, performing works by two of the most inspired and revered keyboard composers of the early Baroque: Domenico Scarlatti and Girolamo Frescobaldi.

HPI Goes POP!
Thu, May 25, 7pm | Serendipity Martini Bar (201 S College Ave)
A light-hearted program featuring beloved pop and rock songs from the past four decades, re-imagined for early music instruments. A program conceived and led by Brady Lanier.

A Reception in Celebration of WFIU-Harmonia's 25th Anniversary
Fri, May 26, 6pm | Monroe County Court House Rotunda (100 W. Kirkwood Ave)
Produced and broadcast from WFIU since 1991, Harmonia is currently in syndication across the country. Angela Mariani continues to host this popular early music radio program and podcast. Light refreshments will be provided.

L'Amour au mois de mai: French Love Songs in the Month of May
Fri, May 26, 7pm | Monroe County Court House Rotunda (100 W. Kirkwood Ave)
A Medieval and Renaissance concert featuring singers Gregorio Taniguchi, David Rugger, Michael Walker, and Kathryn Summersett, with members of the Forgotten Clefs - a Renaissance Wind Band.

Instrument Petting Zoo and Pop-Up Performances
Sat, May 27, 10am-1pm | Bloomington City Hall Atrium (401 N Morton St)
Performed by members of Gamma Ut and curated by Eric Fisher
Please Note that the Bloomington QUARRY MORRIS DANCERS will perform on the Plaza in front of the City Hall at 10:30am

Bloomington Baroque: Works by J.S. Bach
Sat, May 27, 2pm | First Presbyterian Church (221 E Sixth St)
Ingrid Matthews (violin), Colin St. Martin (flute), Shelley Taylor (cello), and Byron Schenkman (harpsichord) present a concert of solo, sonatas, and trios.

A Wendy Gillespie Celebration!
Sat, May 27, 7pm | Auer Concert Hall (Second Floor, Simon Music Center)
An evening in celebration of the inspiring career of Wendy Gillespie, with performances by alumni, guests, and current students.

Duo Park-Kim: Works by Schubert and Mozart
Sun, May 28, 2pm | St. Thomas Church (3800 E Third Street)
An program of works by two of the most loved composers of the Classical period, performed by Jessica Park (violin), and Ji-Young Kim (fortepiano).

Festival Orchestra
Sun, May 28, 7pm | Auer Concert Hall
A grand finale, featuring soloists Ingrid Matthews, Byron Schenkman, Colin St. Martin, Leela Breithaupt (flute), and Nigel North (lute).. The program will include Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, a concerto for two flutes by Telemann, and works by Purcell, Camilla de Rossi and Dall’Abacco.

All performances at the Bloomington Early Music Festival are offered free this year.

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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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