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Bloomington Early Music Festival 2024

Arts and Entertainment

April 15, 2024

From: Bloomington Early Music Festival

Throughout Festival Week, enjoy artwork created by children of families who have recently joined our community, having left their troubled homelands in other parts of the world. The exhibit will encircle the mainstage space at FAR Center from Opening Night, Sunday, through Friday night. During evening performances, you will be surrounded by the visual art of young children who have had to leave their homes behind, while you are immersed in the music of those who had much the same experience so many centuries ago. We are grateful to our new neighbors for sharing their artwork with us and for contributing their talents to our festival. Thank you and welcome to Bloomington!

Schedule:

May 19, 2024

Opening Night!

8:00pm - Wit’s Folly

Émigré: French Refugees in the Early United States & the Music They Brought with Them

(Cleveland, OH) A musical journey of the Early American Republic during an all-but-unknown chapter of America’s early musical history, Émigré shares the complex stories of asylum seekers to the United States during the French and Haitian Revolutions. French nobles, planters, free people of all backgrounds, and the musicians they patronized-such as the clarinetist Mr. Beranger—sought safety from the violence of the French (1789–1799) and Haitian (1791–1804) Revolutions. Consequently, the United States experienced a French cultural explosion in the last decade of the 18th century as waves of self-imposed exiles poured into ports up and down the East Coast. Featuring works by André Grétry, Ignace Pleyel, Michel Yost, and others, Émigré takes its inspiration directly from historic concerts performed in America such as a 1793 benefit for an orphanage in Charleston, South Carolina and a 1798 performance featuring “the best musicians from Boston.”

Formed during the Spring of 2023, Wit’s Folly is an ensemble of highly experienced historical performance specialists based in Cleveland, Ohio that create engaging, energetic, and historically inspired performances using period instruments. Specializing in chamber music from the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the members of Wit’s Folly are dedicated to delivering unique musical experiences that interpret the past, inspire the present, and illuminate the future.

Wit’s Folly is a BLEMF Emerging Ensemble.

7:15pm | Pre-Concert discussion with Lindsay Weaver, specialist in 19th-century French music & culture.

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 20, 2024

2:00pm - What’s that Sound?

The Hurdy Gurdy!

Learn the fascinating history of this medieval wheel-crank instrument & the basics of technique from a world-renowned traditional musician and accomplished performer.

Led by Tomás Lozano

Presentation runs 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Venue: Lotus Fire Bay 105 S. Rogers Street

5:30pm - Al Tayr Ensemble

The Journey of Abendino

(Madrid, Spain)  Expelled from his birthplace of Granada by the command of the Catholic Monarchs in 1492, the Sephardic Jew Abendino lived in exile and traveled across the Mediterranean to Sirkedji, Istanbul, where he eventually resettled. During his journey, Abendino came into contact with a variety of cultures, religions, and music, and survived many dangers along the way . In a musical narration of the movements and experiences of Abendino, Al Tayr Ensemble combines Medieval and Renaissance compositions from the Cancionero de Palacio and the Codex Squarcialupi, among other sources, with traditional music from the Sephardic, Andaluz, Balkan and Anatolian repertoire.

Al Tayr Ensemble is an instrumental trio based in Madrid, Spain specializing in early Andalucian traditional music encompassing Arabic, Sephardic, and European Spanish genres. Member Jon Wasserman, a specialist in plucked stringed instruments, holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Classical Guitar and Ethnomusicology and a Masters Degree in Historical Plucked String Instruments, both from Indiana University. In 2022, he released a CD with Duo Isanta & Wasserman called “Tonos Humanos” of 17th and 18th century Spanish music. Alberto Espinosa Díaz is a percussionist in traditional and Middle Eastern musics who has studied under masters Yshai Afterman, Zohar Fresco, and Kaveh Sarvarian. He holds a degree in Musicology from the UCM and specialized in Percussion at the CPM Victoria de los Ángeles while also studying modern drums and Jazz. Currently, he is pursuing a Master's degree in Interpretation and Research in Early Music at ESMUC. Olga Rodon is a Spanish recorder player dedicated to the fields of musical performance and management. In recent years she has performed in several festivals in Spain such as the Festival de Música Antigua de Granada, Festival de Música Antigua de Lorca, and Early Music Morella.

Al Tayr Ensemble is a BLEMF Emerging Ensemble.

5:00pm - Pre-Concert Discussion (screened) with Jermaine Butler, ethnomusicologist and specialist in Middle Eastern traditional music & culture, and members of Al Tayr Ensemble  

Venue: Screening at Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

8:00pm - Forgotten Clefs

Surviving Inquisition

(Bloomington, IN)  Exploring Spanish and Sephardic music over a 400-year span, Surviving Inquisition traces the journey of Sephardic Jews from the 13th century in Alfonso el Sabio’s Castile, through the early years of the Inquisition in late 15th century Catholic Spain, to Italy in the early 17th century, where many Jews lived following expulsion. Using European and Arabic instruments, Surviving Inquisition intertwines traditional Sephardic tunes with Catholic music from Medieval manuscripts; sets music of the likely converso Juan del Encina (1468-1530) alongside that of the Spanish Catholics Juan de Anchieta (1462-1523) and Christobal de Morales (1500-1553); and moves between secular Italian songs and sacred Hebrew psalms in music of the Jewish composer Salamone Rossi (1570-1630), living in diaspora in  early 17th-century Mantua, Italy.

Forgotten Clefs Renaissance Wind Ensemble was founded in Bloomington, Indiana in 2014 and specializes in the European wind band repertoire of the Renaissance and early Baroque. Almost ten years on, in 2023, Forgotten Clefs toured Montana with the Musikanten Montana, returned to Durham for the North Carolina HIP Festival, performed with Schola Cantorum of the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Richmond, Virginia, and had their Pittsburgh premiere with choral-instrumental music of William Byrd under direction of Alan Lewis and his Calvary Schola. The ensemble’s annual educational outreach program, “Shawms and Stories,” brings musical storytelling to schools, libraries, and community centers in South-Central Indiana with support from the Brown County Community Foundation and Indiana Arts Commission.

7:15pm | Pre-Concert Discussion with Renaissance music scholar Giovanni Zanovello and member of Forgotten Clefs, multi-instrumentalist C. Keith Collins

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 21, 2024

2:00pm | Workshop

Dance the Flamenco!
¡Baila!

Lean into the rhythms, movements, style & history of this perennially popular dance form derived from Roma, Jewish, Arabic & Spanish folkloric traditions.

Led by Bette Lucas of Bette Lucas Dance Studio

Workshop runs 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Bette Lucas has been teaching Flamenco and Bellydance for many years. She directs the troupes ¡Baila! ¡Baila! Flamenco and The Caravanserai Dancers. She is a flamenco teacher, dancer, and perpetual student, and has had many classes with top flamenco dancers both in Spain and at Festival Flamenco Albuquerque.

Venue: Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

5:30pm | Public Screening

Anders Muskens

Incarcerated Music: Sonatas by C.F.D. Schubart

(Weilheim, Germany) Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart (1739-1791) was a German composer, organist, keyboardist, music theorist, poet, journalist, and dedicated activist. Praised by Charles Burney who heard him play organ in Ludwigsburg, Schubart is mostly remembered today as the author of the poem "Die Forelle," which Franz Schubert set to music years later. In an era before true freedom of speech in Germany, Schubart’s published attack on the improprieties of the Jesuits led to his arrest and decade-long confinement in the severe conditions of the Hohenasperg Fortress. During his incarceration, Schubart authored the important treatise "Ideen zu einer Aesthetik der Tonkunst,” (“Ideas for an Aesthetics of Musical Art”) and wrote music and poetry, much of which in the "Sturm und Drang" style. For his political and religious views, Schubart was persecuted: exiled from society, and confined to a cell within a mighty, cold, stone fortress. Yet, in the prevailing spirit of the 18th century, his captors showed a level of Enlightenment leniency and allowed him to publish his art despite his status as a convicted prisoner.

This concert was recorded from within the very cell at the Hohenasperg Fortress where Schubart spent a decade, and wrote much of the music we will hear performed.

Anders Muskens is a Canadian early keyboard specialist and ensemble director, active as an international artist in North America and Europe. He completed an Associate Diploma (ARCT) in modern piano from the Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto and a Masters in Fortepiano at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague. He is currently a doctoral candidate in musicology at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen where he is researching the connection between rhetorical acting and music in the long eighteenth century. He has performed internationally at festivals and venues including the Utrecht Early Music Festival, the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, Het Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the National Music Centre, and the London International Festival of Early Music. Muskens is the founder of Das Neue Mannheimer Orchester, an international initiative to revive the music of the Mannheim School in the second half of the eighteenth century.

Special thanks to the Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg/Museum Hohenasperg for allowing Anders access to the museum to make his recording in the prison where Schubart was incarcerated.

Anders Muskens is a BLEMF Emerging Artist.

5:00pm | Pre-Concert Discussion  (screened) with Michael Weinstein-Reiman (University of Wisconsin-Madison), keyboardist and specialist in the German Enlightenmet, and Anders Muskens

Venue: Screening at Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

8:00pm | Live Concert

The Raritan Players

Jewish Musicians in 18th-century London

(New Brunswick, NJ) Eighteenth-century London was an especially cosmopolitan city, and a relatively tolerant one, which led Jewish musicians from across Europe—from Sephardic, Ashkenazic, Italian, and Eastern descent—to move there. The Jewish community adopted musical customs of the greater London scene while maintaining their own musical traditions. By the second half of the century, Jewish musicians were performing in opera houses, public concerts, and at the English royal court alongside the leading Christian musicians of their day. While some managers and institutions were accommodating, Jewish musicians sometimes experienced clear anti-Jewish sentiment. By exploring the careers of Jewish figures such as the cellists Jacob and James Cervetto and the singer-composer Harriet Abrams, this concert sheds new light on the themes of exile, diaspora, belonging, and music as a site of self-expression among Jews in eighteenth-century London.

The Raritan Players explore lost performance practices and repertoire of the 17th and 18th centuries through engagement with period instruments and new research in musicology. Formed in 2014 and named for the historic Raritan Valley, the area around New Brunswick, New Jersey, the ensemble seeks to breathe new life into untold stories from the musical past. The Raritan Players have revived music and practices associated with little-known figures such as Sara Levy, Anne-Louise Brillon de Jouy, Elizabeth Graeme, and Ignatius Sancho. Past recipients of grants from Chamber Music America, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute, and the American Philosophical Society, among others, the Raritan Players' performances and recordings have garnered praise as “simply mesmerizing" (Early Music America) "enchanting" (Classics Today), and an “unexpected treasure” (American Record Guide). Their recording Sisters, Face to Face: The Bach Legacy in Women's Hands received the 2018 Noah Greenberg Award from the American Musicological Society for contributions to historical performance.  With Rebecca Cypess (Keyboards), Eve Miller (Cello), Parastoo Heidarinejad & Miranda Zirnbauer (Violin), and Ian Pomerantz & Anne Slovin (Voice).

7:15pm | Pre-Concert Discussion with 18th-century British music specialist Devon Nelson and Raritan Players director Rebecca Cypess

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 22, 2024

2:00pm | Workshop

Sword Fighting on the High Seas

Blow me down!

Learn how to fight like a pirate without hurting a fly from a certified,  professional stage combat instructor! Set sail across the Mediterranean with our crew of swashbuckling rogues, and thrust and slash your way to victory like the dreaded Redbeard himself. And if you dare to enter the pirate’s den for this seafaring adventure, you get to take home your own (foam!) sword to vanquish your foes—Aaarrrggghhh!

Led by Andrés X. López

Workshop runs 2:00pm-4:00pm

Andrés received his Ph.D. from Indiana University where he examined the transformation of stage combat in nineteenth century England. Also an advanced actor/ combatant with the Society of American Fight Directors, Andrés holds certifications in all eight weapon disciplines. He has taught stage combat to people of all ages at workshops and in classrooms for over ten years both in the United States and internationally, and he has been the fight choreographer for several productions, including Vinegar Tom, Water by the Spoonful, Streamers, Cyrano de Bergerac, Don Giovanni, and Carmen. Andrés has also  lectured nationally and internationally at universities, organizations, and theatres on the historical and contemporary practice of stage combat.

Venue: Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

5:30pm | Public Screening

Zoe Vandermeer Bards of the British Isles

(Vernon, CT) A beautiful if troubling illustration of the debilitating effects of religious and political persecution, Bards of the British Isles presents music of the late 16th century to the late 18th century from Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. The music, for harp and soprano voice, was composed by harpers and about harpers, as well as other individuals who suffered under the tyranny of Queen Elizabeth I and Edward I. During Elizabeth I’s ongoing religious persecution of the Catholic church in Wales, many Welsh Pencerddau (head bards) were acting as covert emissaries of Recusants in the Welsh nobility, helping to spread news about secret Catholic masses and pilgrimages. And in an attempt to control Ireland, the Virgin Queen issued a proclamation to “hang harpers, wherever found, and destroy their instruments.” Between 1650 and 1660, Oliver Cromwell ordered the destruction of harps and also organs throughout Ireland in an effort to prevent a surge of nationalism—in Dublin alone, 500 harps were seized and burned. Harpers were reduced to becoming itinerant musicians, begging for a living wherever they could. The music these harpers composed and sang provides a powerful view of the many challenges they faced—from avoiding death by hanging to simply putting food on the table, and from maintaining artistic integrity to efforts to keep the legacy of the Bard alive.

Soprano and harpist Zoe Vandermeer is a prize-winning graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and on the Roster of the CT Commission on Culture and Tourism. She accompanies her singing on Welsh triple harp music primarily from the Baroque and Classical periods. Ms. Vandermeer has performed at the Rio International Harp Festival Brasil, International Festival de Deia Spain, American Harp Society, Glasgow Early Music Festival, Connecticut Early Music Festival, American Swedish Historical Museum Philadelphia, New Britain American Museum of Art, Pollok House National Trust Scotland, Nairn Little Theatre Scotland, and elsewhere. In 2014, she enjoyed her Carnegie Hall debut   as First Place Winner of the B. Alexander International Vocal Competition. Ms. Vandermeer has been a featured guest on radio stations in the US and Scotland; her Dowland recording received a favorable review by the UK Lute Society Journal and her soprano and harp baroque album is forthcoming from Centaur Records in 2024.

5:00pm | Pre-Concert Discussion (screened) with early music specialist and multi-instrumentalist C. Keith Collins and Zoe Vandermeer

Venue: Screening at Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

8:00pm | Live Concert

Community Showcase

Bloomington takes the stage!

Honoring the long tradition of Early Music in our community, we present our talented neighbors in a showcase of early music across cultures.
Stay tuned for more details!

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 23, 2024

2:00pm | Workshop

Cocoa Crazy

Xocolatyl to Hot Chocolate

Take a tour through the history of the beans & beverage in the Americas from its earliest uses in indigenous Central American ritual to adaptations by Westerners. Enjoy original recipes along your chocolate journey!

Led by Christopher Armijo & Steven M. Warnock

A partnership with Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard

Workshop runs 2:00pm-4:00pm

Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

5:30pm | Public Screening

Assai Ad Libitum

The Great Fear: Musical Exiles of the French Revolution

(Greensboro, NC & Williamsburg, VA) Exploring music of the  period between the French Revolution (1789-1799) and the Battle of Waterloo (1815), The Great Fear follows the migration, exaltation, and degradation of Pierre Louis Hus-Desforges (1773-1838), Nicolas Méhul (1765-1817), Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-George (1745 – 1799), and Hélène de Montgeroult (1764- 1836). By bringing together music of four French composers affected not only by the Revolution and the downfall of Napoleon, but also by family lineage, gender, and race, this program gives voice to the  circumstances and events that led to political, social, and cultural exile during this violent and precarious time.

Assai Ad Libitum is a newly formed historical ensemble passionate about exploring and performing rare and unrecorded works. Based on the Southeastern coast of the US, the trio comprises Patricia García Gil (fortepiano), Sophie Genevieve Lowe (baroque violin), and Ryan Lowe (baroque cello). Patricia García Gil is a Spanish keyboardist with international accolades in performance and pedagogy on both modern and historical keyboard instruments. A BLEMF 2023 Emerging Artist, she is currently pursuing a DMA in Historical Keyboards at University of North Carolina-Greensboro. Baroque violinist Sophie Genevieve Lowe hails from South Dakota, studied at the Royal Academy of Music and Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music in London, UK, and has appeared on concert stages across the UK and North America. Recently relocated to the US from London after graduating with honors from the Trinity Conservatoire of Music, Welsh cellist Ryan Lowe has performed extensively in the United Kingdom, Europe, Asia, and the United States. Sophie and Ryan regularly perform as a duet at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Virginia.

Assai Ad Libitum is a BLEMF Emerging Ensemble.

5:00pm | Pre-Concert Discussion (screened) with Kirby Haugland, specialist in music of the Napoleonic era, and members of Assai Ad Libitum

Venue: Screening at Lotus Firebay 105 S. Rogers Street

8:00pm | Live Concert

Bach & Beethoven Experience

The Story of Pa I Sha

(Chicago, IL) Following three generations  of BBE Artistic Director Brandi Berry Benson’s own Chickasaw ancestors, this musical journey begins with her fourth great-grandmother, Pa I Sha, who walked the Trail of Tears (or the Removal).  The program moves on to Pa I Sha’s daughter Mary, marriage to a Civil War soldier, their nine children, and their experience as an interracial family forced to live in a tent outside of town. The final stage of the program addresses the discrimination that led this family and later generations to deny their full degree of Indian blood or to deny their indigenous identity altogether. Using melodies of the Chickasaw and Choctaw Nations, the performance features a narrator/vocalist (in English with some Chickasaw language), traverso, Native American flute, period strings, and Chickasaw percussion.

Founded in 2009, the Bach & Beethoven Experience brings artists together to collaborate and transform the classical concert experience through classical, folk, and new music using period instruments. Hailed as “thrilling...charming... performed with such grace, joy and sincerity that a watcher and listener had to be won over" (Bloomington Herald Times), the BBE has performed across the U.S. including at Baroque on Beaver Island Festival, Early Music Academy in Ann Arbor, the Green Mill, Martyrs’, 4th Presbyterian downtown, the Dame Myra Hess series, Boston Early Music Festival fringe series, the Beat Hotel in Boston, and in residency at the Old Town School of Folk Music. The BBE has released three albums, A Gaelic Summer (2019), An Appalachian Summer (2019), and Chicago Stories (2021).

7:15pm | Pre-concert Discussion with Brandie Macdonald, Executive Director of the IU Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and BBE Music Director Brandi Berry Benson, both members of the Chickasaw Nation.

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 24, 2024

2:00pm | Workshop

Making Music Books

Printing Presses, Quills & Ink

Learn about early printing technology from a replica 15th-century Gutenberg printing press, then join in a fun quill & ink making activity to create your own tools for writing the old-fashioned way!

Led by Lilly Library & Kirby Haugland

Workshop runs 2:00pm-3:30pm

Venue: Lilly Library 1200 E. 7th Street

5:00pm | Workshop

Tavern Hopping through Time

Third Round!

Listen, learn & be merry while time traveling in place. Hear about the history of music & drink through lecture, demonstration, sing along & tasting! Try out centuries-old drink recipes while listening to early music written to be performed while imbibing.

Led by Devon Nelson

Workshop runs 5:00pm-6:30pm

$15 at the door  |  21+ only

Venue: John Waldron Arts Center 122 S. Walnut Street

8:00pm | Live Concert

Musica Pacifica

Enclosures, Clearances, the First Wave, oh my!

(San Francisco, CA) During the 18th century, Ireland, Scotland, and England all experienced similar social changes and hardships that forced many of the poorest members of society to effectively become exiles from their native lands. Scotland experienced the "highland clearance", the English had the "enclosure movement", and finally, the Irish had the "first wave" of migration to the United States. Countless subsistence farmers were forced to migrate to other regions, countries, and even continents, leaving their homes and livelihoods behind. Showcasing some of the music that would have been made and heard by these immigrants both before and after they left their homeland, this program features folk tunes and popular dance music from the British Isles in the eighteenth century as well as descendant tunes from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Recently celebrating their 30th anniversary, Musica Pacifica  is widely recognized as one of America’s premier baroque ensembles, lauded for both “dazzling virtuosity” and “warm expressiveness.” They have been described as “some of the finest baroque musicians in America” (American Record Guide) and “among the best in the world” (Alte Musik Aktuell). Musica Pacifica has performed on such prestigious concert stages as the Boston and Berkeley Early Music Festivals, Music Before 1800 and the Frick Collection (NY), the Getty Museum (Los Angeles), the Cleveland Art Museum, Dumbarton Oaks (Washington, DC), Pittsburgh Renaissance and Baroque, Seattle Early Music Guild, Early Music Society of the Islands (Victoria, BC) and the Houston Early Music Society, as well as multiple appearances on the San Francisco Early Music Society series at home. They have performed at festivals in Germany and Austria, and have been featured on German National Radio, Minnesota Public Radio, and National Public Radio’s “Performance Today” and “Harmonia.” Musica Pacifica’s ten CDs on the Virgin Classics, Dorian, Solimar, and Navona labels, including their iconic “Dancing in the Isles-folk and Baroque music from England, Ireland, and Scotland”—have won numerous national and international awards.

7:15pm | Pre-concert Discussion with folklorist Caroline VerMeulen and Musica Pacifica director, Judy Linsenberg, and co-director, Alexa Haynes-Pilon

Venue: FAR Center for Contemporary Arts 505 W. 4th Street

May 25, 2024

Youth Performance

5:00pm | Live Concert

The BEMI Players

The Stanley Ritchie Youth Performance

(Bloomington, IN) Join us for the second annual mainstage concert by members of the Bloomington Early Music Immersion program. A showcase of new skills and newly discovered talents, the BEMI Players performance is the highpoint of a week of daylong instruction and activities introducing middle-school aged string players to historical technique and repertoire from the Baroque era.  A partnership between Bloomington Early Music and the Historical Performance Institute of the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University, with support from the Smithville Charitable Foundation and a 2023 Engagement Award from Early Music America, BEMI is free to participants and fun for all!  

Venue: Trinity Episcopal Church 111 S. Grant Street

Closing Night!

8:00pm | Live Concert

Cantoría

The "Cancionero de Palacio" & Other Songs for Exiles

(Murcia, Spain) During the Franco regime, a group of well-known Spanish music critics, composers, and musicologists living in exile—along with some half-million others—dug deep into music of the Golden Age. Though scattered across the globe, Otto Mayer-Serra, Jesus Bal y Gay, Adolfo Salazar, Roberto Gerhard, Ernesto Halffter, Eduardo Martinez Torner, Jaume Pahissa and others kept in frequent contact through the musicologist and Catalan priest Higini Anglés, who remained in Spain as director of the Spanish government’s Instituto Español de Musicología. Cooperative research and intense musical discussion of this repertoire is understood to have helped these political exiles reconnect to cultural life in their homeland in a profoundly meaningful way. 

Exquisitely beautiful and powerfully rousing, music of Spain’s Golden Age was patronized by—and composed to glorify—the Catholic monarchs during a time of vicious intolerance and sweeping expulsion of both Jews and Muslims.  How, then,  during another dangerously volatile period five centuries on, did this same music, with its problematic origins well-known, serve as a means for another group of exiles—political this time, rather than religious—to re-engage wtih their home country? This program gives us pause to consider how musical meaning shifts with time and context, as the victims and the oppressors change and the role of a particular work or repertoire changes with them.

Founded in 2016, Cantoría is a Spanish vocal quartet specializing in music of the Iberian Golden Age. Known for their distinctive, fresh approach to performance, the group’s superb musicianship, youthful energy, and vibrant stage presence create a powerful, engaged connection between early music and modern audiences. Cantoría is quickly building an international presence with numerous accolades to their name and concerts at renowned festivals and venues in Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Germany, the UK, Poland, and Croatia. Their CD, Mateo Flecha “El Viejo”: Ensaladas has earned three prestigious recording awards: the Diapason Découverte Award (France), the German Record Critics Prize (Germany), and the Melómano d’Oro (Italy). Cantoría’s BLEMF 2024 performance will be their US debut.

7:15pm | Pre-Concert Discussion with Carolann Buff, early music choral scholar & BLEM board member, and Cantoría music director, Jorge Losana

Venue: Trinity Episcopal Church 111 S. Grant Street

Date: May 19 - 25, 2024

Location:

Various Venue in Bloomington, IN 47404

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