Category: BEMF11

In This
review of Red Priest at Rockport, he compares them unfavorably
to Solamente Naturale.

People (including me) often remark on how much less crowded
BEMF is these days than it used to be. There are several
conventional explanations:

• There’s more to do, so each event is less
  well-attended.
• There was a heyday of early music in the 80’s (which I missed) and early
  90’s and the people who were attracted to early music then are
  aging and traveling less and staying out less, and early music
  hasn’t recruited younger people to replace them.
• The lousy economy is cutting into everyone’s discretionary income.

I’m sure all of these explanations are valid, but I ran into
another one last night. A friend came over with his two dogs to
console me for losing Sunny, and I told him I was surprised at not
having seen him at BEMF this year. He turned out to have been
busy. One of his groups is doing a recording, but the good story
is that he’s now playing shawm in a rock band.

It reminded me of Michel
Godard, one of the best serpent players in the world. He
plays lots of kinds of music, from Medieval to jazz and the
digeridoo repertoire. He
attended the Historic Brass Society conference in 1995, and said
that it was the first time he’d been asked to play somewhere because of the
instrument he plays, rather than because people liked his music.

So if there are lots of players of early instruments who aren’t
going to BEMF because they’ve found places to play that aren’t
specifically early music-related, that would be a more cheerful
result than everybody getting old and losing their money.

This
article is mostly about the Juliard early music department, but the hook
is the BEMF Young Artists mini-festival.

Is here.

Is
here.

Is here.

Is here.

Is here.

Joseph E. Morgan makes some good points about how demanding
BEMF can be of its audiences:

In all it was a wonderful concert that I enjoyed immensely.

Unfortunately however, several members of the audience around me did not. As part of my preparation for this review I did some research concerning the opera’s plot, music and libretto — preparation that is generally not expected of a concert-going audience. And yet, in a move that only be ascribed to their ambition to sell as many of their $10 “yearbooks” as possible (which included the complete libretto), BEMF did not distribute the typical program book for the performance. Instead they handed out single-page flyers that listed only the performers and sponsors. Coupled with the lack of supertitles, this left too many of the audience members completely ignorant as to what was happening on the stage before them. Despite the singers’ excellent diction, it is really rather difficult to make out a text in operatic performance — even if it is in English. Because of this several people left at intermission and I doubt that they will return next year.

Is here.

I sat through a Tallis Scholars concert once. I haven’t gone since.
They really aren’t about anything I like about Renaissance music.
Some of the reasons for this Jeffrey Gantz touches on in his article. So you’ll
have to read the articles I’m aggregating here if you want to know
more about it.

Is here.